Tears of joy are a scarce elixir. I have seen and shed no more than a few of these precious drops in my life. But here they were, pearls of liquid gratitude rolling down my cheeks to toast a moment so mundane that it would have evaporated into oblivion’s ether on any other day. A moment earlier I had been too miserable to think of betterment, of feeling well ever again, let alone of rejoicing at life. Goddamn valley, you made for one sweet sweet high.
It all started with gentle baseline content and unnoticed well-being on day one of our three-day trip into the white – Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. A car packed with good people, driving straight into the right place and time – heaven by the looks of it, but certainly unforgiving if someone were to strand in this burning, salty vastness. That’s why we, five friends and a stranger, had opted for a tour despite our general tour(ism) aversion. It was one of these few places where DIY is no longer a marker for indie-travel, but a sign of recklessness, like walking into the Amazon without local knowledge. This here was the polar opposite of a green, dense labyrinth filled with animals, but just as perilous without knowing your way around. Given that the Salar is bigger than Lebanon and almost void of visual anchors for orientation, crossing it by yourself with spotty GPS and meager cell phone reception is for gamblers.
"... like a surrealist dreamscape it seemingly existed detached from all the rest of space and time, somewhere somewhen.”
Our driver navigated the even white all around us most instinctively, like a bird that just knew and flew. With a fierce sun high above, the Salar was a shining emptiness filled with enough salt to cover the fact that it was once a gigantic prehistoric lake. Miraculously, it was the utter monotony, the one-colored flatness that made for the lost lake’s spectacular beauty, and like a surrealist dreamscape it seemingly existed detached from all the rest of space and time, somewhere somewhen.
We would stop for the occasional photo op, like all turistas before and after us. But, to the obligatory perspective shots this white stage is famous for (think tiny person in giant’s palm) we said: “Not us, too cool.”
Adhering to our tight tourist schedule, we took a lunch break at Isla Incahuasi, a cacti-covered outcrop and former island in the heart of the salt pan, where the panoramas were wide and the 360°-horizon unencumbered.
If I remember correctly, we spent that night at a salt hotel, where a mirror revealed my true colors: crab-red with a hint of pink. I had turned into a crustacean. That cunning sunburn delay. By the time you see it, it’s there. Who would have thought that 12,000 feet of elevation and a reflecting crystal ground merit sunscreen on a cloudless day? My skin felt like a balloon, crackling with electricity and just about to burst – a level of discomfort that was still bearable. It couldn’t much dampen the happiness of a day that felt like being hugged and loved by mother nature herself. Unbeknownst to me then, the red alert on my face was a foreboding warning signal for more pain to come.
"Bolivia’s altiplano is like a pocket in the world filled with otherworldly strangeness, as though another planet had collided with ours and left an imprint on it.”
Day two was a sightseeing marathon that had us in a comical loop of hopping in and out of the 4WD with dizzying frequency. Bolivia’s altiplano is like a pocket in the world filled with otherworldly strangeness, as though another planet had collided with ours and left an imprint on it. Somewhere, a stone tree grew from the desert, somewhere else lagoons with absurd water-colors attracted a wealth of flamingos smitten with their minerals, here a sulfur-cloud, there a volcano. The only mark of human life and reminder that we were still on planet Earth were some lonely train tracks that seemed to come straight out of nowhere and head off to nowhen. Without so much as a grain of light pollution, our nightly swim in the hot springs took place under a pristine sky – a front row seat to the milky way. Nature’s gifts were generous out there, away from it all. And life was still good, and I was happy, and, perhaps more importantly, I was well. I was well, but I didn’t know it, because you never do until well vacations in hell.
"And life was still good, and I was happy, and, perhaps more importantly, I was well. I was well, but I didn’t know it, because you never do until well vacations in hell.”
"I woke up in the early morning hours with my stomach lining twisted inside out and my guts using it as a trampoline."
