But... at the border while waiting for my immigration stamp Diana appeared out of nowhere... it´s a small world on the gringo trail in South America. In Copacabana, Bolivia all of us met up again for lunch. I was staying to explore the Isla del Sol, they were heading for La Paz. After an hour in Copacabana, I decided that I´d rather spend my time on the Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca.
Lake Titicaca sits at 3,811 metres above sea level, making it the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. By volume of water, it is also the largest lake in South America. 30,000 years ago Lake Titicaca was part of a single massive lake including present day Lake Poopó and the now mostly, but not completely, dry Salar de Uyuni. Since the year 2000, Lake Titicaca has experienced receding water levels. Between April and November 2009 alone, the water level sank by 81 cm and has now reached its lowest level since 1949. This drop is caused by shortened raining seasons and the melting of glaciers feeding the tributaries of the lake.
A very slow boat ride got me to the southern end of the Isla del Sol at the community of Yumani. As I got off the boat I quickly realized that the only modes of transportation were donkey and foot; but seeing as the island is only 11 kms long, it kind of made sense. Isla del Sol is covered with ruins, over 80, but most are just small piles of rubble from long gone buildings and settlements. Archaeologists estimate that this isand has been inhabited since around 3,000 B.C.E. In my previous blog post I outlined the significance of this island to the Inca as the mythological birth place of the Inca founder Manco Capac.
After climbing more Inca stairs from the docks to the village proper, I was greeted by a bucolic, pastoral village complete with cobble streets and wandering livestock. While looking for a cheap hostel I ran into some other travelers: a couple of Swedes, an Italian, and an Indian. We decided to search for lodging together so we could get a good group rate and they had planned the same trek I had in mind for the next day... hiking the length of the island at 4,000 metres to see ruins and the local lifestyle. We settled in at a hostel with a beautiful view of the lake for only 17 Bolivianos/night ($3 or $4), had some dinner, played some cards, and prepared for the hike in the morning.
Waking up to the echoes of donkeys braying at the rising sun is... for lack of a better word... awesome. After a quick breakfast and shower we were on our way. Side note... in South America showers can be classified in the following ways: hot, warm, not cold, and cold... these fell into the warm category, thank goodness after a night at sub-zero temperatures. Walking through the villages and thoroughly lived in landscapes of the island felt like being transported hundreds of years into the past. Donkeys, cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, and llamas wandered everywhere punctuating the still silence with their commentary on our presence. We took the long way around the south part of the island before heading up to the "highway", an ancient path along the highest ridges of the island. We stopped at a mountain top café for some mate de coca to help with the altitude, then continued on to the northern part of the island to check out the Sacred Wall and the ruins of Chicana.
After a long return trek we were all exhausted and overdosed on amazing beauty. We had some dinner and some more cards then called it an early night as the heat of the day was replaced by the chill of darkness at 4,000 metres. By 8 am the next day we were back on the boat to Copacabana where I said fairwell to my brief travel companions. An hour later I was on a bus to La Paz. I figured it would be a quick 3 or 4 hour bus ride, but Bolivian politics got in the way of that plan.
About 30 minutes out of Copacabana, along the only paved road to La Paz, some locals had set up a road block. At first I thought it was due to the elections held the previous day. About a month earlier there had been a large uproar about the proposed trans-oceanic highway planned to stretch from Argentina through Bolivia to Chile. The result of this uproar was the election, which turned out to be a farce with few, if any, people knowing which candidates stood for what. Turned out this particular roadblock was about a local matter... a local girl had been raped and the alleged perpetrator had, in the local´s opinion, been treated unfairly, so they planned to block the road for 3 days in protest.
After 4 1/2 hours of speeches and a growing lineup of aggrevated tourists, they let buses through before throwing the block up again. A few more hours in the bus and an interesting bus-ferry across a portion of Lake Titicaca got me to La Paz. Instead of arriving in La Paz at 4:30 pm I arrived around 9 pm... I hate arriving in new cities without a guidebook after dark. Fortunately Rasmus, Kasper, and Diana found a nice hostel and forwarded me the address... thank goodness, La Paz after dark is a mad house of traffic and pedestrians... by far the craziest traffic I´ve yet encountered in South America.
At 3,650 metres above sea level, La Paz is the world´s highest capital city. It is nestled in a valley climbing steep walls of dramatic rock formations, but at this point in my journey I was done with exploring South American cities, I just wanted to set up my adventure down the nearby Camino de la Muerte a.k.a. Death Road. So, after a day of relaxing, playing pool, planning the bike ride, and eating cheap street food (3 Bolivianos - about 80 cents for a meal) Rasmus, Kasper, and I had to get up extra early to navigate some more local road blocks on the journey to our cycling drop-off point at 4,700 metres.
