Altiplano Traverse: Stage 4

Altiplano Traverse

Stage 4: Sud Lipez y Las Lagunas (~175m)

I entered the maze of rock coulees, washes, slots, and basins atop a high plateau. The rock resembled elephant skin except the pink color of the rock. Calloused and stacked together, the sand dunes hardened and shaped by water and wind, warmth exuded from the rock, the sun pounding down its rays. The wind reverberated through the narrow gullies and would erupt into the air as a basin opened up. Then, the wind would plunge back into the slots blowing down the sand that covered the narrow channels. The lichen and the crazy-unique Llareta, a bulging bulb of giant green resembling cauliflower on a large scale, dappled and hung on the rock that stacked on top of each layer plied together with hardened mud. Life found a way here despite its harshness. Life found a maze here, twisting and turning, each ravine different, a unique experience with a million ways to solve or go. One could easily get lost here, but that might be the point. I guess life can be a maze meant to wander and lose yourself without thinking about the end.

Down one sandy wash, before the narrows became cramped, I found cat prints. Almost all the dogs I have seen don’t stray too far from humans or the villages. Plus, the prints I found were twice the size of any dog print and had the retractable claw look. This maze had a sense of isolation like no other on this traverse of the Altiplano. The only other footprints I saw were of the occasional vicuña or the plentiful viscacha. I found a camp high up on pink platform out in the open and away from the drainages and the sinking cold. I woke up at one point during the dark night after dreaming of mountain lions. I startled awake after one of the lions screeched frighteningly loud in my dream. It took some time for me to fall back asleep as I definitely worked myself up a little. But that didn’t take away that feeling that a big cat was nearby. 

I spent close to two hours figuring out an exit to the maze the next morning. Climbing over rocks and ridges, choke stones and boulders, meandering and backtracking, even picking my way through the gorge and the boggy bottom until I found an old cairned trail up on the bluffs that eventually had me back down in the drainage following another wide tributary. Beautifully lonesome, I relished in the walking. Right before my morning break in the upper drainage I spotted 3 cats, all way bigger than a bobcat. The pumas bolted away from me and bounced and hopped, zigged and zagged, through the tall tufts of grass to disappear into the thicket of brush, most likely crouched down somewhere under rocks or the brush. I admit, I stood with my mouth agape in astonishment. This sighting was the last thing I thought I would see. 

At Laguna Canapa, nestled in a basin surrounded by conical volcanoes, I told my puma encounter to the checkpoint. The man there laughed and told me that I just saw him and his two buddies earlier that day. He definitely was a comedian of sorts, but in the end he wanted to know where I spotted the pumas. We all shared a good laugh, then I walked on down to see up close the pink flamingoes. A tour group stopped by and offered me a coke to which I eagerly accepted. I told them, too, about the puma sightings. I really couldn’t hold my excitement. And now I had pink flamingoes to boot, looking all weird and strange, giant wings and skinny little legs with a body shaped like a decorative couch pillow. I continued on walking amid a volcano alley.

Basin after basin held a colorful lake. Each laguna has its own unique color and shape with a volcano that filled the shallow lakes with water and mineral deposits. Huge flocks of flamingoes brightened up the lagunas with their fluorescence which highlighted the scene among the still and reflective waters. After the series of lagunas a long and gradual ascent ensued. Hues of reds and pinks held the horizon firm against a strikingly blue sky. After plodding up a perpetual sand dune the climb topped out onto an enormous expanse of even more sand. Stark and barren, this area seemed like where all the sand accumulated and mounded up had been destined, all within the conical cerros surrounding the massive area.

I arrived to a welcoming salt hotel that night. Fortunately for me, they put me up with the guides at an economic price. The real value came with my conversation with a guide named Alan. He spoke better English than my Spanish which really made me feel pretty good after not having very many conversations in English. The conversation themed in the out-of-doors, from camping, to wildlife, to different environments, to the Altiplano. I gathered that my timing during this trek had been rather fortuitous. Turns out, the previous month had been rather wet. Snow hit the Sud Lipez region hard and for the first time in a century the Salar de Uyuni received an amount of snow. That explained the sudden puddles in some areas during my salar crossings. Global warming may be the culprit, in Alan’s opinion. It’s interesting to hear or see a hot topic on a global scale when you’re in the boonies. 