That night we stayed at a guesthouse even more remote than the last. Painfully remote as some other guests would come to find that night. After what felt like the longest day, we inhaled dinner and fell into our bunks. I woke up in the early morning hours with my stomach lining twisted inside out and my guts using it as a trampoline. I wasn’t the only one. Funny enough, two years into my journey at the time and feeling immunized against food poisoning, it was a meat-free and most Western dish – Spaghetti with tomato sauce – that had ignited the carousel inside my bowels. Considering my travel seniority among my friends, the fact that it had hit me hardest, felt like betrayal on life’s part. Not that I would have wanted them to be sicker, or that it would have helped me, I'm just saying life, just saying.
Over breakfast, those of us still standing learned the dimensions of the outbreak. Another group had been hit bad – as in hospital-bed-bad. People had been carted off to the nearest clinic in the middle of the night. Couldn’t have been a fun ride in a place where near is far and roads aren’t roads. But at least it was behind those poor devils by the time we heaved ourselves into the car, where the ordeal was only about to begin. I felt sick like a little child does: helpless and hopeless, gravely mistreated by the universe, worse than an adult could comprehend, worse than anyone has ever felt before. The bumpy ride through what felt like a minefield on Mars didn’t help. It was the mean kind of nausea, the one that has you on the verge of throwing up your entire stomach, life, and soul, without ever peaking into that point of relief. Clubbing your tummy with dull discomfort, that kind of nasty nausea makes you long for an outright, honest pain.
As always in these moments, it was hard to imagine that things would get better again, and probably very soon, despite knowing this for a fact. Knowing has less than nothing to do with feeling. Pain, be it physical or emotional, is not up for debate. It just is. And when it is, you’re facing a Herculean task if you want to reason with it, rationalize it away, shift your focus, pivot your perspective towards what you still have left or what could be even worse, find comfort in the anticipation of a lighter future just around the corner.
Feelings are never illusions. When they are, they are and when they aren’t, they aren’t. Whether they are positive or negative, pain or pleasure, emotion or sensation, their existence is undeniable. One might even argue that feelings are in that sense more factual than knowledge because what we (think to) know can so easily be deceived with a little lie, a cheap magic trick, or a simple optical illusion. Feelings can easily be overfelt and just as quickly fade, but they are always true for as long as they last.
"With all the pain I had ever felt now fading fast into the past, all the pleasure was ahead."
It seems unfortunate that pain trumps pleasure when haggling over our attention (which means that losses loom larger than gains as psychologists know). The mind is caught in the one place where it hurts, and it can’t escape. Mine was stuck in my stomach and no beautiful landscape or comforting word or memory could give it a lift back up. But I guess evolution has a good excuse for emphasizing pain over pleasure: the former is linked to our survival more directly and critically. If something hurts, your life might be in danger; if it pleases, it might just be an ice cream cone. Of course, none of that occurred to me then, nor could it have appeased me if it had.
Fortunately, I was with Americans, and Americans always have powerful medicinal nukes that wouldn’t be OTC anywhere else. When that little pink warhead dropped onto my stomach lining, it killed the nausea instantly and I was saved from the miserable depths within me. That the explosion probably wrecked my gut flora forever was irrelevant because there hadn’t been a rest of my life prior to this relief package delivered via missile.
That sugary bliss of just being fine, of not being sick anymore. With all the pain I had ever felt now fading fast into the past, all the pleasure was ahead. I had been somewhere between content and happy throughout the trip, but this moment was one of the finest I've ever partaken in. All the dopamine that had been buried under the suffering was released at once and flooded my system the way the light kills the night. My not feeling bad felt so incredibly good and the landscape was so indescribably beautiful and life so inconceivably loving that it moved me to tears. Maybe that can be of comfort to us when nothing else can in pain-ridden moments: not only will we bounce back from that valley, but when we do, we’ll fly way beyond the baseline to an extra high high with our appreciation tall as a ray of sunlight.