The so-called "Death Road" was built in the 1930´s by Paraguayan prisoners from the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay over petroleum rich lands along the borders of the countries. With over 3,600 metres of vertical decent and 64 kms of non-stop downhill adrenaline, this road is by far the gnarliest bike ride I´ve ever experienced. The deadliest portions of the road drop off in a 600 metre cliff face into wild jungle below where piles of cars and buses lay entangled in overgrown jungle after decades of deadly disaster. It is said that when it was in regular use, up to 300 people died each year on it. The most typical way people went over the edge was when two vehicles met on the road going in opposite directions. The local rule was that vehicles drove on the LEFT hand side so that drivers could keep an eye on the wheels and the edge of the road. As the vehicles on the outside edged closer to the precipice to allow other vehicles by, the water-logged roadside would occassionally collapse toppling whichever car or bus happened to be there at the time. Since 1990 mountain bike tours have been using the most dangerous portion of the road ever since a new highway was built. In that time 33 cyclists have lost their lives on the road.
Our day began well above the nasty portion of the death road at 4,700 metres in the La Cumbre Pass amidst rain and fog... we were going to get wet! The first leg took us down paved highway through a narcotrafficking check point to the road access fee hut. Our bike guides were awesome permitting all levels of riders the freedom they needed... thank goodness they supplied us with good equipment, I only got one flat tire and still managed to shred that road. The death road proper began with a stop at one of the highest chasms and proceeded through cliffside waterfalls to "The Balcony". After many a hair-raising twists, turns, and cliff-tottering stops we arrived in the town of Coroico completely soaked where we were provided lunch and hot showers before making the 3-4 hour drive back to La Paz... what a fantastic adrenaline experience! Due to strange Bolivian transport practices, I found myself stuck in La Paz for another day waiting for a night bus to Uyuni and my next adventure. A few weeks earlier I had been traveling with a Portuguese doctor named Rui. He suggested that when in Bolivia I check out the Salar de Uyuni, so I chose to cross into Chile through the high Andean desert by 4x4 from Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama.
On the bus from La Paz to Uyuni I met a German guy, Sebastian, and a Japanese fellow, Shogo. They were planning the same trek I had in mind, so we decided to travel together in order to get a good trek price... we needed 6 people to fill a Landcruiser for the 2 night 3 day desert crossing. After a bone-jarring night cruising along washboard "highways" we got off the bus in Uyuni at 7:30 am to be greeted by a mob of tour operators. I was relieved that I wouldn´t have to spend a night in Uyuni... it was a town straight out of a Mad Max film... the tour left at 10:30 am.
We shopped around for the cheapest deal we could find then got some breakfast and cold weather clothing... we were going to be traveling above 4,000 metres for a few days. As we were eating breakfat, who should I see walking across the square... Diana! She had left La Paz a day before me but had experienced some bus problems en route, so she was beginning her Uyuni tour the same day as me... small world on the gringo trail... At 10:30 am six tourists, our cook, and our driver piled into the Toyota Landcruiser for our 600 km journey through the Bolivian wilds. Our first stop lay just outside the town of Uyuni, the train cemetary. It is located 3 km outside Uyuni and is connected to it by the old train tracks. The town served in the past as a distribution hub for trains carrying minerals on their way to Pacific Ocean ports. The train lines were built by British engineers who arrived near the end of the 19th century and formed a sizable community in Uyuni. The engineers were invited by British-sponsored Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway Companies, which is now Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia. The rail construction started in 1888 and ended in 1892. It was encouraged by the then Bolivian President Aniceto Arce, who believed Bolivia would flourish with a good transport system, but it was also constantly sabotaged by the local Aymara indigenous Indians who saw it as an intrusion into their lives. The trains were mostly used by the mining companies. In the 1940s, the mining industry collapsed, partly due to mineral depletion. Many trains were abandoned thereby producing the train cemetery.
A brief exploration of gutted train wrecks and we were back on the road headed for the Salar de Uyuni, the Uyuni Slat Flats... Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat measuring around 12,000 square kilometers. It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, and is at an elevation of about 3,656 metres above sea level. The Salar was formed as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes, Lake Titicaca, Lake Poopó, and the Uyuni Lake. It is covered by a few meters of salt crust, actually up to 120 metres in some places, which has an extraordinary flatness with average altitude variations within one metre over the entire area of the Salar. The crust serves as a source of salt for local Bolivian industry and covers pools of brine, which can be seen at the surface in many places, which is exceptionally rich in lithium. It contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves which is in the process of being extracted. The large area, clear skies and exceptional surface flatness make the Salar an ideal object for calibrating the altimeters of Earth observation satellites.
