From The Telegraph – UK
Breathless in Bolivia
In the high plains of the Altiplano, Nigel Tisdall sleeps
in a hotel made of salt and learns where trains go to die
I HAVE just drunk a bottle of tequila, smoked a hundred Woodbines and had my chest filled with
quick-setting concrete. Well, that is how it feels when you fly into La Paz, 12,000 feet up in the
Bolivian Andes.
To get here I had endured a 13-hour flight from London to Buenos Aires, then a six-hour wait
inside its rain-drenched airport, then a three-hour flight north to Santa Cruz for a crazy race
through immigration, then another hour's flight up to the Bolivian capital. All that, just to land in a
place that has run out of air. When I finally staggered into my room in the skyscraping Hotel
Presidente, I didn't care whether I was going to my bed or my grave.
Next morning I woke with a head like lead, pulled back the curtains and swore. La Paz is one of
the most audaciously located cities in the world, and the first view of it, like the altitude, is
breathtaking.
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The City of Our Lady of Peace was founded in 1548 by Spanish gold-diggers who took shelter
from the cold Andean winds in a 1,200ft-deep canyon fenced with snowy peaks. Today La Paz is
a great bowl of humanity caught between the rocks. More than a million Bolivians live here, and
its thin-aired streets are a chaotic stage where office workers, bowler-hatted Indians and puffing
tourists endure their daily dramas against a backdrop of Baroque churches, shiny corporate
headquarters and heap upon heap of shanty homes.
La Paz is bursting at the seams. No longer content to climb up the canyon walls, its
impoverished suburbs are now spreading across the high plains of the Altiplano to the west. It
was this vast and austere plateau that I had come to explore.
The Altiplano is like a giant's hammock slung between the mighty Cordilleras of the Andes.
Sweeping down the west coast of South America, these great mountain ranges part midway to
create a lofty, thousand-mile shelf stretching from the south of Peru to the north of Argentina.
This is the historic heart of Bolivia, the roof of the New World, the eye of the Andes. And the glint
in it is Lake Titicaca.
These fabled blue waters lie only 45 miles west of La Paz, but they could be in another world.
Driving up to the Altiplano, I felt a shock similar to that of emerging on to the open-air roof of a
multi-storey car park. Up here it is big country. The sky rolls on forever, and the light has a wintry
clarity that induces a growing sense of omniscience. Nothing can escape your all-seeing eye -
the mudbrick houses, the herds of llamas, the golden totora reeds from which the Indians make
curvy canoes that have been sailing Titicaca for millennia.
I was hooked. "The real heart of the Altiplano is down south," a friend had advised. "Head for the
Salar de Uyuni." So I took a flight 280 miles south to Potosau, the world's highest city, then
caught a bus west. It's a six-hour ride to Uyuni, following a bumpy road that winds down the
western slopes of the Cordillera Central, into a wild landscape of khaki hills dotted with llamas
and abandoned adobe villages.
At the end of it stands a surreal railway junction town with gleaming Communist-style statues
and empty streets as wide as motorways. Uyuni has only one tourist sight, a sprawling train
cemetery where lines of abandoned steam engines rust in the pitiless sun. Travellers who
make it here tend to be committed high-plains drifters, wilderness freaks keen to lose
themselves in the elemental wonderland of the Salar de Uyuni.
Twenty-five thousand years ago this part of the Altiplano was a vast lake, but the sun has
relentlessly boiled everything down to a sheet of salt flats covering an area almost as big as
Northern Ireland. What is the meaning of life? Salt. The Salar is Lake Titicaca in the future, a
great white plate, flat and stark as an ice-rink, clean as snow. Its surface is covered with a bas-
relief of hexagons that feel as crisp and sharp as the frosting on a most excellent margarita.
The only thing to do in the Salar is be in it. Drive across it, walk on it, dream with it. Forty miles
west of Uyuni, I checked into a new hotel built entirely from its salt. The architects simply cut
blocks out of the ground and piled them up as a child might build a toy house. I dined beside
pillars of salt, and slept on a bed of salt beneath a cupola made from more than 300 salt cubes.
