Monday, December 14, 2015

Uyuni, day two: into the Andes

Day two dawned, as I said, with the crunching of salt under the feet of fellow travellers. After a nice breakfast that even featured scrambled eggs – for the first and only time in four weeks of travel! - prepared from the supplies we brought along by the women who work in the salt hostel we were on our way. It was just starting to get light, the sun still hidden behind the high peaks to the east. The road – more like a sand track – skirted the edge of these mountains and led through fields planted with quinoa, fenced against vicuñas with a single strand of smooth wire to which pieces of cloth and plastic had been tied. Quinoa is the main means of subsistence in that area. It must have been seeded within the last four weeks at least, but in many places nothing visible had emerged yet, in others a few plants showed here and there. The fields were waiting for the rainy season for emergence, and it would be another three or four months until they were ready for harvest – even now still done by hand. We noticed the lack of farm houses: farmers live in the small villages along the way and drive out to their fields, sometimes with small trucks, sometimes by bike.

After stopping in the small town of San Juan for a few moments so that Bemer could pick up a bag of coca leaves we started to climb higher. The road required Bemer's complete attention: deep ruts and big rocks made navigation difficult, and it became clear why a four-wheel drive vehicle is essential for this trip. Less and less vegetation clung to the rocks along the side. 
We stopped for a few minutes amidst big eroded rocks and deep gullies: after seeing all this it certainly would no longer be necessary to visit the moon. 
 
A later stop provided even more bizarre rock sculptures, among others the 'stone tree' in the following picture.
 
The main feature on this second day, however, were the lagoons. It's totally amazing to suddenly come upon these colourful bodies of water, flamingoes, sometimes in the hundreds or even thousands, wading slowly back and forth, drawing their hooked beaks along the shallow bottom to pick up the small crustaceans that form their diet. 


The first one we stopped at provided very close access to the birds, and we had good opportunity to study their beautiful plumage. Three kinds of flamingoes can be found here, and they all resemble each other to the unschooled eye, of course, the Andean, Chilean and James's flamingo. Young flamingoes, already seeming quite apt at looking for food, were still wearing their downy adolescent plumage, not yet pink but soft grey.


 


We saw a bit more wildlife along the way, like this fox (obviously quite used to being fed by humans – a bit of a disillusionment to watch a fox eat left-over pasta from lunch ...) and, quite frequently, vicuñas, sometimes by themselves, sometimes in small groups, their fine hair gently stirred by the wind. What they survive on is a mystery to me; they seem to graze the bare rocks, though I'm sure there must be some kind of vegetation not visible from the car. 
 


The last stop of the day was the 'Red Lagoon', its clay-coloured water containing large amounts of iron oxide. It is a huge lagoon, situated in a dip, like the others surrounded by high mountains. It was so windy on the ridge above that it felt as if I would be carried aloft if only I spread my arms wide. We spent some time walking along the edge of the lagoon, admiring the thick-coated llamas grazing the short grass, gazing at the plume of borax dust driven into ever-changing deposits on the other side of the lagoon.

It was still early in the evening when we reached our lodge, only about twenty minutes from the lagoon. We had cleared a pass at 4700m not so long before and had dropped to about 4300m, about seven hundred metres higher than the night before and thus were well prepared for the 5000m we were going to reach the next morning. Predictions that we would be cold at night were unfounded: four of the thick, very heavy woolen blankets used everywhere we travelled kept us nice and warm.

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