Our first stop was a salt mining village... salt, being cheap, is only mined for local Bolivian use. Nevertheless, it was an impressive operation with many of the houses built from salt bricks. Next we continued on deeper into the Salt Flats where we got to experience some of the unique optical perspectives offered by the featureless landscape as well as some unforgettable natural formations.
In the middle of the Salt Flats there´s an island... Isla del Pescado. Apparently this island was of some significance to the Inca, but I have yet to uncover any information about it. Nevertheless, it is an amazing little "island" amidst the salt flats. It´s called "The Island of the Fish" because apparently when there was water in the Uyuni salt flats, at a certain time of day the island appeared to look like a fish with its reflection in the water. With cactii over 800 years old looming above you and stark white salt flats extending to the horizons around, it is definitely a sight to behold. Nevertheless, it was mearly a pitstop on our greater journey through the high Andes desert. We quickly left the salt flats behind as we entered dry martian coloured valleys. I dozed off until we hit some serious washboards on the road. It wasn´t long before we experienced our first flat tire. Normally this wouldn´t be a big concern, however, we only had one spare tire and 500 or so kms left in our journey across some pretty unforgiving terrain.While our driver changed our tire I had a chance to get a close up look at some of the ancient coral speckling the landscape... it was mind boggling to examine old coral reefs near 4,000 metres... a reminder of the geologic powers and time frames the earth lives through with us only being a blip on the temporal landscape.
With the sun setting and the Andean chill of night setting in, we rolled into the small desert town of San Juan. As Cristobal, our driver, figured out that we couldn´t fix our spare tire, our group settled into the salt hostel with a little iPod driven music, complementary wine, and some cards. Once the warmth of our clothes gave way to the penetrating cold of a 4,000 metre night, I took a brief look at the southern night sky before hitting the sack in preparation for our early start to the second day... early so that we would be in front of the tourist caravan of 4x4´s in case anything went wrong with our vehicle. We headed south down a valley which I still have yet to find on a map... our first stop amidst 4 or 5 dormant volcanoes was the active volcano... Volcan Ollague. The northern side has a road going up it to old abandoned sulphur mines, the road reaches an altitude of 5,650 metres, arguably the highest road in the world. We went around it to the southern side to see the active plume on the western slope and to explore the bizarre lava formations in the area. We also got to see some wild Vicuñas grazing the sparse martian vegetation.
Next up were the four lakes... Lago Cañapa, Lago Hedionda, Lago Chiarkota, and Lago Honda. Each lake possessed a unique colour due to various volcanic chemicals and compounds which had seeped into them over the centuries. Surprisingly, even though these lakes were not usable by humans, many birds and other wildlife were able to use them as sources of drinking water; flamingoes were by far the most prevalent creatures to be seen here. After more surreal landscapes we found ourselves at one of the high points of our journey overlooking the Montañas Colorado at about 4,800 metres. The landscape here was sparse, yet some vegetation manged to hold on despite the extreme lack of moisture and severe cold at this elevation. At mid-day with blue skies and the sun beaming down on us we all needed extra layers of clothes to withstand the ambiant temperature of about 5 degrees celcius. After, we descended a bit to view the Arbol de Piedre before heading into the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve to view the Laguna Colorada where we would spend our second night.
A bone-chilling morning awoke us at 5 am so we could make it to the geysers nearby at 4,900 metres. They are only active between sunrise (6-ish am) and 10 am. At other times during the day they are little more than small puffs of steam. The landscape was truly alien here. The vulcanism of the area was apparent but not overly threatening. We got to walk around bubbling pools of lava mud and stand in the warm (the air temperature was around -10 degrees celcius) plumes of the many geysers dotting the lunar landscape. Sulphur was the smell of the day, but the experience was well worth the subtle rotten egg odour. For breakfast we descended to some thermal baths on a nearby lake... what a treat after the "not cold" showers of Laguna Colorada. Then we were on the final leg of our journey into Chile. We had a quick stop in the Valle de Salvador Dalí with its bizzare rock formations reminiscent of the artist´s works and then headed for the Laguna Verde at the base of Volcan Licancabur on the Chilean border.
The Laguna Verde gets its name (green lake) from the colour it has when the winds stir up particles resting at its bottom. The green colour comes from a combination of volcanic elements including arsenic and copper... deadly for us humans to drink but delightful to gaze upon. We then traveled around the volcano, which would be in my sights for the next few days in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, and made for the Bolivian-Chilean border. I was surprised to find a legitimate border crossing this high in the Andean outback, but it was there, and lucky for me they liked Canadians and I didn´t have to pay the 15 Boliviano fee everyone else had to dole out. Thus ended my stint in the countrey of Bolivia amidst amazing volcanoes, lakes, and landscapes... next stop... the Atacama desert, driest place in the world.