Every now and again, I pressed a licked finger to the walls to check I wasn't dreaming.
Uyuni has numerous small adventure companies offering tours by Landcruiser into the Salar
and down to the flamingo-tinted lakes and volcanoes near the border with Chile. Eager to look
even deeper into the eye of the Andes, I signed up for a three-day trip with Empresa Sol de
Mañana, which turned out to be a mother-and-son team called Domy and Edwin.
He drove, she cooked, I chose the music. Small and wiry, Domy had a physical and spiritual
toughness reflecting her Indian ancestry. Edwin was chubbier, with the lazy confidence of a
young Bolivian raised on American soaps. It was Domy who insisted we stop to make
observances to Pachamama, the Earth Mother, and Edwin who had to carry them out. Solemnly
he sprinkled each wheel of the four-wheel drive with alcohol and coca leaves. Domy said a few
words. Edwin took a sly swig from the bottle. Then we sped off into the wilderness.
I hadn't a clue what to expect. It certainly wasn't Colcha K, a bizarre military post run by Action
Man conscripts, where an officer wrote down our names with a yellow crayon. Or the minimalist
village of San Juan beyond, where we spent the night. The only movement in its dusty streets
came from pigs and gaggles of children wearing a school uniform of long white coats.
Wandering around, I became convinced I had discovered a secret community of dwarf lab
technicians.
San Juan had a church, a football pitch and a small hostal run by Roberto and Ricardo, a pair of
dudes whom I never saw sober. They had bottles of stout, a log fire and a stack of Stones,
Beatles and Pink Floyd tapes - not quite what I expected in the Bolivian desert.
At this point civilisation stopped and the volcanic cabaret began. We left San Juan before dawn,
driving across the rocky plains as the sun ignited the peaks of the Andes like an altar-boy
lighting a row of candles. We had now crossed the width of the Altiplano, and were heading into
the mountains of the western Cordillera to find seven lakes renowned for the hues of their
mineral- and algae-rich waters.
Out here God likes to work with a limited palette. Laguna Colorada, the largest of these lakes, is
like a blood-red gash on a mustard canvas. Others have waters that are Arctic-blue, pencil-grey,
pea-green. What looks like ice is actually gypsum, what seems a pink cloud turns into hundreds
of flamingos. Getting near these magnificent birds is a laugh - you have to creep up slowly, as if
playing grandmother's footsteps, while at the same time moving fast enough to prevent your
boots sinking into crimson mud that appears to have been shipped in from another planet. Just
as you get close, the flamingos gracefully walk away in unison, luring their admirers even farther
into the lake. I doubt there is a more romantic way to die.
Next to Laguna Colorada is a small electric power station with a few buildings where weary
travellers fall into bed wearing as many clothes as possible. I thought this was the end of our
journey, but Domy had other plans. "You want to see Laguna Verde?" It would take only another
six hours to get there and back . . . How could I refuse? We slotted in our Orquesta Santa
Barbara cassette, again, the brassy rhythms of Bolivian road music sustaining us like aural
coca.
The last lake in this chain of Andean jewels, Laguna Verde, proved worth the extra effort.
Stepping out of the Landcruiser, I was hit by a whirling scene of bright sunshine, roaring winds
and scarlet flamingos. The lake's waters were jade, its shores as frothy as bubblebath. Beside
it stood the perfect triangle of the 1,800ft Licancabur volcano, gently streaked with snow. It was
the sort of lonely, holy place where, in Auden's wishful words, we all might "clear from our heads
the masses of impressive rubbish."
Yet even here, in one of the most remote spots you could possibly fire yourself off to, there was
a surprise. Someone had put up a large painted metal sign that exuberantly proclaimed "Bolivia
- Bienvenidos!". I couldn't believe it. I had travelled more than 6,000 miles looking for the end of
things, and here was a sign suggesting I was only at the beginning.
Bolivia is like that: it knocks you dead on arrival, then lifts you into the clouds.