I am meeting friendly strangers now. Up rolls a tour blowing dust in the air and we briefly talk of travels and they offer assistance. They tell me I am crazy and I tell them I know but I am only walking. I get it; why walk when you can drive? At Laguna Colorada a Brazilian group invited me to their table for dinner which despite my homeliness brought out some energetic sociableness from me. I had been feeling a minor stomach bug, so the conversation took me away from the grumbling of the stomach. Transportation in our modern times enables every kind of folk to visit and explore such faraway places, and, in turn, the faraway folk to efficiently travel and utilize the bigger towns and cities. I am fascinated by this because I work in the transportation industry, a contradiction to my credo and action of walking that is something almost archaic. At the same time I am humbled by the industry and laborers who do the same thing as I do or as my compadres. Except the pay is so different. The responsibility the same, the pay drastically different. Point blank, I am pretty lucky.

I spent the next morning strolling along the blood red lake yet dodging the swarm of the gulls that squawked a warning to me that I was too close for niceness. In and out of gorges, a high sandy plateau with snowcapped peaks, windy, but this was a day of reflection, of planning, organizing thoughts and feelings, putting a theme together of ideas and dreams, of being in a big empty while clearing out my head, reflecting on this trip of roughly 3 weeks with no distraction while in isolation, a time needed to be alone. One thing that always crossed my mind out here while encountering tours and locals: I wanted to, yes, I am stringing it all together. That’s what I wanted to say. Yet, it has me thinking, visualizing something I have ignored for so long. But there’s been a letting go of sorts, of trusting the unknown. I never truly know sometimes. As long as my feet carry me...that I know, though, that leads me to the unknown a bit more bolder. And, some particular events and meanings have curtailed my ignorance and weakness to encourage and bolster what I have always envisioned. Maybe this crossing did do something to me besides give me more wrinkles. 

Sol de Manana, the basin, the end of the day, in the cold wind feeling the heat from the fumaroles, the redolent air of sulphur and stinky gases all put the newness on things, of something different that compels me, that figuratively smells different. Then, one of the windiest evenings yet, I ducked down a drainage to find a wind break. Eventually I found one on a bench behind a rocky outcrop. Sulphur rang up my nose that the wind blew in from Laguna Chalviri and the hot springs a few miles away. As long as my feet carry me, which they will.

In the morning I helped a road crew of two older guys move some boulders, one of which needed at least the 3 of us. I saw them struggling with the large boulder with a couple of wooden props as fulcrums. We flip-flopped the boulder over after a few minutes of exertion. Soon, I ambled my way through the Dali Desert, which has random small islands of rock placed randomly in the huge angled sand dune. I can say for sure the Altiplano has no shortage of strange places, the scenery so unique and otherworldly. And, no road crew or artist can replace the sublime invention of wind, cold, and precipitation.

The pellucid waters of Laguna Verde and Laguna Blanca rippled in the hard wind blurring the reflections of the peaks and sky around. The gusts whipped up a salty froth and spindrift spritzed into the dry air. Volcan Licancabur posed a stunning sight to end the route. The last half of the afternoon the wind stifled my hearing and sand blasted my clothing covering my skin and the slivers of exposed skin. Tiny parts chafed, like my nose and a part of my right cheek. The wind, even heavier this afternoon than the previous, roared my ears and head into an inescapable echoing cave. The wind was so loud I didn’t hear the French motorcyclist who rumbled up from behind me. We briefly spoke in muffled tones and hoarse voices. His motorbike was caked in sand and his face looked as covered as you would expect a desert wayfarer. We agreed on having dinner together that night at the refuge near the lakes. Unfortunately for me, I had had small stomach woes a few days back that had delayed me about a half a day or so. Couple that with my traveling time left, I had to pass climbing the volcano, which Swami had poised as the southern terminus of the route. I felt disappointed; my time was short. But, hearing the tales and feeling the exuberant courage exuding from the young Frenchman had me inspired. His tales of his South American journey joyed me. Even more so his future and current adventure. The encounter only reinforced what had been through my mind recently. That seemed to matter most, the groundwork for future plans. And those were only emboldened by meeting another fellow adventurer. 

I cannot end this trek with a simple ending, for the adventure seems non-ending. This one has me yearning for more. As long as my feet carry me, which they will continue to do so...

Altiplano Traverse: Stage 3

Altiplano Traverse 

Stage 3: Salar de Uyuni (~75m)

It is the push back I receive that empowers me to push, to reason out my actions of action, to determine the flexibility of heart rather than the rigidity of it, for if I became intolerant to flexibility I am not sure how capable I am in willing to take everything. In turn, I am not sure how I can expect patience in return. This pushing back is me listening, spouting off or exerting further, the echo of response. 

