Chapter 14: A Bag of Limes / Bolivia

We left Peru through a narrow side street that got us around a blockade. There are stuffed mannequins with political slogans hung by their necks from the street lights, and posters everywhere accusing the government of genocide, corruption and abuse of power. The president is not a popular woman in these parts. Our entry into Bolivia goes off without a hitch, except for the three cops who tried their best to bust us for not having the apparently mandatory safety vests on board. They stopped us 3 meters short of the border. Fortunately, the Peruvian customs officer nearby was having none of it, pulled rank and waved us through. We were in.

Our first stop in Bolivia was Copacabana, a small town on the southern margin of Lake Titicaca. In Copacabana you can pay money to young, Catholic priests to have your vehicle blessed in an elaborate, colourful, and gaudy ceremony. The daily ceremonies are performed on the street, grinding local traffic to a halt. The blessing seekers seem like they are trying to stretch the boundaries of divine intervention, hoisting children, pets, wads of cash and miniature models of houses onto the open hood of their cars to ensure all receive an adequate sprinkling of the holy water. We watch the ceremony for a while, then wander off in search of Bolivian sim cards. I’ll save my money for a new bottle jack for the truck.

La Paz is the world’s highest capital city. I am also awarding it the scariest place on earth to drive in. There are no road rules, and size, courage and the composition of your bumper are the difference makers. Need to get around someone? Use the oncoming lane. Traffic light taking too long? Hit the gas and exploit a gap. Two lanes aren’t enough? Make a third. Still no space? Use the sidewalk. Tolerance for passing someone else’s vehicle is millimeters, not centimeters. This high stakes derby takes place on a road system with few traffic lights, no road markings, and degrading roads that alternate between paved and gravel surfaces with unmarked potholes and work zones. The margins of these roads are taken up by street vendors who gradually appropriate more and more of the road width. Bike and motorcycle riders thread the narrow remaining gap between drivers and vendors. On top of this, marching bands seem to be a national pastime in Bolivia, and random streets are shut down entirely to facilitate their parades. Piloting a 6 tonne rig through this madness feels like you are elbow to elbow in a giant, automotive roller derby, and is a recipe for a coronary event. Remarkably, there is very little road rage, Bolivians having long ago committed their fates to the streets. We discover early on that any faith placed in Google Maps directions was drastically misplaced. Instead, we plug in our destination, then chart a general heading in that direction following our compass more than the map.

The boys enjoyed La Paz. The city sits in a dry, treeless ravine bed, carved out by an ancient river. From the air, you can see hundreds of branching ravines connected to the main system, lined with hoodoos and sandy, eroding banks. Each connecting ravine has painted buildings sprinkled over its surfaces, a colourful blanket through which the uneroded spires of sharper rocks poke through. The entire city exists in an active, simultaneous state of building and erosion. It feels like a soluble city, one that could be washed away in a proper rainstorm. The city of course, has been here for some time. They have recently strung up a series of Austrian made gondolas similar to Medellin, and these provide a handy way to see and understand the city from the air. We spend several days here, hunting up basketball courts and local delicacies. On one street you can find colourful wool clothing, on the next a lama fetus (buried beneath the foundation of new buildings for good luck). La Paz is also home to the infamous San Pedro Prison, which sits directly in the city centre. This prison is governed by the inmates themselves, and an entire economy exists with restaurants, real estate, grocery stores and a thriving cocaine export business. We wander around the high walls and watch the line-ups of women and family members waiting to visit their incarcerated loved ones. I snap a furtive picture, and am quickly approached by a guard. For us Vancouverites, La Paz turns out to be the most interesting, varied and adventurous city we have experienced, and the boys fill their pockets with enough stories to last for a long time.

It was in the city of Sucre where we were visited by a boy from our past. Sucre was a beautiful, white city that offered us a slightly lower altitude location to rest for a few days before we entered the remote regions of Southern Bolivia. With the boys tucked into bed, and the truck parked within the walls of a nearby overlander spot, Daniella and I left for a walk through town. The evening air was warm, the streets were full, and it was nice to walk down the sidewalk without tripping over three boys. I stopped when I noticed that Daniella was no longer walking beside me. She was stopped 5 steps back, her gaze fixed on the opposite street. Sitting on a thin blanket on the sidewalk between shop doorways, just out of range of the car traffic was a young boy. He was shoeless, about 6 years old and he was selling limes. The limes were spread out carefully on the blanket in front of him, and he looked up and down the street. His eyes made hopeful contact with each passerby, but his body language told us he was resigned to a long evening trying to get rid of his limes. Daniella burst into tears on the sidewalk.

