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Hello
from the Solar de Uyuni in Bolivia,
Crunch... crunch... crunch... softly, muffled.
Then silence again, profound silence.
Sebastian has crept up behind me in the bright
dining-room to deliver the next course of my
breakfast as I sit transfixed by the panorama
framed by a wall of glass, feeling like
royalty. The room is so bright I wear
sunglasses to breakfast. He is walking on a
half foot deep carpet of brilliantly white
rock salt. The sound of his foot steps is not
unlike that of someone creeping down a gravel
driveway... except more hushed. Sebastian is
the lone bellman-waiter-handyman,
do-everything guest services staff member here
in the stunning Hotel
de Sal - Luna Salad (Salt Moon Hotel), an
island of civility on a craggy hill at the
edge of a blinding desolate salt desert
wilderness: the
Solar de Uyuni. The entire 23 room
thatched roof lodge built in 2005 employs five
people who do the housekeeping, laundry,
building maintenance, and cooking plus the
manager and her ten year old daughter. Not
even the sound of coffee filling my cup or the
whispered kindness in unintelligible Spanish
disturbs the utter reverent silence of the
place this morning:
SILENCE... in capital letters. The
night I arrived only one other guest shared
the dining-room as I enjoyed my candle lit
steak dinner. The pleasant smell of burning
candle wax added to the exotic ambiance. The
second day I dined alone with exclusive
attention of the entire staff for all three
meals, the only guest in the elegant lodge!
All 23 guest rooms in the hotel are
constructed end-to-end in two wings on either
side of the large dining-room. Rooms in my
wing have picture windows facing the Salares.
Rooms in the other wing face away from the
salt flats, but open onto large public
sitting-rooms associated with each
guestroom and face the Salares. At one end of
the long lodge there are game rooms, a theater
style meeting room, and a large circular great
room that looks like a deserted cafe or coffee
house. Outside the long narrow line of
structures are piles of volcanic rubble and
weathered boulders with a sinuous footpath
winding its way around the lodge. As the
buildings have been constructed on a hill, the
views of the surrounding flat plains below are
unobstructed. To the north and east in the far
distance are the snow capped volcanic
mountains of the
Oxidental Range.
From the back of the lodge the well pump
house from which the hotel gets its water is
visible next to the long line of single wire
power poles stretching off into the distance.
Heat for the hotel is provided by bottled gas
hauled to the hotel every few days or so. From
the front of the lodge two white plastic drain
lines wiggle their way down to the several
cesspool-septic tanks dug into the soil at the
bottom of the hill. The hotel's dirt driveway
meets the dirt road that disappears to the
south-east in the distance, the lone
connection to primitive civilization in Uyuni.
As I pondered the difficulties in getting to
this astounding oasis it occurred to me how
much more I appreciate things achieved after
struggle; how matter-of-fact are my reactions
to situations acquired with ease. I have to
wonder if this is a genetic predisposition
that explains my bizarre travel habits!
Transversing the rock-salt covered floors
of the long halls inside creates an illusion
of walking a path covered by crisp frozen snow
in deep dawn shadows, something I do several
times a day on my way to meals and to my
unique guestroom for some horizontal time. The
hotel room is like nothing else I have ever
experienced anywhere else in the world. The
carpet of deep rock salt in the hall continues
on into my room, but here large Indian throw
rugs provide some cushioning between bare feet
and lumpy salt crystals. The modern bathroom
floor is tiled. Still, scattered salt pebbles
find their way into this room, also. Stepping
on a salt stone is disorienting in the middle
of the night when lights are low.
Bright yellow lightweight down comforters and
fragrant rose scented flannel sheets set the
stage for another delightful surprise the
first time I snuggled into bed under starlight
alone. Every movement creates luminescent
flashes of light in the sheets. Like a kid I
experimented with finger painting my personal
light show around and under the covers. Nearly
a half century ago a girlfriend passed on the
secret of
Wint-O-green LifeSavers, an occult
knowledge "only to be shared after
passion with your lover," she confided. Now
that others have broken the oath of silence I
also can share it. Ultra-low humidity and
synthetic fabrics no doubt play a role. The
dancing lights on my sheets are similar to the
candy flashes. The scientific knowledge of
causes in no way diminishes the magic of this
private moment of a monk between the sheets
far from civilization surrounded by endless
deposits of salt.