My feet hurt at the end of today. A symbiotic push and push back relationship in fine example. My drive pushes and my feet push back to let me know pace, interpretation, knowledge of my surroundings, understanding of my body, gauging my mind, and, in this case this day, the power of the wind. Out of no where the wind blew in. Most of the morning I could see a massive dust cloud billow up over the divide so many miles away west. At first, I thought a fire had been brewing but when that first push of wind hit, I knew what that discoloration in the faraway sky was. Soon, the wind became deafening, the salar acting as a wind tunnel, no obstruction, no push back other than a tall and lanky walker in the empty expanse. I leaned in and flexed with the wind, danced with it for a bit, while Isla Incahuasi became ever closer, the mirage becoming an ultimate reality. 

Many vehicles stopped by to see if I was okay, including the Incahuasi park staff who drove from the island about 6m out to lend their assistance. I refused and thanked them, and embraced the wind, the pushing back. Is it some game I am always playing? Feeling it out, an act of self preservation, or getting to know something so I can help others? I feel it to be a mix of both. I sit here in a cafe on the touristy island, only me and the waiter, a young dude from Tahua, the town in which I walked from that morning, drinking coffee, trying to speak more Spanish than I have done yet, while all the other people, mainly tourists, are taking photos with tiny dinosaurs out on the playa doing what you are supposed to do, to be like everyone else. But there’s value in pushing back, let alone pushing. Balance, earnesty, genuineness, flexibility, compassion, tolerance, endurance, among others. A puppy nibbles on my sock on the ankle while pouncing on my wiggling toes through my shoes, playfully jumping up on the side of my leg, growling and practicing, seeing what she can and cannot get away with. The waiter laughs. Then, the puppy pees under the bar on the tiles. Only I see it. The coffee goes down sweetly. And I think about patience. Maybe that’s what I need. Both given and in return. A secret underlying tone of endurance, of pushing. I also think of balance, between the two forces, between my feet and my head, my body and the wind, the true introvert and needing to be extroverted, the puppy’s tiny teeth and my sock, and the sun collapsing onto the salar, a colliding brightness, the balance that becomes indistinguishable and one at the same time, the push and the push back creating a harmonious synchronization. 

After all the tourists left I climbed the small peak on Isla Incahuasi. I had the top to myself in the middle of an endless sea of salt. All the colors imagined on a 360^ panorama of a day ending and a night beginning, all right there in the palm of my hand. A giant scale in perpetual balance, quite simply put: Mother Nature. I felt the wind knife through my skin, like the last rays of light shimmering through the large spines of the giant cactus on the island. Everything began to blur, and sleep entered my mind. Another day, walking.

The park staff put me up in a room of sorts, like a meeting room. The chairs were stacked, the floor creaked, and parts of the walls were made of the sharp limestone rock covering the island. A bay window overlooked the western half of the Salar de Uyuni. Night had sunk to land and the sea of white turned black, the night had engulfed the brightness. The camp killed the lights and with the moon not yet risen utter blackness blanketed the moonscape. I could hear the window panes rattle from the wind. But, just like that it stopped. In an instant, something so incessant and fierce stopped. Like the wind got tired, exhausted. Then, it quit. I felt to be on a precipice of an abyss, like I was looking down on the stars. Even Venus, so bright and vibrantly plump with twinkling light, looked to be just on the seam of the horizon, right on top of the playa, almost a twin glow tantalizing itself from its mirrored reflection. I had never seen anything like that before. All the tourists had left hours before and were snug in some small town on the shores of the playa. And I had a front row seat, on an island, watching the best entertainment one could ask. 

I left early the next day after climbing the small peak to watch the sunrise. The knobby peak had a pyramidal shadow extending so far to the west into the salar. Morning came and went with the sun dominating the day with the punishment of light. However, the sunlight was different this day. More bluer, an almost crystal blue. The sun over my shoulder, the cool wind at my back, and the salar seemed different. In some places, the salt had a frothy yellow tint to the tops of the tiles, while the blue of the sky merged with the endless white to create a wavy and watery horizon. The mirage extended for miles in all directions. Soon, Isla Incahuasi sank into the watery mirage and vanished from my line of sight. 

From my sheltered camp behind a sand dune I could see the lights of Uyuni, an outpost about 50m due east. The lights flickered like Las Vegas in the dark desert, albeit way smaller. Mud flats, both dried and squishy, and sand dunes followed the next day, after a chilly morning. I eventually ambled in into the railroad outpost of Julaca. I really expected nothing to find here, and as I passed a dusty and hardscrabble cemetery, I thought the trend would hold up. Most of the small towns I had passed in the past couple days shops were either closed or places weren’t serving any food. I managed to scrounge up a meager resupply but I couldn’t suffice the constant hunger pang I had been feeling. To be honest, the hunger made me a tad sluggish. To my luck, I chose the right street to enter the outpost. A jovial senora greeted me after her young son spotted me and ran to tell her. Her store was by far the best yet! I must’ve looked rather famished and homely looking because the kid asked me if I wanted potatoes and eggs. I had heard his mother tell him to ask me. I wavered a bit playing a bit shy. In a dry and hoarse voice I finally relented and agreed to some grub. Quick like, the senorita brought out a bowl of eggs, purple potatoes, and shell pasta. I slurped the delicious meal up as I guzzled a soda, my first cooked meal in a while. At least the occasion felt like it.