10 years ago in Ethiopia we had encountered this same boy on a street corner, alone, swinging his plastic bag of limes, and shouting his sales pitch into the street. He puffed his chest out, trying desperately to show everyone that he was older than he really was. He should be in school, with his family or anywhere but spending all day on a street corner. Is this the future he was consigned too? An entire day’s worth of effort to sell a few limes? He was not the first child vendor we had encountered, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last, but for some reason this kid, dirty and shoeless touched a nerve. He wormed his way right past all the excuses and reasons we had layered on like armour after months of travelling and placed himself right in the tender centre of our hearts. Now, 15 years later, here he was on a street in Bolivia. He wasn’t the same boy of course, but he may as well have been for all it mattered. Same age, same limes, the same bravado of a small kid trying to do a big boy’s job.

We crossed the street and purchased all of the boys limes. He beamed with pride as he wrapped them up carefully for us, then rolled up his little mat. Daniella asked him in her broken Spanish if he was going home now to sleep (it was 10pm). He flashed us a grin, nodded and ran off. An hour later we passed by the same place, a block further. The boy was out on the street again with a fresh pile of limes. Who knows how long he would be there before he was allowed to go home. I suppose there comes a time when you have traveled enough, seen enough boys selling limes on the street to feel like you’ve come to grips or at least made your peace with the inequity in the world. Something inside me hopes we won’t ever make that peace, that the little boy on the corner selling limes will keep showing up on our journey to remind us that it’s not all ok yet.

Between Sucre and Uyuni is the mining town of Potosi, and it was in Potosi that we got terrifically stuck. We had tried to navigate our way through the city (Google Maps, once again proving hopelessly out of date) and ended up being funneled down smaller and smaller streets. Eventually we found ourselves on a one-way street, jammed like a cork between a set of steel bollards and a parked taxi. There was no way we were backing up, and when I moved forward, I was so close to the taxi that my rear tire grabbed the car body and friction lifted it about a foot in the air. The honking from the traffic we had backed up several blocks started shortly thereafter. I got out to survey the situation, and no matter how much I tried, we had no room left to move. We were seriously stuck, and the taxi driver was no where in sight. A crowd of men had gathered behind the truck, none of them looking at all pleased with the gringo who had just ruined their day. I don’t understand much Spanish, but I understood them. The head scratching and gesturing went on for about 5 minutes and then one of them stepped forward and motioned for me to grab my jack. A disgruntled crowd of Bolivians has a way of being particularly motivating, and we shoved the jack under the frame of the taxi. Once we had jacked it up about 8” five men grabbed hold of the back bumper and heaved it over the curb, buying us a couple of inches. We repeated the same process with the front. I then climbed into the driver’s seat and moved forward two feet. It still wasn’t enough. My camper jack wasn’t going to clear the taxi’s front end, and we had no more room to move. I hadn’t noticed the policeman show up, but he was suddenly at my driver’s side window. I prepared myself for the worst. The cop removed his aviators and told us “You must go!” I tried to explain that there would be collateral damage, but he pointed to the road ahead and spoke again “Vamos!” I took that as my cue and pushed the Duramax to freedom, leaving behind a taxi with a questionable fender. I’m using to get my trucks stuck and unstuck on muddy bush roads, but the driving challenges here have been entirely different.

These challenges extend to the simplest of tasks. In an effort to stabilize the economy, the Bolivians have nationalized all fuel stations, and instituted a strict policy that only nationals are allowed to buy gas or diesel at the subsidized rate. Foreigners must pay double, but many gas station owners simply refuse to sell gas to us because of the extra hassle. Security cameras and young, baby-faced military cadets are installed at each station to ensure that the rules are followed. This leaves our diesel thirsty truck in a real bind. After my first few approaches are rejected, I park the truck around the corner and walk up with two jerry cans. These I get filled at the local price, without any issues. 4 sweaty, greasy trips later and the precious diesel has been carefully filled into the tank. During our stay in Bolivia, I was only able to fill gas into the tank directly twice, both early in morning before it was light out, and only after paying a hefty tip to the attendant (who quickly turned off the security camera while he filled our tank).

