Every so often, the duller, yellowish green of these little bushes, are punctuated by big clumps of bright, almost florescent green moss-like substance growing on the rocks. It has, Diana tells us, enormously long roots which can reach down far enough to suck water in even the most barren of landscapes. As soft as it looks though, we get a chance later to walk around among the rocks where it grows, and find it hard to the touch, like the rocks it is growing on.
We stop and gaze at gleaming lagoons, half ice, half liquid, colours varying from depth to shallow, and from lagoon to lagoon. Even as the sun moves, or the wind blows, the colours change, subtly. I begin to understand what Diana means about the scenery never looking the same way twice. There are more flamingos, populating the larger lagoons, able to withstand the cold without the temptation to migrate due to the hot water leaking into parts of the lagoons from underground volcanic sources. Obsessively, I take pictures and videos of them, each nearly the same as the other, none of them able to begin to capture the real size and impact of the scene I am filming. Flamingos, I explain to Diana, do not simply wade about in streams in the UK. I have seen them, but only in zoos, where they are subdued and silent, prevented from flight and, presumably, too depressed to call or to stretch their wings.
We use the toilet in a hotel which boasts a small wall of empty bottles forming a makeshift football pitch. Football, in Chile, is hugely important. Perhaps it is here too. Toilets, in Bolivia, are also worth comment as indeed, toilets everywhere seem to be. It is interesting how much a simple bodily function like using a toilet, can vary in different countries. Bolivian toilets, at least in the desert flats, are similar to Chilean, in so far as they require toilet paper to be disposed of in a bin, as opposed to in the toilet bowl itself. The actual toilet bowl, however, has two compartments, one for liquids and one for solids. 'If you fail to use the toilet correctly,' states a notice in my cubicle, 'you will have to clean it'. There is a notable lack of exclamation mark. I think they mean it. And I don't honestly blame them. How many tourists neglect to try to remember to keep their toilet paper separate, or to follow instructions? And how many hours of unpleasant work does that mean for somebody?
We wend our way gradually downwards, and I can track our descent not by the state of my breathing, but by the temperature of our drinking water. When we began the water was frozen solid in the bottles, now it is simply very cold.
Diana tells me more of Bolivian culture.
"Vicuña wool is very valuable," she says, "especially in Italy and Japan. Before, people were killing the vicuñas to get the wool, and they became endangered. Now the vicuña are protected, and they are farmed by communities in the mountains who are allowed to farm them."
Nowadays the vicuña can wander free, to be caught once a year, shaved, and released. As the vicuña requires its coat to survive the harsher mountain temperatures, only some 200 grams may be taken at any one time, driving the price of vicuña wool up still further, as it is a slow business, not lending itself much to economies of scale.
The current Bolivian President, Evo Morales, is an indiginous man who grew up in the countryside. Previous governments had not done much to protect and care for the poorer people in the countryside and Morales has worked hard to improve things for the country dwellers, and to promote the country's culture, protecting and preserving it. He has, for example, worked hard to dissuade the North American and European idea that Bolivia, because it grows Coca leaf, is a cocaine producer. Coca leaf is used here as a medicinal herb, in quantities certainly not sufficient to even resemble cocaine. Coca leaf farming is a popular business in the countryside, and a sweeping belief that it is all used for cocaine production is clearly untrue. I would not try to say that no one in the whole of Bolivia has ever been tempted into the internationally lucrative business of cocaine trading, but I have, even in these few days, seen plenty of people chewing the leaf, (not cocaine unless very carefully processed in huge quantities) to keep awake or to prevent sickness, I have consumed tea made from coca leaf to aid digestion and help altitude sickness and seen that our guides drink Coca Mate tea the same way the English drink English Breakfast. Coca leaf is a legitimate business here and used by nearly everybody.
I rather like the sound ofForo Morales, who has apparently done much to rebalance some of the social in justice which had been rife in Bolivia. From what I understand though, he is now in his third term, was highly popular in the first two but his popularity is fading now. Diana does not necessarily share this opinion but tells me that there are some dark rumours about what happens to those who speak out against the government. She is not sure if they are true, but certainly the government controls the press. I am not sure either if these things were new developments brought in by Morales however, I think these are symptoms of the way Bolivian politics has always been, but to dig deeper into that requires more of an investigative journalist that I can claim to be. And if the rumours are true, investigative journalists are an endangered species.
Another endangered species, at least according to Diana, are 'quiet babies'. For many centuries, women would tightly swaddle their babies so they were unable to move in an effort to help the baby's bones form straight. Babies would grow up quiet and shy. As time has gone on this custom has faded, and with the advent if television and internet, more western attitudes have gained momentum, especially in the younger generation. This is coupled with a greater understanding of children's rights. For example, previously, a teacher had absolute power to punish a child physically and as harshly as he or she felt necessary. There would be no come back for the child as parents too would hold teachers in admiration and would not dream of arguing with a teacher's judgement. Nowadays children and parents have more regard for the rights of children, but with this has come far greater difficulty for the teacher, with children challenging their teachers consistently, asking them what, exactly, the teacher is going to do about it, whatever 'it' might be.
"I would not," says Diana with a shudder, "want to be a teacher in Bolivia now."
I tell her the story is rather familiar, and that children in the UK are equally vile and awful.
"Bring back the cane, that's what I say" I joke. Diana looks confused and just shocked enough for me to decide, too late, to curb my natural flippancy, at least a little, especially when talking cross cultures.
We stop for lunch. This is not at all remarkable until you consider where we stop. Essentially, Kenny drives to the middle of a salt scattered landscape, without man nor beast in sight for miles around, surrounded by red, white or ashen mountains, and the odd, vaguely active volcano, hissing out steam. To set out a little table and four chairs and munch on green apples, omelette and salad, in that setting, is really something to be experienced. We are the only people on the planet. We can hear only the wind, the odd whirl of dust and, if we listen carefully, the far away call of unseen birds. We are eating lunch, casually, in the middle of nowhere. It's beautiful.