Afterwards, I brought the bowl back into the store. She refused to take any money from me for the meal. I felt so grateful for the meal I tried to give her some money, but she wouldn’t have it. My belly felt great, and so did my heart. Hikers say the ‘trail provides,’ but I don’t always think that is true. That saying reminds me of adaptation and opportunity used in a way that comes across almost like a phrase of self-entitlement. Sure, random and amazingly fortuitous stuff happens. What I mainly think it all is is that ‘people provide.’ Damn good people provide damn good memories. And that memory is enhanced while out on a trail or route, especially when convenience is unfamiliar.

Sometimes I forget where I am at. And I have to remind myself. Normally, I am on guard, aware of my surroundings, in the moment. However, there are times when I am just ‘outside.’ It doesn’t matter where I am at: I am here. I tend to be lonesome or individual. Yet, people bring me back. I watched her plump cheeks perk up as she smiled her toothy grin as she handed me the bowl of food. Her store was immaculate, the cleanest I had seen. The trash can, freshly dumped, smelled like stale beer. Along the side alley sewage puddled up in a gurgling cement containment. All the jeep tours go through here, drinking beer and using this outpost as a pit stop. Yet, the shade soothes my sunburnt nose and cheeks, her hospitality fresh and comfortable. Her son had eager eyes and had an air about him of wanting to help out. He darted about running small tasks without objection. He would throw a quick glance at me and flash a smile. He looked just like his father. I tilted my head back to replenish my fluids. I was cruddy, salt-stained, particularly crusty. The wind blew up dust and I heard school kids laughing from behind an adobe wall. A game must be being played that brought the open-air silence to life. I thought: a smile an inheritance, and laughter is a gift. I came back to here while here and found myself present. Sometimes I forget where I am at. Then, unknowingly even to me, I left as quick as I came in, back to the ‘outside.’

Altiplano Traverse: Stage 2

Altiplano Traverse

Stage 2: Salar de Coipasa (~100m)

While waiting for the minibus to leave I saw a homeless man among the hordes of people. Most were waiting for a ride or selling food or goods. He was watching everyone load up on the minibuses, observing the hubbub of society going on right in front of him. His feet calloused and hardened, his face so dark and sun-scarred, his eyes squinting from constantly being outside, his wool tacky sweater, a rough blanket, his hair just slightly overgrown; I couldn’t tell by the deep stare on his face if something was wrong with him. Nonetheless, I could see his pain, feel his pain. I knew that look. I felt to be looking into the soul of my father. It is what is inside of me. Why wouldn’t he just wander, roam the earth? Why hold such guilt, the same guilt that ails me, that we both lament over? If he was to struggle to fit, or torture himself with pleasing people, or crack his bones to understand that which he could never understand. Some say we follow through or live a life our parents wanted to but didn’t. I think of my father, homeless for 20 years, living part of the time under a stairwell at the back end of the church, even a corrugated pipe under a highway. Here I am, trying to walk the world, to explore faraway locales and exotic cultures, but I cannot help but wonder: why didn’t he follow his instinctive path, his way the way it was supposed to be? I am not doing this for him, nonetheless, he is a part of me. Nor am I seeking an answer. It’s the curiosity that compels me, the will deep inside me, the urge to go. Maybe he’s prodding me from some recess deep inside, forging a path, a wavelength of connection, a continuance of destiny to complete the journey, to be shaped by the world. 

Then, the man would occasionally smile or grin, even with his eyes, as he observed the chaos and absurdity of humanity. He wasn’t crazed or lost, simply amused. Then, he ducked his head under his shoddy blanket, gone from the world, abandonment by cover, not by walking away, or drugs or alcohol, or a mental disease. In truth, I really don’t know why he went under that ratty blanket. Neither will I ever know why my dad lived in a stairwell.

Sometimes I am hit with these moments. Unexpectedly they appear, as if something some deep down inside that’s welled up is ready to flow. Then, it happens. I come to terms all over again with my wandering, my morbid thoughts of abandonment and vagabonding. And, I feel content, humble, and not as much as proud of a homeless man that once was or once feebly tried, rather I am proud of a fleeting and wandering soul. Going no where in particular, no where in mind. Simply driven by instinct, the highway of a heart, by the gut of the land. I guess I just feel lucky that I haven’t lost it.

