Tears of joy are a scarce elixir. I have shed no more than a few of those 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 those 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 almost literally 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 meagre cell phone reception is only for hardcore 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 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 obligatory photo ops, like all turistas before and after us, without ever loosening the grip on our tight schedule. It is well understood that one must adhere to a vacation’s rules at all times. 2 pm: lunch break at Isla Incahuasi, a cacti-covered outcrop and former island in the heart of the salt pan boasting a braggy 360 degrees of horizon.
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 a cloudless day reflected in a crystal floor at 12,000 feet of elevation merits sunscreen? My skin felt like a balloon, crackling with electricity and just about to burst – a level of discomfort that was just about 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 at a 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 trace 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.