We finally arrived in Uyuni. When we had dreamed this trip up, there were two places that immediately topped my itinerary. The Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world, and the Lagunas district, a roadless stretch of remote, high-altitude desert that is the closest thing we will experience on earth to an otherworldly landscape. Uyuni is the jumping off point for both. We had arranged to meet up with our new friends Henrik and Rebecca (from Germany) and with our old friends Ferenc and Evelin (from Hungary). These areas are so remote that the only help you get is the help you bring yourself, and travelling with friends with rigs big enough to pull you out is advisable. Uyuni is a frontier town, the last outpost before a wild and trackless desert. It is the rough, dirty end of the line where travellers stop only for diesel, car washes and necessities. In Uyuni we have our truck’s undercarriages washed and sprayed with a diesel coating to protect it from the salty grit it will accumulate on the Salar. We slept that night in a train cemetery, amid the rusting carcasses of old locomotives abandoned after the Bolivian access to the ocean was cut off after they lost their war with Chile. These hulking, graffitied giants peer through lidless steel eyes as they watch over the desert, guarding the entrance into the unknown.

The Salar de Uyuni is roadless, trackless and one of the most remarkable places I have ever visited. For two days, we charted a course across this ancient salt seabed, a crystalline, blinding white table. We navigated it more as a marine environment, with compass headings, sailing the Duramax across its heavily textured white surface. It felt like we were navigating an Arctic ice shelf, and I found myself suspiciously on edge, scanning for soft spots, half expecting the salt pans to crack and drop us into the ocean. At night we snugged up against the bay of a rocky island, tethered to its edge by some primal sense of shelter in this giant, otherwise featureless landscape. We watched the sun set and the cold creep in and the first stars appear, and then we climbed up into our tiny capsule of warmth and safety, where we swapped stories and marveled at the day. What a place. The next morning the boys got their first driving lesson. The only thing they could possibly hit was the two other vehicles with us, and they grinned wide as they gripped the steering wheel for the first time. Nathaniel drove the first hour of the way back, and I sat in the passenger seat, with the growing realization that the coming years of his life were going to come a lot faster than we had thought they would. On the Salar, the ground plane merges with the horizon line creating a space that has no limits and no scale. The boys set up a photo shoot and maxed out the scale distorting effect to its full potential, before we pointed the nose of truck along a compass heading that would take us back to Uyuni.

In Uyuni we topped off all of the required fluids for humans and machines, and prepared to launch into the Lagunas region. This is a vast area that marks the southern border of Bolivia and the majority of it sits above 4,200m in elevation. There are no paved roads, towns, gas stations or services of any kind. Parts of the region have tracks that have been travelled enough that they could be called a gravel road. In other areas you simply pick a route that you think your vehicle can handle and hope for the best. In overlanding circles the route is known as a rig killer. In a pre-trip pep talk I described all of this enthusiastically to my family. Halfway through it dawned on me that I was doing a rather poor sales job. Why bother with the Lagunas? We were at the culmination of a long, hard stretch of travel through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia and now this. I had a hard time providing a reasonable answer to the question myself. To my boys I mumbled some sage sounding advice about learning to do hard things in life. To myself the best I could come up with is that somethings are worth doing simply because they are worth doing. And the landscapes…..

The geography of the Lagunas is rolling rock and sand ridges, eroded away in places to form steeper peaks and mountains. Wind is the active force here, and it scours the land, a river of air pushing the earth here and there, and sweeping trees and any other loose bits into the corners. It reminds me of a sandy version of a snow-blown arctic landscape. Beige dunes of gravel and sand sweep around mountain bases. Overhanging cornices crumble and plunge into ravines below. Finer grained striations follow and accentuate the larger ridges. Brown, yellow and orange colours sweep along in bands several kilometers long. It is the sky however, which gives the landscape it’s meaning. Thrust into an altidude higher than most other places on earth, and stripped of its lower atmosphere, the sky is a dark, indigo blue so saturated it feels liquid. It is a sky permanently in twilight mode, when anything standing up against its horizon is immediately thrown into sharp relief. Gone are the muted tones of a baby blue sea level sky. This is real blue, deep blue. The Spanish call it azul, which feels a little more fitting.

