mars and the moon and lakes of red and green, white and blue

We left for our four day Salar trip from Tupiza, rolling through the red hills of Potosi up, up, up to the altiplano. There were six of us -Tom, me, Emily, Tiffany, Helen, and Diana- plus our driver Gonzalo, a great and capable driver who fixed all eighteen of the car troubles we encountered along the way.




in the altiplano we passed four thousand llamas and nearly five people or so. It´s desolate and beautiful.




These kids, used to tourists passing through, asked us for money. We offered them bananas instead, which they happily took. Not much fruit growing up in these parts.




moss and scruby desert shrubs are about the only vegetation up there.







We came upon an ancient Incan village called el pueblo de fantasmos, the village of ghosts. The story goes that the Incans worked here as slaves for the Spanish Colonialists mining silver. They booted the spaniards at some point and continued to mine for themselves, becoming incredibly wealthy. The riches went to their heads, they went a little crazy and started burning their wheat and generally wasting things that had been considered precious for generations. A grandmother in the town, seeing the destruction they were bringing upon themselves, went door to door one week and caste a spell on everyone. Soon, disease came and there were no more people in the village, just its empty, haunting houses and streets.

then we took a wrong turn and ended up on mars.

mars is lovely this time of year.

a few million miles later we arrived on the moon, which has great rocks for climbing. And is good for human pyramids.

on the moon we encountered big steaming, bubbling geysers. That sign, in case you don´t speak Spanish, says ´Danger, don´t get close.´ Tiff and Em don´t speak Spanish well either.




from there we headed back to earth, which has lakes. lakes of funny colors in southwest Bolivia. Some are red from iron, some white from Borax, some blue from arsenic (don´t swim in that one), some green from something green, and each is just a few inches deep all the way across and teeming with minerals.

The lakes and desert expanses between them are dotted with the beautiful animals of the altiplano, the Andean plateau chillin at 13,000 to 16,000 feet. The llamas didn´t appear to have a hard time breathing, but we were sucking for air.



Thank goodness for the hoja de coca. Que no es droga!



fuzzy baby alpacas. I think we´ll get one when we get home. Make good pets and lovely sweaters.


highland flamingos wading in the cold blue water.

on halloween we turned into altiplano superheroes. Helen and Emily were flamingos, Diana was a coca leaf, Tiffany was the sunset, and I was the wind. Tom took pictures and hardly made any fun of us at all.

Then the superheroes went to some fine hot springs and soaked themselves until they turned pruney. It was glorious.

After three days in the car bouncing down roads of rock and sand, we arrived at the Salar, the greatest salt flats in the world. Amazing.