Other considerable subtitles: Love & Loss in the High Desert; Crossing the Chilean-Bolivian Border; Gifts from the Underworld; Salar de Uyuni – Salt Flat on my Ass.
In my last post I traveled from the southern tip of Chile, Punta Arenas, all the way to a northern border town called San Pedro de Atacama. I flew to Chile on January 6th, and had spent over a month exploring and volunteering in Patagonia. We resume this adventure on my last morning in Chile, before embarking on a three day guided tour that culminates at the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flats. Here we go!
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February 19th,
The sky was still pitch black, revealing a view of the Milky Way when I woke up that morning. San Pedro de Atacama is a world-renowned location for space-watching, with an observatory, several stargazing tours, and an astronomical museum. This is due to the facts that the town is high up in elevation (around 8,000 ft or 2,400 m), nestled in the Atacama desert, the driest desert in the world, and with little light pollution to drown out the stars.
Thankfully I ran into a friend that morning, who had the keys to unlock the two gates that I needed to pass through in order to make my way to the street where Sol Andino Expediciones would pick me up. We chatted while waiting for our respective rides to take us into Bolivia, and by 7:15 I boarded the van. We picked up maybe 15 more folks from a few different hostels who were also doing the tour, and passed a hot air balloon on the way to the first border crossing into Bolivia.
Despite making it to the checkpoint by around 8 AM, there was a lot of waiting that was awaiting us. At first we were told we could pass through the checkpoint around 10 AM, and then noon, then… well, hopefully today. So the guides set up breakfast and coffee on a fold-up table outside, and I killed the time in conversation with various folks. That time passed away, but with indefinitely more time standing guard, I caught myself up on writing and wandered around, admiring the stupendously tall snow-covered volcanic peaks which ran along the Chilean-Bolivian border. Some were over 19,000 feet (5,800 m) tall, which far surpasses the 14’ers that Colorado claims fame to. So, it wasn’t a bad place to be stuck for a while. Still, the clock kept ticking. Ticking away time that I would have rather spent sinking into the landscapes that were over the volcanic pass on the itinerary for that day. Oh well.
We passed through the first gate around 1 PM. The reason we waited five hours longer than expected… they were “cleaning”. Whatever. Regardless, it was a magnificent ride, passing right by Volcán Licancabur, which rose up 19,423 feet (5,920 m) above sea level. Even the mountain pass we were on curved its way up to 15,260 feet, which brought me higher than when I summited Mt. Elbert, Colorado’s tallest peak, at only 14,439 ft. Fresh snow on the ground and surrounding mountains made it all the more surreal. Up there, we waited in line for a while again to cross the official border, along with all the other passenger vans, who were transporting hoards of people off to tour the big flat salt.
Just a few miles down the road, we split up into groups and prepared to flop into our respective off-roading Toyota vehicles. The moment I’ve been waiting for! Oh wait. Nope. First, some more nice waiting. This waiting took place outside in a line of around 50 people, wind blowing, snowflakes fluttering, still higher than a kite. I filled out the visa paper and had all my other needs in hand. Standing next to me were Paul and Vanesa, who thankfully were fun and friendly, since we would be sharing the same ride for the next few days. They’re traveling for nine continuous months, and will eventually be heading to the states, visiting family in San Francisco and then touring every island in Hawaii before they fly back home to Germany.
Finally, with a Bolivian stamp in my passport and $160 fewer bucks in my pocket, I was stuffing myself into the car, with my Bolivian driver Eloy, and passengers Lisa and Leah from Switzerland, Marcia from Brazil, and Paul and Vanesa. Tight squeeze, but I’d surely get used to it. First stop was a natural hot spring, where we ate lunch and proceeded to swim around in this luscious little body of steaming water. Hovering at the edge of the spring, I’d pause to watch the llamas grazing just 20 feet in front of me, then swim a lap, and repeat. So surreal.
Further on down this beaten up half-trail of a road, we cruised by some thermal vents in the earth, which was strikingly similar to some landscapes in Iceland. It was sunny blizzarding, with snowy peaks on red rock mountains, barren yet for a few desert shrubs, and several fleets of Llamas. Afterwards, we ended up turning around multiple times because Leoy was confused about the whereabouts of our next stop, Laguna Colorada. My trustworthy offline map, Maps.Me, was surprisingly quick and accurate in showing us the way. So I guided our tour guide down a rugged road for a couple hours as the sun slowly sank into the mountains.
