Salt of the Earth

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

40,000 years ago, the Salar de Uyuni region in Bolivia was part of a huge prehistoric
lake called Lake Minchin. The lake has dried and now at 10,500 square kilometres
it is the world's largest salt flat, a land of preternatural beauty and wildness.

Scare stories gnawed at my insomniac mind. Anything was possible. Inedible food. Unhygienic cooking conditions resulting in severe food poisoning. Alcoholic tour guides selling the petrol supply on the sly. Drunk drivers and horrific accidents far from any hope of rescue or survival. Simply getting stranded, ending up in an archaeological museum of the distant future. A pervasive paranoia absent when we booked the trip in a travel agent in La Paz now intensified. Negotiating them down to $20 a day, all inclusive, seemed irrelevant now, if not reckless. We were doomed.

As the journey south progressed, a ten hour bus ride from the capital La Paz to the small market town of Uyuni, the night grew colder taking my mind off the travellers' myths. Condensation and ice duelled on the windows. Blankets bought in dusty La Paz shops together with fleeces and several layers of clothing struggled to preserve our body heat. Our breath glistened in the dark.

For once I was glad of the cramped conditions. Locals, indigenous people of the Altiplano, sleeping in the aisle like piled up corpses and leaning on me, meant some warmth. The smell of straw, over-ripe vegetables, damp laundry together with various small livestock, alive and squawking or dead and festering in sacks, was somewhat less welcome. By now that the tarmac road had given way to a more pragmatic form of track, a further challenge to sleep.

Arrival in Uyuni was around four in the morning, tired with fingers stinging from ice cold. It was still dark and it seemed that half the town were there to greet the bus or attend its funeral. We were herded by our local travel agent and managed a few hours sleep at a nearby guest house, which had severe plumbing problems. Our driver, Pedro, middle-aged, grinning, bean-like, picked us up. We climbed into his old Toyota Landcruiser with our cook, Rosa, who could have been his sister.

After a brief interlude at a salt museum, the journey really began. The Salar de Uyuni is 6,000 square miles of salt desert at an altitude of approximately 3,800 metres. The clear dazzling pale blue sky combined with the white brilliance of the salt meant shades were essential to return the glare of this ethereal landscape. It was like a polar scene, a snowy crunch beneath the feet, breathtaking. Ultraviolet rays seared us reinforcing the brutal reality of this landscape.

Small pyramids of salt collected indicated this was a place of industry as well as a scene of immense natural beauty. Surly men in hats with shovels. Rusty, wheezing tractors. Chipping away at the 10 billion tons of white salt for oblivious diners at tables around the world. The continuing drive across the salt flat was gliding, almost hypnotic. We were cramped, seven of us plus Pedro and Rosa, together with our luggage and provisions, but entranced in silence, absorbing everything.

In the middle of the salt flat, a brown speck grew as we approached, appearing sun-hazy like a mirage. We soon realised this was a small hill: La Isla del Pescado (the Island of Fish), named due to its peculiar shape. It was lunchtime and we stopped there to eat. With what seemed to be the entire foreign community in Bolivia. A row of jeeps gave the impression of a car park. The island was layered with pot-marked brown, ancient coral, testament to the fact this was seabed in prehistoric times. Absurd, tall cacti crowded the island. Some were up to 100 metres and aged 100 years. This was a sacred Incan site called Incahuasi, mystical, tranquil. Now it swarmed with travellers.

As we drove on, chasing the horizon of mountains, leaving this spectral, fading day the landscape became a surrealist painting. We drove past a red water lake with orange grass lining the bank and a blue island in the middle. Wild llama herds were skittish as we rumbled by. Our guest house for the night was in a village of shuttered doors and windows that had the feel of a ghost town. In the night silence, you could not help feeling that something was going on. It was too quiet as we crept about, searching for a pub with the golden candlelight of Latin hospitality and laughter. Silence. The starry sweep of the Milky Way on this cold, rural night was one of the highlights of the trip.

Our second day, an early start without a shower, had a feel of big country, Wild West, red mountains. Although there was a tourist circuit to the Salar de Uyuni, we passed rare vehicles, rare life. We could have been lost or the world could have ended for all we knew. Lunch of spaghetti bolognaise by a briny lake filled with flamingos was quiet as the lack of sleep caught up with us.

During the next few days we traversed a landscape of smoky volcanoes, snowy mountains, sweeping lunar vistas giving way to Martian rubble, geothermal springs reeking of sulphur. We followed and crossed dried out rocky riverbeds as wide as the Thames. Sometimes we had to get out and push as the Toyota's weary gear box struggled with the terrain. It never ever ceased to be amazing or epic.

At certain interludes the desert presented us with sandy rock formations swept and carved by history's desert winds, conveying an Easter Island feel of long rocky faces, but all naturally formed. Strange animals, dream- like images. This was the world of Dali, his imagination in reality, in total silence. There were a handful of stops like these. A chance to stretch legs, climb, and for Pedro to smoke. We encountered the most famous on our second day: the Arbol de Piedre (Stone Tree).

On our last day, we ate leftovers for lunch by the roadside before a final excursion, a visit to the train cemetery on the outskirts of Uyuni. Lines of rusting steam engines stood, scrap, unwanted, but sleek against the bright, light blue sky. This spoke of sorrow for unfulfilled potential, the promise of Nineteenth century industrialisation given away to the rot, corruption and failure of the last century. We climbed and played in the wreckage and felt like children again.

Bolivia is a land of mystery and dramatic scenery. The frequently overlooked Salar de Uyuni is as alien and starkly beautiful as anywhere on the planet. The horrors feared days before, did not materialise and were never likely to. Apart from the food poisoning. I endured one last cold night in Uyuni at a ramshackle guest house in a creaky, damp bed before an early morning bus south into the badlands, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid territory and the border with Argentina. I knew then the quiet, the barrenness would remain with me and still does.

Text & photos: Steven Tizzard