Planet Bolivia

What to say.

Fresh off the back of a four day tour of the Bolivian wilderness. Fresh is the wrong word. I am anything but fresh. I now know what it truly means to slum it. Extreme changes from searing sun to below zero, air so thin you catch your breath getting in and out of a jeep. Stone beds, rationed electricity, 4am alarms, gobsmacking sunrises. Sweating in the odd boiling, but also freezing climate, the last four days have been a lesson in just how hard life can be if you are born in a country such as Bolivia. The villages we stay in are built mainly from mud and dry stone walls. They are accessed by a rubble strewn track suitable only for 4 wheel drive. They make their living swapping llamas for food. The nights are so cold the streams freeze. The days are so hot they only come out as the sun rises and falls. The llamas are fine whatever the weather.

Bolivia is literally like nothing I´ve ever seen. The landscapes are so extreme and changable it´s difficult to believe. Laguna Verde at the foot of a 5000m Volcano is actually gorgeously bright turquoise and green. Mineral deposits make it so. Laguna Hedionda (foul-smelling lake) is toxic and sulpher-saturated, black and oil-slick sticky. Laguna Colarada is bright red. All have robotic flamingos of varying pinks strutting through the shallows.

We approach a series of geysers emitting serious steam. Boiling mud belches from the centre of the universe. Such a hostile environment I have never seen. Chinchillas bounce around and we spot a sly young fox eating abandoned tourist crisps. Last night we slept in the Salt Hotel. A building made entirely from salt, we lick the walls and laugh, light-headed with altitude and beer. The majority of the tour has been conducted above 4000m. At one point we nearly reached 5000m. The pressure on my cranium keeps me awake. And the excitement.

This morning, after hooping while the sun rose on the pure white salt flats, we visit an island in the salt where many cacti grow. We met one that is over 1000 years old. The cracked salt plains are a lake bed that is 12000km squared. Pure white, further than the eye can see. So bright it hurts your eyes. It fills during rainy season to create a perfect mirror.

Our Bolivian arrival hinted at the harshness and extremity this country has to offer. Spewed off a bus at the 7am border, into the freezing blue light and headlong into a 2 hour wait because the officer didn´t like our emergency passports and their predictable lack of an entry stamp.

Once we are in, it´s all smiles, freshly squeezed oranges and women in bowler hats. Hilarious, wonderful, filthy cheap and no ATM´s. We jump on a bus which fortunately costs pence and i spend 3 hours with my sarong stuffed into my ears to bar the ´Casio keyboard on steriods´(Andy) from perforating my eardrums.

Tupiza. Bolivian wild west. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid kicked it here. We mount two untrustworthy steeds and ride off into the red rocks through a canyon, one hand holding the sombreros, the other the reins. Pointless as the horses do whatever they like.

We are properly and securely into the groove. I don´t know or need to know what day it is. My most valued possesion is the Spanish i am collecting like hard-earned coins. I am amidst a continent i have dreamed of seeing for at least as long as I´ve known a certain boy. This dream has been running uninterrupted for nearly a decade. And now we are living it.

I apologise for my smugness. But I cannot contain this feeling. What it is to be ALIVE.