It was a fairly uncomfortable ride, at least until we were nearing Laguna Colorada, when suddenly.. OUUUWCH! Let the swearing commence. The road dipped abruptly, causing my head to hit the roof. My sunglasses propped atop my noggin dug into the top of my head with such force I soon was bleeding. Leoy felt genuinely sorry, and I forgave him. But damn did that hurt more than anything has in a long, long while.
I persevered through the pain as we stretched out of the jeep to see the Red Lagoon. With a mild shiver I walked out to observe the shallow, reflective lake, filled with somewhere around 20,000 flamingos. No exaggeration. I’ve never seen so many O’s passionately ablaze in my whole life… So. Many. Flaming O’s.
By the time my head scabbed up we made it to our hostel, and I was starting to feel a serious headache come on. I supposed it was due to a combination of factors: lack of water, high altitude, and the obvious small hole in my head. There was some big logistical issue happening in the common area, but I withdrew to a bed and lied down, head and body sore from being stuck in one position on rocky-ass roads for maybe seven hours that day. Ugh, this really sucked. I was hopeful that sleep would solve everything, as it usually does.
But as the night ticked on, my headache only seemed to get worse. Additionally, my body temperature was unregulated, as I would cycle between feeling frigid and flaming. Top it off with some labored breathing and nausea, I was in too much discomfort to sleep. Maybe I got two hours that night. The rest of the time I spent tossing and turning, with frustration and fear that maybe something serious is happening, and I will need medical evacuation.
My signs and symptoms, while they matched up with altitude sickness (which I’ve never really experienced before, despite spending lots of time being really high in Colorado), also lined up with increasing inter-cranial pressure. According to my Wilderness First Responder training, that would be a red level of concern, requiring immediate evacuation, since if untreated it could lead to fatality in less than 24 hours. I didn’t have a concussion, at least to the point of lacking recall, but I sure was in a hazy, achey daze. I fretted over not being able to finish the tour, the prospect of poor health care and a huge medical bill, and what the evac would look like. A helicopter ride would be fun, I guess. I’ve never been much of a worrier, and there have been but a couple times I’ve felt so concerned for my health, moreover my life, as I did that night.
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February 20th,
I awoke feeling drained and anxious, with every little movement wringing out pain in my brain. Zombie-like, I stuffed my sleeping bag into its sack, skipped breakfast, and meditated instead. Leah was sweet and caring, offering ibuprofen that morning and some medicine for altitude sickness the night prior. I felt grateful to be in supportive company, who all encouraged me to sit in the front seat of our Toyota that morning.
Flakes of frost dissolved from our windows as we sped away, only to have the other car in our group pop a flat tire. 20 minutes later we were off again, and with the help of some hojas de coca, my headache subsided into a hazy but less painful mental state. We continued along up at 15,000 feet, passing the high and dry peaks, a lotta’ llamas, and a humble stream with short, spikey grass. Eventually we reached town, Villa del Mar, which held little buildings that resembled the vast, sprawling sea of dry, orange-red rocks that surrounded it. Leoy offered me the opportunity to see a medic, which I turned down. The pain was tolerable, I no longer felt nauseous, and my energy had slowly started to return. Thank freaking heavens.
On our way to our lunch spot we stopped to climb up some scattered red rocks, which reminded me quite a bit of Utah. The vegetation, too, all dry and prickly. A little further on we stopped in some random middle of nowhere town for an hour, while some dissonant, out-of-tune fluting and drumming was mid-concert in the middle of the street. It was Carnaval time. A time of devious, trickster energy. Celebration of the underworld. And I sure had it coming for me (tomorrow). The flagrant musical display carried on while I played chess with Livia, everyone else sipping on beer as I stuck to water.
Eventually we sped on towards Anaconda, a deep, barren canyon, which again had Utah written all over it. The desert foliage held some bushy plants with short cedar-like fronds. I gently pressed my fingers against their tips, and those to my nose. Couldn’t smell much. Just a faint trail of a friend.
Finally, after many long hours packed like sardines in the backseat, we made it to a hostel made entirely of salt. Or so they claimed. Turns out their doors were wooden, sinks were sinky, and the electric currents in the lights hadn’t even the slightest saline solution. Though the walls, sure enough, tasted like a french fry minus the fry plus extra salt.
I passed out on the bed for a little while, then got up to eat dinner. Soup and bread, and a few potato wedges. I was grateful that Lisa asked Leoy if we could watch the sunrise on the salt flats, and he said yes. However, that meant we had to wake up at 4 AM. So, promptly after dinner and some tooth & tongue brushing, around 9:30 I was out.
