Uyuni, Bolivia

5,403.92 miles from San Francisco

“Bolivia siempre está perdiendo, por todos lados.“ “Bolivia is always losing, everywhere.”

So claimed our mountain guide as we drank piping hot tea in our tin shed high camp, nearly 17,000 ft up the flanks of the towering Huayna Potosí. We had arrived in this country just a week prior and were immediately taken by Bolivia’s uniqueness. It is an enigma. A country whose past so dictates its present that it still maintains a standing navy, despite being utterly landlocked. A country where life is cheap, whether animal or human, and the roadside becomes the unfortunate grave for many of both.

To understand Bolivia’s present, one must be familiar with its past. Named for Simón Bolívar, the fierce Venezuelan ‘liberator’ of many South American nations, Bolivia was released from Spanish colonial rule in 1825. Independence was swiftly followed by a series of coups and wars including the War of the Pacific, which saw Chile emerge victorious over Bolivia and Peru. The outcome enabled Chile to claim the area from the Atacama Desert to the coast as its own, leaving Bolivia as one of two countries in South America without a coastline and capturing mining resources of immeasurable value in the process. Since 1982, Bolivia has been under democratic rule but, per the CIA World Fact Book, it has continued to face the unstoppable tide “deep-seated poverty, social unrest, and illegal drug production.” Bolivia is also cited as consistently maintaining the lowest ranking, or close to it, in Latin America on key health and development metrics including poverty, education, fertility, malnutrition, mortality, and life expectancy.

Bolivia is struggle.

Our several weeks of Southbound progress through the country were imbued with conversations and experiences that helped us to begin to grasp this complex place. Our mountaineering guide Eduardo Mamani – a proud man of Aymara descent – told us of his exploits in the harsh Andean scapes that surround La Paz and beyond. He described missions to crash sites of airplanes in the mountains north of El Alto airport, formerly among the most notoriously dangerous places to land in the world. He never found survivors. We spoke to Barbara, a friendly woman in her 70s, who has opened her large, secure concrete parking area in La Paz’s El Alto neighborhood to overland travelers. She and her family live at 13,600 feet in a neighborhood whose environment inspires fear – due to weather conditions and what the other occupants might do. Barbara told us that she rarely leaves her compound, as she’s concerned that any absence would encourage a break in and robbery of the few possessions that she holds dear. We learned about government corruption, where money intended for providing aid to the poor in rural areas was used instead to construct new soccer fields. We heard about the lack of spending on road infrastructure and drove down the infamous ‘Death Road,’ where hundreds of people have met their end by sliding off the crumbling slopes into the canyon far below. Crosses dotted the sides of the narrow path honoring the victims. We drove past a bus crash along a terribly narrow road with one lane in each direction. As we passed the wreckage of twisted metal and torn fabric we saw no bodies. Only a large pile of luggage remained. We later learned that 24 people had died in a head-on collision just a few hours before. The event barely made local news, let alone international headlines. Our search for it turned up several more accidents of similarly horrific consequences on the same stretch of road. We saw billboards in support of the President. We saw graffiti calling him corrupt.

Our route through the country eventually led us to the Southwestern frontier, on the road that would have led to Bolivia’s coast had history not treated her with such disregard. We arrived by moonlight to the dusty town of Uyuni, a place of high altitude and crisp, dry air. At 2am on our first night, a powerful lightning storm moved in with such ferocity that we were forced to crawl down from the tent to hide inside the car. We sat with our feet pulled up, taking care to avoid touching any metal components for over two hours.

The following day we wanted to visit the world-famous Salar de Uyuni, a monstrous dried out salt lake spanning over 4,000 square miles. One of earth’s most abundant sources of lithium, the Salar is the world’s largest salt flat and is easily visible from space. In fact, standing on the Salar feels as though you’ve left Earth behind and entered another realm entirely. The prospect of driving onto the Salar gave us pause, as our beloved Bessie (the car) had been having trouble of late and salt is not known for its beneficial properties for auto parts. We therefore decided to reach out to a guiding service to take us into the flat, and that is where we met Lino.

Lino exuded what we’ve come to know as classic Bolivian humility. He was very shy and quiet as we lurched down the dirt roads of Uyuni and out onto the vast salt flat. We peppered him with questions, as we gawked out the open windows at the massive natural mirror. After a few hours together and many laughs, Lino began to open up to us as we watched the burning sun fall below the reflected horizon. He grew up in Uyuni and watched tourism explode about 25 years ago as the first foreigners began to discover the beauty of the Salar. He explained that in Uyuni the options for gainful employment are either tied to tourism, often as a driver, or to mining. Given Bolivia’s reputation for brutal mining conditions, Lino was quite pleased to have found a career driving the Salar. He had previously spent 10 years living across the rugged stretch of high Bolivian desert in the magnificent Atacama Desert of Chile. His weekly routine involved spending 3-4 days with groups of tourists while driving from Atacama to Uyuni and back. The stretch that unites the two features road elevations of up to 16,000 feet and brings new severity to the cruel twin sisters of wind and cold. As his favorite 80’s music pulsed through the Land Cruiser’s speakers, we drove away from the Salar back towards Uyuni. We were in the throngs of conversation and thus asked Lino if he’d eat dinner with us. He obliged, and we went to his favorite restaurant to eat a Bolivian classic – llama ribs. As we sat, he continued to reveal the true shades of his experience. He quickly alluded to political difficulties and corruption, but then changed the subject to a more all-encompassing view of the land-bound nation. “/La vida aquí es dura./” “Life here is hard.” He described his year of mandatory military service, a fact of life for both men and women in Bolivia. He told us that he enjoyed the experience, although it held many difficulties.

After we discussed many aspects of life, we returned to ‘the Pachamama.’ Earlier, before drinking a sip of a bottle of Paceña on the Salar, he had poured some onto the ground, “/Para la Pachama/,“ said he. Lino was alluding to a fertility figure in the indigenous beliefs of the people of the High Andes. A powerful symbol, both revered and feared, the Pachamama is the Andean equivalent of Mother Nature or Mother Earth. She gives much, but her ability to unleash destruction is not lost on those who populate this region. When asked about the Salar and the role of the surrounding nature in his life, Lino was abundantly clear. His quality of life was based entirely on the natural riches of Bolivia. The high mountains, the boundless salt flats, the rugged dirt tracks. He owed his existence, therefore, to the generosity of the Pachamama. As we spend more time in this part of the world, it is impossible to not feel a similar appreciation for her.

We toasted another Paceña and chewed our llama ribs. The last light of day gave way to a raven-hued sky, torn by the most overwhelming display of sky-bound incandescent bodies known to this earth.