Chapter 36: Living Through the Bolivian Revolution

Let’s go see real dinosaur footprints! Rock climb in Sucre! Go down into the silver mines in Potosi! I eagerly draw out a route across this country on our map, weaving through the highlights I’ve read about.

But it wasn’t meant to be.

Road blocks. Threats of border closures. Police in riot gear patrolling the streets.

Checking the news every hour. Stocking up on food and water and fuel. An emergency trip back to Peru. This was our unexpected Bolivia experience.

(It’s a long story – see book for details!)

Typical scene on the streets when I go shopping for groceries

The Fun Stuff

Salar de Uyuni:

Yup, that tiny thing is the van! Gives you a good sense of perspective for how large this place is! This is where we slept the first night on the Salar:

I keep thinking we’re on snow. Or sand. Or the moon!

We take advantage of the impossible perspectives to get some crazy photos. (There was no photoshop involved!)

And the BEST one (John’s idea) for your potty humour enjoyment:

We drive for 2 hours in a straight line on endless white salt and never arrive anywhere!

So, we decide it’s a great place for Lilly to have her first solo drive. It starts as a joke, with John & I crouched at her elbows ready to grab the wheel, but ends up with her driving for 30 minutes while John plays guitar in the back and I look out the window!

She was driving at 40 miles per hour for over half an hour! You simply can’t screw it up when you’re driving on an infinite flat, empty surface!

It feels so wild and free to be here in the middle of white nothing-ness with nobody around. It’s reminiscent of the empty beaches of Baja, but salt instead of sand.

 

From the Moon (Salar de Uyuni) to Mars (Lagunas)

The infamous Lagunas Route is a rough dirt track that passes over 5000m elevation (16,500 feet). We brought enough fuel and food and water for 5 days, just in case.

We bump along on dirt roads for 4 days, gaping out the window at stunning endless landscapes of lakes, colorful red mountains, and flamingoes. It’s hard to describe, and it’s even tougher to photograph. The landscapes are impossibly broad, stretching from horizon to horizon, with so many horizontal layers squeezed into the frame that we simply can’t capture it. First is the foreground of dirt flecked by white salt streaks here and there, then the inevitable lagoon with a layer of pink dots – flamingos – and many different colors of water, then the red/orange/brown/yellow hillsides behind the lagoon, larger mountains beyond that, and finally the bright blue sky stretching to infinity behind it.

 

On our last night, we park on the shore of yet another colorful lake full of flamingoes, but this time with a convenient hot spring on the edge. It’s certainly the most unique and picturesque swim I’ve ever had – a hot infinity pool looking out over flamingoes in an incredible backdrop of layered lakes and mountains.

 

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