We walk for a while, just M and I, in this vast open landscape of grey white ground, having been pointed vaguely in the right direction by pur guides. They give us time to enjoy our walk, before catching up with us in the car. I can, as I walk, both see how easily they can allow us to do this without fear of losing us, given how flat and large this landscape is, in its bowl of mountains, and how easy it would be to get thoroughly lost on a place so devoid of discernible landmarks.
Going a little further we come across train tracks, incongruous and odd, stretching across this flat ground, in the middle of nowhere. We walk over the tracks. It looks like a toy train set, without the train.
"It still runs," says Diana. I can't imagine it. Even the dogs which hang around like bored teenagers near the tracks, pestering us for food and affection, seem barely real here. Diana tells us that many Bolivians keep dogs because a dog can chase away a soul, and the national superstition leaves many people quite afraid of lingering spirits which might be present in their homes or in their villages.
Certainly this is the sort of landscape which makes it seem, somehow, more real that there might be a lingering soul, than that there might be a train track, or another person. It is quite literally difficult to tell what you are seeing. The white on the ground, along with the flat landscape broken far away by mountains, combines with the clear blue cloudless sky and the sun, to create mirages at the edge of the horizon.
"Oh! Another lagoon!" I say frequently, only to be told there is no water there. I am seeing a reflection of the mountains on the ground itself, or a distortion of the light. Even looking back again, following her answer, I cannot make myself see that it is anything other than an expanse of water. Given that, and the fact that the same factors make very long distances look very much smaller, I can see how a lost traveller, parched in the desert, could become horribly disappointed, believing him or herself to be going mad, literally seeing things that are not there.
Oddly, the effect this actually has, is to make more or less anything seem believable. If a landscape this literally incredible can exist, then what else might? We end our day on the Uyuni salt flats, the highlight of this tour, according to all the brochures. If I was amazed by our lunch destination, this is something else entirely. The salt flats of Uyuni are so vast you cannot see the end if them. If you think you do, and that it is that mountain or hill over there in the distance, think again. Those are islands in the salt flats. The salt is bright white and absolutely hard. It goes down for dozens of metres. On its surface are strange hexagonal patterns, made, ostensibly by air bubbles up through the salt. But why in such distinctive patterns, and not randomly? Nobody knows. Because the individual salt crystals themselves are the same shape? When you stand on the Uyuni salt flats, sky and ground merge into one. You have no reference and so you can create photographs which defy reality. M can hold a tiny me in his hand, I can emerge from an apple, we can drive our shoes like cars. In a world where you can make the impossible look real, even the most unworldly things seem perfectly plausible. Rather than becoming cynical, it feels instead as though perhaps our ideas of the world previously, were flawed. Certainly, the presence of a greater power than us in this beautiful and deadly landscape, seems a foregone conclusion, though as always the size and shape of that power depends on your point of view. Unsurprisingly here, the idea of God is ' Pachamama', Mother Earth. We visit a small museum which notes that when the Aymara and Quechua tribes happened upon each other they found a mutual idea of God in Pachamama, agreeing that of all other possible Gods, Pachamama was the most important. Despite it being a largely Christian or Catholic country since the Spanish invasion, offerings, called Ch'Alla, are still made to Pachamama, particularly in the countryside, at least three times a year, burning an offering made up of herbs, vegetal produce, artisinal sweets, and flowers, each according to his or her wealth, and watching closely to see how well it burns. A thorough burn shows an acceptance by Pachamama. If it fails to catch light, or is somehow extinguished, Pachamama is signalling her disapproval.
And if you can recall as far back as my blog entries in Bali, this description of an offering will seem very familiar. The ancient people of Bali and the ancient people of Bolivia were miles away from each other, in the middle of nowhere. And yet their concept of how to worship their Gods is strikingly similar.
And if that doesn't blow your mind, try this.
The skulls of the ancient people of Bolivia, and those of the ancient people of Chile, and those of the ancient people of Egypt have been found to have something in common, a deformity of the cranium, essentially a forcing of the skull, via the use, probably of tight bands of wood or stone from birth, so that the skulls grows upward, creating a shape rather similar to a cone.
But the ancient people of Egypt, and of Bolivia cannot possibly have met. What caused them both to consider creating this deformity of the skull? Why would both see this as a sign of beauty, or of wealth or wisdom, as something to strive for?
The most popular theory, apparently, is that both had been visited by another race. A race which had cone shaped heads and which seemed, to both peoples, to have a power and wisdom beyond humanity, and worth striving for.
There is some documented proof, I am told, which suggests that the race we tend to call 'aliens', have distinctive cone shaped heads.
Ancient people deformed their skulls to emulate aliens, from whom they had been lucky enough to have a visitation, and the experience had been positive enough for the aliens to have appeared God-like, perhaps by descending out of the sky. Really??
My mind goes a little crazy. Could what we call aliens be angels? Could our logic be circular, and the 'alien' remains we believe we have found in fact have been other members of those ancient peoples, who defined their craniums deliberately? Could aliens really have visited ancient peoples? Could they be time travellers? Could the whole thing be some sort of loop in which members of the tribes found a way to visit themselves in time? Was there once technology we have now lost which could have allowed this? Was it all the hallucinogens which most ancient peoples seem to have used in one form or another? Could a collective hallucination across oceans be possible? Might certain substances suggest certain shapes? Or might those substances really have the power to open our mind and perceive a second world, knitted in to ours, to which we are usually blind?
Who knows. But really, anything seems possible. Out here. In the middle of nowhere...
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