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February 21st,
To my surprise, I slept poorly. Perhaps only twice as well as the night prior. Oh, altitude, you magnificent beast. I surrender. Under the bedazzling, star-lit sky I helped load our bags onto the jeep. Jittering amidst the lethargy and frustration was a sense of giddiness for what lied ahead: The Salar de Uyuni. The world’s largest salt flats.
We drove for two hours, at first on a road, then on a path that sometimes dissolved into the thin lake around it, and then at least for half an hour, on the salt without any semblance whatsoever of a trail. Just glazing over this wet, salty desert. I watched as a faint reddish glow started to populate the sky. But when we stopped to pee, I could still see an orchestra of stars.
It bled brighter, and orangish-yellow by the time we pulled over to watch the sunrise. Well actually, there was nowhere to pull over from, it was more of a plopping down. Either way, we made it. We were in the middle of this mind-blowing expansive crust of a lake. My Salomon trail-running shoes surprisingly had just enough sole to keep my feet dry while standing atop the inch-or-two deep lake. Yes, that’s right, I could walk on water.
As I stepped out, I stood at first with Paul and Vanesa, speaking a little bit of german together, sharing a special treat. I set up my time lapse camera on the hood of the car, thinking, “this will surely be one of the most incredible time lapses I take in my entire life.”
Then, with some special tea and buttered coffee, I set myself free to the enveloping mirror of colors. Clutching my beloved Crazy Creek, a padded portable seat, like a chicken falling back on an egg, I landed my tush on a salt boob protruding up from the lake. Livia and Lisa got such a kick out of watching me, leaning back with my shades on, just melting into the infinitude of this mirror-lake.
As such, I watched the sunrise. A forever moment.
Which means: a moment that I wouldn’t mind being stuck in forever. However, since impermanence exists, I’ll settle for remembering it forever. Thus in a way, it can stay with me wherever I go. It can fuel me. Bring me beauty and wonder, providing comfort in times of boredom or despair. And with the time lapse video as a keepsake, I can experience the moment, at least at a speedy distance, whenever I’d like to (that is, once I am able to upload the video to a computer).
So it came, and so it went. With places to be and people to see, we hopped back on the wheels, and kept driving over the lake. Onwards we went for miles and miles, passing face-carved salt monuments, a holy 100% salt stairway to heaven, and a hut-shaped hotel sewn together with nothing but sweat and the ocean. Bodies of water aside, this is the saltiest place on Earth.
Further on, near Uyuni at the eastern edge of the salt flat, I stopped to buy a shotglass and fill my water bottle. We continued on, and in the next town there was a marching band full of men dressed in bright red, hootin’ and tootin’ all down the street. So of course, I went to pull out my time lapse camera to create art out of this once-in-a-lifetime moment, but couldn’t find it. Anywhere.
My water bottle, too, was MIA. Immediately my brain snapped to the moment of setting it up on the back of the car while we grazed around the little touristy pit stop for a mere 10 minutes. I was preparing some matcha mixed with a powdered fruit thing to bring up my energy, which was starting to slip back into sleepy-dreamworld. Suddenly it was time to go, everybody had already piled into the car, and I felt rushed to follow suit.
Well, after learning about how they make all this salt edible, we drove back to the pit stop. Immediately I recognized my water bottle and my heart jumped with hope. But no camera. Leoy helped me out by asking the local vendors if they had any clue what happened to it. They said some blonde lady in a white van might have snagged it. Alas, a lead was a lead, but not a very promising one. Back in the town we just came from, 10 minutes away, we stopped at every white truck, asking them if they had seen my camera. After about 15 minutes of this, coming up as dry as the Atacama desert, I made the only rational decision: Give up. Move on.
So we continued on to Uyuni, a much more sizable settlement with big tall banks and loud boxy buses. But first, we were to finish off the tour at some train graveyard place. Lots of old, falling apart trains scattered about over a few acres. I gave a final go at asking any and all blonde women near white trucks if they had seen a camera. Nope. Nada. Sorry. Nothing.
I tried my best. The truth could now start to settle in. I could accept the loss. What exactly the loss was, however, that was still hazy. And that was okay.
I sat with Livia and Lisa upon the top of an old falling apart train, my butt roasting on the hot metal beneath it, smoking a cigarette that Livia hand-rolled for me, letting the moment be. Not fighting it. Not refusing to feel remorseful, yet not giving into remorse. Knowing that this, too, is perfectly in place. There will be a lesson learned from this. And again, what exactly that lesson was – I wasn’t sure yet.
After gulping down a tongue-pleasing cup of fresh green orange juice, we continued to drop everybody off at their respective places. First, in the Sol Andino office I hugged Vanesa and Paul goodbye. They were about to embark on a return trip to San Pedro de Atacama, then Calama, and then off to Ecuador.
