The lake rippled with velvet shades of crimson, fringed by pearls of arctic
white borax. Around it hung a mantle of lime-green grasses from which, like
a high collar, rose the ashen flanks of Mount Licancabur. Against this
iridescent palette of colour stood the llama, sporting an ineffable pout of
disdain.
Few venture into this corner of Bolivia. “The difficulties of independent
travel in the Far South-West cannot be overstressed,” warns the normally
gung-ho Lonely Planet guide. Given the altitude and lack of communications
and watering holes, the warning is best heeded.
I had acclimatised gently, courtesy of the wonderful Explora hotel on the
Chilean side of the Andes. San Pedro de Atacama, with tour agents in place
of gunslingers, differs little from the ramshackle set of a spaghetti
western. On horseback, my guide and I clopped through the oasis town, along
burbling channels, past adobe houses and verdant orchards. Into the desert
we rode, to the Valle de la Luna, labouring up vast sand dunes to survey the
lunar rock formations below. At 2,450 metres, the light was eerily intense,
the sun bathing the volcanic cones of the Andes in the most impossible red.
At dawn we negotiated the steep climb to the famous Tatio geysers. We drove
through a desert of gravel and rock, landscape changing at every bend, the
smoking hulk of Volcan Putana the only constant in our sights. At 4,300
metres we reached a plateau of some 40 geysers. Magma-boiled underground
streams met the cold morning air, sending up hissing plumes of
sulphur-scented steam. Delicate vicuñas grazed, and backpackers soaked in
bubbling pools, like steaming dumplings.
Dusk came over the Salar de Atacama, its surface jagged and sand-dusted like a
ploughed field. This salt lake harbours almost half the world’s lithium –
used to pep batteries and to spark the neurotransmitters of the depressed.
Mario arrived to take me to Bolivia. “It’ll be different,” he muttered. The
frontier at San Pedro was decorated with “wanted” posters of moustachioed
Bolivians. Since 1879, when Bolivia lost her coastline to Chile, little love
has been lost between these countries. We sped through a no man’s land
flanked by minefields, took a dirt track and rose past Licancabur to a shack
flying the red-yellow-green tricolor: Bolivia. Within 100 kilometres we had
climbed to 4,850 metres.
It was literally breathtaking, like Chile on LSD. It was not just that
beautiful Red Lagoon, where flamingos join the llamas to set the lake
aflutter. There is also a Green Lagoon – a milky, viscous jade so rich in
lead and arsenic that no sensible creature approaches.
In Bolivia, the Sol de Mañana geysers do not hiss suggestively: they roar
deafeningly, through yawning craters. Mud gurgled hungrily at 600C. The
breath of the devil hung in the air.
That evening, dining on llama fillets at the only joint in town, among miners
on a karaoke outing, I understood what Mario meant by “different”. We
checked into the Luna Salada, a hotel sculpted entirely of salt, overlooking
the world’s largest and highest salt lake: the Salar de Uyuni. Unlike the
Chilean version, it stretches flat over 12,000 square kilometres of
hexagonal patchwork, snow-blindingly white. We raced across it, glad of a
smooth surface. Though sunny, it was bitterly cold. Giant cacti teetered on
rocky islets, adding to the sensory confusion.
On arrival at an Inca burial cave, full of foetal-position mummies waiting to
be reborn, I thought the altitude must be affecting me. It was. “Coca
leaves,” suggested Mario, when orthodox remedies failed. “They aid oxygen
uptake.” Leaves were produced.
I was shown how to prepare then store them in a mulch in my cheek. My
throbbing head responded, enabling us to climb to Potosi: once the richest,
still the highest, and one of the most affecting cities in the world.
Potosi is where the New World encountered Spain at her least likable. Cerro
Rico, source of Spain’s riches for 300 years, towers drably above this tiny
city of narrow streets, overhanging balconies and churches whose baroque
curlicues are out-flourished by the exotic motifs of mestizo culture.
Indians were fed into the Cerro’s mines to extract silver to be transformed
into Spanish coins. Astonishingly, the 360 mines still functioning are
almost unchanged.
Armed with the novel gift of dynamite from the miners’ market, we visited one
underground labyrinth. A cross stood above the entrance, decorated with
flowers. For good measure it was splashed red with the blood of a llama: a
sacrifice to the earth mother, Pachamama. Sporting headlamps, we crouched in
the gloom. It was stifling and disorienting. It reeked of fumes from
explosions. We followed the din of pneumatic drills to find two miners
hoisting themselves from a pit, blackened but smiling. We proffered our
dynamite, then retired to sup with an effigy of the devil. Someone placed a
lighted cigarette in Old Nick’s mouth, a bottle of alcohol in his lap.
Miners will hedge their bets with any deity to hand.
In Sucre – the judiciary capital, with all the whitewashed, colonial elegance
and Catholic pomp of its heyday – I walked over cows’ bones arranged in
cruciform pattern, “to exorcise the ghosts of Spaniards killed in duels”. In
La Paz, not only Indian women in colourful shawls and bowler hats seek
advice from hechiceros in the Witches’ Market. The bourgeoisie also gather,
selecting llama foetuses, condor plumes, stuffed owls and assorted herbs for
hexing and veneration. “Believe in God or not,” explained Mario. “But deny
Pachamama and all work stops.” This the Americans discovered. Their new
embassy is founded on the remains of a llama.
I met my own doctor-magus, a kallawaya, on my final evening, on the tranquil
shores of Lake Titicaca. Benjamin read my fortune using sacred coca leaves.
Charily, I sat as he invoked the spirits of the Andes, Pachamama and St
James, and blessed, then hurled, alcohol into the fire. The flames billowed,
auguring well. The leaves fell auspiciously. I celebrated with local trout,
Bolivian wine and a coca-leaf massage. It seemed a fitting end to a journey
through magical realms.
HOW TO GET THERE
Teresa Levonian Cole travelled with Cox
& Kings - a 16-day/13-night tour of Chile and Bolivia starts at
£2,895