Breathless in Bolivia
In the high plains of the Altiplano, Nigel Tisdall sleeps
in a hotel made of salt and learns where trains go to die
I HAVE just drunk a bottle of tequila, smoked a hundred Woodbines and had my chest filled with
quick-setting concrete. Well, that is how it feels when you fly into La Paz, 12,000 feet up in the
Bolivian Andes.
To get here I had endured a 13-hour flight from London to Buenos Aires, then a six-hour wait
inside its rain-drenched airport, then a three-hour flight north to Santa Cruz for a crazy race
through immigration, then another hour's flight up to the Bolivian capital. All that, just to land in a
place that has run out of air. When I finally staggered into my room in the skyscraping Hotel
Presidente, I didn't care whether I was going to my bed or my grave.
Next morning I woke with a head like lead, pulled back the curtains and swore. La Paz is one of
the most audaciously located cities in the world, and the first view of it, like the altitude, is
breathtaking.
advertisement
The City of Our Lady of Peace was founded in 1548 by Spanish gold-diggers who took shelter
from the cold Andean winds in a 1,200ft-deep canyon fenced with snowy peaks. Today La Paz is
a great bowl of humanity caught between the rocks. More than a million Bolivians live here, and
its thin-aired streets are a chaotic stage where office workers, bowler-hatted Indians and puffing
tourists endure their daily dramas against a backdrop of Baroque churches, shiny corporate
headquarters and heap upon heap of shanty homes.
La Paz is bursting at the seams. No longer content to climb up the canyon walls, its
impoverished suburbs are now spreading across the high plains of the Altiplano to the west. It
was this vast and austere plateau that I had come to explore.
The Altiplano is like a giant's hammock slung between the mighty Cordilleras of the Andes.
Sweeping down the west coast of South America, these great mountain ranges part midway to
create a lofty, thousand-mile shelf stretching from the south of Peru to the north of Argentina.
This is the historic heart of Bolivia, the roof of the New World, the eye of the Andes. And the glint
in it is Lake Titicaca.
These fabled blue waters lie only 45 miles west of La Paz, but they could be in another world.
Driving up to the Altiplano, I felt a shock similar to that of emerging on to the open-air roof of a
multi-storey car park. Up here it is big country. The sky rolls on forever, and the light has a wintry
clarity that induces a growing sense of omniscience. Nothing can escape your all-seeing eye -
the mudbrick houses, the herds of llamas, the golden totora reeds from which the Indians make
curvy canoes that have been sailing Titicaca for millennia.
I was hooked. "The real heart of the Altiplano is down south," a friend had advised. "Head for the
Salar de Uyuni." So I took a flight 280 miles south to Potosau, the world's highest city, then
caught a bus west. It's a six-hour ride to Uyuni, following a bumpy road that winds down the
western slopes of the Cordillera Central, into a wild landscape of khaki hills dotted with llamas
and abandoned adobe villages.
At the end of it stands a surreal railway junction town with gleaming Communist-style statues
and empty streets as wide as motorways. Uyuni has only one tourist sight, a sprawling train
cemetery where lines of abandoned steam engines rust in the pitiless sun. Travellers who
make it here tend to be committed high-plains drifters, wilderness freaks keen to lose
themselves in the elemental wonderland of the Salar de Uyuni.
Twenty-five thousand years ago this part of the Altiplano was a vast lake, but the sun has
relentlessly boiled everything down to a sheet of salt flats covering an area almost as big as
Northern Ireland. What is the meaning of life? Salt. The Salar is Lake Titicaca in the future, a
great white plate, flat and stark as an ice-rink, clean as snow. Its surface is covered with a bas-
relief of hexagons that feel as crisp and sharp as the frosting on a most excellent margarita.
The only thing to do in the Salar is be in it. Drive across it, walk on it, dream with it. Forty miles
west of Uyuni, I checked into a new hotel built entirely from its salt. The architects simply cut
blocks out of the ground and piled them up as a child might build a toy house. I dined beside
pillars of salt, and slept on a bed of salt beneath a cupola made from more than 300 salt cubes.