The grand emptiness of the Salar de Coipasa, even the small arm I was crossing in the late afternoon and early evening. The incredible emptiness and the brilliant white, the wind howling non-stop and in two areas two slivers of streams being spread out and pushed by the wind moved eastward over the crust of salt, puddling up a dramatic reflection of the sky above and the sun setting behind the towering volcanoes, although ripples from the wind the mirrored earth blurred a portal losing your chance to do whatever you wanted to do all over again; the crunch of the salt crust, maybe a few inches thick, my shoes would splash and kick up some brackish water spouting through a thinner layer of salt, huge tiles of brilliant white, crystals tantalizing my vision from a sun-glare; an immense pseudo-snow expanse, wondrous to an desert traveler resembling an arctic zone, oozing clouds almost dropping to a seam of oneness with the vast playa. I spent the last hour or two of the day gazing at the snow-dome panorama while playfully looking at my shadow lankily mimicking me in the salt glow goofily resembling a marionette, the sun and the salt orchestrating it all. To this wanderer, this is the never-ending I crave, I yearn for. This seemingly unending horizon that which I could just walk into forever. This is the contrary of a morbid thought. This is happiness. A dream. A blur of infinity. Chasing the end of nothing. This is what I feel lucky about: That I haven’t lost it.

Walking across the Salar de Coipasa, roughly 25m, the radiant glow of white, the projecting heat shimmering in the horizon, the blurry discernment of the horizon and the size of the surrounding mountains, the consternation of distance and how one second something seems close, then a shift in a moving cloud or change in the wind patterns and something seems so far away; this was my mesmerization for hours. Sometimes I came upon splattered bird shit that distorted the white radiancy but caused me to stop and inspect the shit. The splatter had a kaleidoscope of shape that sparkled under caked salt. Sitting down at lunch in the middle of nothing, the salty water pooling up in tiny puddles around me, the white staining of my hands and my gear, the salt encompassed me, almost melting me into the mass. All this walking and I haven’t lost it.

Early the next morning I walked into the tiny village of Luca. To my embarrassment, I stumbled into a woman or a little girl going to the bathroom on three occasions. I say this with embarrassment because I literally stumbled upon them in the process. I really don’t care about public urination or defecation in the sticks. I mean, most folks use discretion; I’m cool with it. But to stumble upon the gals around 730am as a tall, bearded lonesome walker, I sure as heck didn’t want to scare anybody. So, I paid my obsequious ‘Buen Dia,’ grabbed some water, and jetted out of town stealthily with my tail between my legs, just trying to get lost.

I had been dead set on a salt hotel since last summer. And this morning was no different. So, I veered my course a bit and crossed the Cordillera Intersalar. Not a very high range, nonetheless, the range bridges the gap between the Salar de Coipasa and the Salar de Uyuni. Besides that, I stayed off any roads and navigated meandering alpaca trails and cliff bands high above the flats below. Before the cliff bands fell off into a white space I even followed a small stream down a channel worn out by glaciation and ice. Like a skateboarder I playfully weaved side to side within the chutes. Most of the day, though, I dodged ground-lying and bushy cactus that kept me at a strict focus. Atop a random pass I relished in the faraway views of the seas of salt, each sea a beckon of nothingness, the matrix of an indiscernible horizon. The cool breeze felt refreshing and I began to feel like I had traveled some considerable length so far on this traverse. To the north, some 100m in a line, Sajama Peak poked its snowcapped head out of utter whiteness.

Towards the early evening, I ran into locals walking back to their tiny village from a day of planting rows of quinoa. I asked them how far to Tahua and we conversed about what I was doing and where I had come from that day. Their faces were incredibly dusty from their day of digging and planting. My first thought at my first glance at the first dusty face: beautiful. The young man, the older woman, the young boy, and the older man all had the characteristic of a job worth doing, for the sustenance of the people. The older man began really conversing with me but I couldn’t understand him as much with the slurring gap of missing teeth. Couple that with me being a tad tired and absolutely thinking of nothing all day, and in particular no words of Spanish had come to mind, I felt a bit ashamed I couldn’t truly converse with him. In earnest, I wanted to know about their day and how that dust came to settle upon their beautiful faces. A solitary traveler consumed with nothing, words had been freed within in and forever vanished. All

I could think of were the basics. I rushed off, my heart stifled by my own drive, my stride in understanding tempered by my gait; I lost it. Into the dark knowing where I was going, the wind ate my words.