Next up, not even 500 feet away, I was dropped off at Rummy Hostel, and bid farewell to Marcia and my sweet Swiss friends. Leoy walked me through a buzzing plaza to drop me off at my hostel. He was kind and gentle, and despite the calamities of this trip, I was grateful he guided me though it all.
So I checked in, wound up some stairs, dropped off my pack, and walked back down to the streets to find an ATM. On my way back I crossed an accordion player who really struck a chord in my heart, so I made my way back to a ledge across the street from him, and just listened for a while. Just let myself be.
After some passing of time I let myself wind back up and down the stairs of my hostel, to sit on the ground of this open room with a ladder, and some construction rubble on the ground. With Adrianne Lenker’s voice reminding me through my earbuds, “you don’t need to know why when you cry”, I cried. And though it had to do with losing my camera, I didn’t fully know why. Which was just fine. I did what I needed to do, releasing my emotions wild to the wind, which took them to irrigate some far off, distant lands. After a few songs my heart subsided, the seas of my soul mellowing out, and the moonlight rocked the waves to a faint, steady beat.
The gods sure did have a sense of humor, as in the middle of this experience, a marching band of at least 30 spine-shattering, brass-blasting, drum-thumping men came a-blazin’ into the little plazacito of my hostel. They filled the space with their bombastic music, and then just stayed there, hanging out, taking a break. I nodded in recognition of some greater forces at play. I let bellow a silent laugh, and proceeded briskly past their stares and up the stairs once again, to retreat to the darkness and rare creature comfort of watching TV from my hostel bed, before falling asleep around eight. It had been a long day of highs and lows, and while I was grateful for it, boy was I relieved to have it finally end.
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So what did I ultimately learn from losing my time lapse camera?
1) That I identified with this camera, and had built attachment to it. And perhaps attachment isn’t always bad. Rather, it seems, the danger of attachment lies not inherent in the grasp, but in the unwillingness to let go when the object no longer fits your palm.
More importantly, 2) That along with the camera I lost a piece of myself. And that’s what I really mourned for.
For months even before my travels I had been envisioning the grandest art project of my life, a true creative statement: A musical time-lapse with creative writing. Blending all my artistic passions into one masterpiece, I’d sew together footage from each day, play original music over it, and share it with stories and poetry. In losing this creative potential, I felt a loss of self. For I identify not just with what I’ve done, but what I strive to achieve.
Self-expression is self-expansion, and this equipment provided an artistic outlet. Like music, it is a way of communicating something that words can’t quite ever encircle. Creation through the means of music and film opens a passageway through which my spirit may breathe. It is the instantaneous combustion of life. Raw Life, filtered and blended through a human and a tool or two.
There were two ways I could ultimately choose to react to this: a. slobber around all sad and woeful, or b. let this loss creativity through this channel be funneled into another one. Keep moving on living my best life, in humble remembrance that I am vulnerable to the world around me. People and the environment seep into me as I seep into them. I am an absorbent sponge in a wet world of stimulation, and I’d rather live letting myself be fully saturated by it than trying to stay dry.
I could blame the lack of sleep, I could blame the person who stole my camera, I could blame Leoy for rushing me along, but at the end of the day, blame wasn’t important. What’s gone is gone. I accepted that I had some responsibility in losing it. External circumstances played a role, too.
I also recognized that there was something beautiful about losing it at this crux of my journey. Carnaval time, when mischievous spirits of the underworld come out to play. The entering of another country. The winding down of my overall South America trip.
So much invaluable footage was now gone with the wind: Peak moments from Torres del Paine – that place of places with utmost stunning beauty. Over 1,000 miles of driving through the Atacama desert, the most alien landscape I’d ever experienced. And the salty wild world that had burst open with color, totally unlike any place I had ever been. All gone. But of course, the memories, the experiences themselves, the forever moments – those will remain in my heart. And that is the way it was meant to be.
I compared my situation to one that Green Day was once in. They wrote one of my favorite albums of all time, American Idiot, right after having the tapes of their entire previous record stolen right out from under them. So I chose to let this loss of creative material amplify my creativity elsewhere.
Let this be passion fruit, jasmine blossom, hojas de coca, sangre de tigre, diamond-digging, spring-singing, lightning-striking, magic-musing inspiration to keep writing. To keep creating with love and out of love.
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Thanks for reading. Only a few more posts and this entire South America trip will be wrapped up. Stay tuned.
:),
Hans
Words of Hans 