We penetrate the mountains through folds in the lower ridges and drive for several hours. At first, the path forward is reasonable and discernable. After a while, it braids into a hundred different possibilities and we are left to pick the best way through in an automotive choose your own adventure journey. The tracks follow a logical pattern through the ridges the first day, but on the second day they merge and we are spit out onto a large plateau, where any semblance of track has disappeared. Henrik has downloaded tracks from other travellers who have driven here previously, and we follow him in convoy. In a landscapel like this it is easy to fall into a false sense of security by the openness of the plateau, which lures you gently and subtly into much more dangerous, unstable and steep slopes. We found ourselves suddenly pinched into a very steep fold descending the plateau, and were just barely able to retreat and turn around in low range 4WD before we are too committed. Our speedometer never tops 20km/hr.

At nighttime we seek shelter from the wind where we can. The wind is gale force, and constant. It is impossible to spend more than a few minutes outside before it rips the cold from your body and spits sand in your eyes. The temperatures at night plummet to -15C before windchill and the propane heater runs most of the night to keep humans and pipes from freezing. Before we left I had drained any remaining water from the fuel filter, and tipped some Russian anti-gel chemical into the fuel tank to keep the diesel from freezing. I am glad I did, and proud of the fact that every morning the truck cranks over on the first try while the European Iveco’s cough and sputter slowly to life. We drop the jacks on the rig to keep it from rocking too much in the wind gusts, and as I climb back into the warmth of the camper I glance up at the sky. Fistfuls of stars have been tossed into the darkness of a black, velvet backdrop, and the Milky Way wraps itself like a wispy, semi-transparent cotton blanket around us. It’s all so close you feel like you could reach out and touch it.

We do find a few places of shelter in small, rocky ravines, and we are not the only ones. The ravines are inhabited by viscachas, small rabbit like creatures that are almost tame and take food right from the boy’s hands. It is at one of these lunch breaks that Ferenc discovers a potentially disastrous engine failure. One of the bolts holding an internal bracket that runs his timing chain has sheared off, and oil is slowly leaking from the hole. There is no way of fixing this without parts and machinery that we don’t have, and if the remaining bolt shears off their truck is dead in the water. There is no cell service out here, and no tow truck would make it back here. If their rig doesn’t make it, it’s staying here in the desert and the Altiplano will swallow it with time. The stress level climbs as we continue on our way, picking through the easiest routes. Ferenc grits his teeth through every stretch of washboard, hoping the bolt will hold.

We travel for several days until we reach Laguna Colorado, a blood red body of water poured into the palm of the desert. It is not deep, but it stretches for miles, hugging the base of an extinct, treeless volcano. In the late evening sun the flamingoes and the vicunas (small, wilder cousins to the llamas) share the shallow margin of the lake’s edges, hunting for fish and other food. This place is so entirely out of reference, and as I sit there watching the sun drop, cocooned in every warm jacket I have, I suddenly feel very, very far from home.

It is at Laguna Colorado that we discover that the back door to our camper has been open for the past 30 kilometres of dusty road. We had been trailing in the convoy, fighting through billows of dust thrown up by the vehicles ahead. The entire camper, stem to stern has been filled with a thick coating of dust, blankets, clothes, walls – even the closed cupboards haven’t escaped. Daniella is devastated. It’s getting dark, the temperature is dropping quickly below freezing, and the sanctity of our tiny shelter – our last retreat, our home – has been violated. There is no time for tears. The boys are confined to the backseat of the truck with an Ipad, and our travelling companions are quick to step in and help. Everything is hauled out of the camper and dusted off as best as possible. Our small mountain of possessions lays there under the darkness of the night sky as we dust, sweep, wipe and repeat. It takes several hours until we can climb into our beds, exhausted. It’s time to get out of here.

The next day we make tracks for the border. After several hours the track begins to look slowly more and more like an actual gravel road, and pretty soon we are standing in front of a lone building – the border crossing into Chile. There is one official manning the booth, and it’s not heated. He’s clearly not happy with his lot in life, but stamps us through fairly quickly. The track continues and suddenly we are spit out onto a paved road, a bunch of alien travellers suddenly looking a little dazed and confused. The pavement feels good though, and we air up the tires and head for town. We’ve made it.