Every now and again, I pressed a licked finger to the walls to check I wasn't dreaming.
Uyuni has numerous small adventure companies offering tours by Landcruiser into the Salar
and down to the flamingo-tinted lakes and volcanoes near the border with Chile. Eager to look
even deeper into the eye of the Andes, I signed up for a three-day trip with Empresa Sol de
Mañana, which turned out to be a mother-and-son team called Domy and Edwin.
He drove, she cooked, I chose the music. Small and wiry, Domy had a physical and spiritual
toughness reflecting her Indian ancestry. Edwin was chubbier, with the lazy confidence of a
young Bolivian raised on American soaps. It was Domy who insisted we stop to make
observances to Pachamama, the Earth Mother, and Edwin who had to carry them out. Solemnly
he sprinkled each wheel of the four-wheel drive with alcohol and coca leaves. Domy said a few
words. Edwin took a sly swig from the bottle. Then we sped off into the wilderness.
I hadn't a clue what to expect. It certainly wasn't Colcha K, a bizarre military post run by Action
Man conscripts, where an officer wrote down our names with a yellow crayon. Or the minimalist
village of San Juan beyond, where we spent the night. The only movement in its dusty streets
came from pigs and gaggles of children wearing a school uniform of long white coats.
Wandering around, I became convinced I had discovered a secret community of dwarf lab
technicians.
San Juan had a church, a football pitch and a small hostal run by Roberto and Ricardo, a pair of
dudes whom I never saw sober. They had bottles of stout, a log fire and a stack of Stones,
Beatles and Pink Floyd tapes - not quite what I expected in the Bolivian desert.
At this point civilisation stopped and the volcanic cabaret began. We left San Juan before dawn,
driving across the rocky plains as the sun ignited the peaks of the Andes like an altar-boy
lighting a row of candles. We had now crossed the width of the Altiplano, and were heading into
the mountains of the western Cordillera to find seven lakes renowned for the hues of their
mineral- and algae-rich waters.
Out here God likes to work with a limited palette. Laguna Colorada, the largest of these lakes, is
like a blood-red gash on a mustard canvas. Others have waters that are Arctic-blue, pencil-grey,
pea-green. What looks like ice is actually gypsum, what seems a pink cloud turns into hundreds
of flamingos. Getting near these magnificent birds is a laugh - you have to creep up slowly, as if
playing grandmother's footsteps, while at the same time moving fast enough to prevent your
boots sinking into crimson mud that appears to have been shipped in from another planet. Just
as you get close, the flamingos gracefully walk away in unison, luring their admirers even farther
into the lake. I doubt there is a more romantic way to die.
Next to Laguna Colorada is a small electric power station with a few buildings where weary
travellers fall into bed wearing as many clothes as possible. I thought this was the end of our
journey, but Domy had other plans. "You want to see Laguna Verde?" It would take only another
six hours to get there and back . . . How could I refuse? We slotted in our Orquesta Santa
Barbara cassette, again, the brassy rhythms of Bolivian road music sustaining us like aural
coca.
The last lake in this chain of Andean jewels, Laguna Verde, proved worth the extra effort.
Stepping out of the Landcruiser, I was hit by a whirling scene of bright sunshine, roaring winds
and scarlet flamingos. The lake's waters were jade, its shores as frothy as bubblebath. Beside
it stood the perfect triangle of the 1,800ft Licancabur volcano, gently streaked with snow. It was
the sort of lonely, holy place where, in Auden's wishful words, we all might "clear from our heads
the masses of impressive rubbish."
Yet even here, in one of the most remote spots you could possibly fire yourself off to, there was
a surprise. Someone had put up a large painted metal sign that exuberantly proclaimed "Bolivia
- Bienvenidos!". I couldn't believe it. I had travelled more than 6,000 miles looking for the end of
things, and here was a sign suggesting I was only at the beginning.
Bolivia is like that: it knocks you dead on arrival, then lifts you into the clouds.