Morning arrives slowly here in the desert;
around 05:30. Slowly, total darkness gives
way to hints of dawn. No bird sings, no subtle
far off traffic noise, no inaudible sounds of
human activity at all, subliminal signals of
civilization starting a new day everywhere
else on earth. No rustling of leaves or softly
whistling breezes exploring obstacles. Not
even the rarely seen insect makes a sound on
this silent, silent morning. Finally drifting
into full consciousness there it is. There it
is again: the brief muffled distant sound of
someone in the hotel preparing for a new day
of serving this lone privileged guest. It is
06:30 and I wonder what adventure awaits me
this sparkling new day out here in the middle
of nowhere.
At breakfast I see the tables and chairs in
the cavernous dining-room are carved from
solid blocks of salt. All are heavy and
immovable. Covered with elegant table
clothes and puffy cushions, they are spaced
to take advantage of the panoramic windows
facing the vast white expanse below in the
distance. Throughout the hotel are a dozen
other sitting rooms containing more
furniture chopped from solid blocks of salt
and covered with comfy cushions. One room
features a pair of hammocks positioned so
recliners can view the vistas as they laze.
Tasteful modern decorations adorn every
niche and wall. Most reflect Western or
Indian motifs. I went berserk photographing
everything.
Reflecting on so much use of solid blocks of
salt, my mind races back to the year my father
raised a calf for slaughter and the big yellow
block of salt he bought for the animal. Salt
licks are heavy and hard as rock! It is easy
to imagine using them as bricks for
construction... or in larger massive blocks as
the starting point for sculpturing items like
tables and chairs. Naturally, being a
scientist I had to taste the walls and
searched for a spot unlikely to have been
sampled by previous guests. Sure enough,
sodium chloride! I resisted the temptation to
ask Sebastian: "With all this salt, where's
the pepper?" I also felt tempted to inquire
which of the many salt pillars used for
structural support might be
Lot's wife.
At first the open plain strikes
one as unremarkable, not unlike desert
expanses found in many other places around the
world. But then it becomes clear the desert
ends far short of the horizon, the transition
zone filled with blinding white. Almost
featureless like an Antarctic ice-scape, tiny
dark spots against the contrasting white can
be seen moving. These are the 4X4 Range
Rovers, Land Cruisers and Jeeps full of
tourists making the
circuit:
3 days of up close inspection of the region's
fabled geothermal features.
They reminded me of the great herds of
wildebeests I watched from a distance crossing
the
Serengeti
in Tanzania. Other indistinct smudges
along the edge of the horizon are more lodges
built to accommodate the hoards of visitors
who flock here in the Fall and Winter holiday
seasons. I am here in the off season,
September through November. Lucky thing, too.
My surprise walk-in rate is a mere $55 per
night including hardy meals at daybreak and
dusk. The Internet advertised rack rate is $75
for a single ($95 double).
There are few distractions from enjoying the
silence and emptiness: no radio, no
television, no piped in elevator music or
raucous disco sounds, no ringing telephones,
no chattering staff in gossip sessions and
NO INTERNET!
The hotel has been trying to get an Internet
connection, but the government is in the
process of nationalizing communications and
has suspended any new satellite connections, I
was told.
One morning after breakfast while strolling
around the grounds I spotted a herd of Vicunas
feeding on the scant greenery among the craggy
rocks at the base of our hill. Farther out
among the salt formations several groups of
llamas moved slowly as a herd to the west. By
the third day without an Internet connection I
had begun to go stir crazy and dashed back to
the village of Uyuni for an early 10AM bus
back to Potosi and another couple nights in
the great Coloso Hotel before the short bus
ride back to Sucre where a plane waited for
the flight to La Paz once more. As luck would
have it, a new transportation blockade stopped
all highway traffic from reaching Sucre about
twenty kilometers from town. A five kilometer
hike around the blocked portion of the road
got me to taxis and the final distance into
the city. The next day an Aerosur flight got
me back to La Paz again for some very welcome
relaxation in the five star $50 promotion
rate Hotel
Presidente where I am putting the
finishing touches on this postcard.
But
the story of how I stumbled onto this
remarkable salty hideaway is also worth
telling. The long road connecting Potosi and
Uyuni is an adventure in itself. Desolate
except for numerous farms and scattered small
communities, the land is subdivided
by countless stone walls that serve as corrals
for domesticated llamas, donkeys, horses,
sheep and alpacas; or as barriers to wild
animals around planted crops. The bus paused
frequently to board or dislodge passengers,
sometimes in the most unlikely places in the
middle of nowhere! At every stop local
entrepreneurs descended on the bus with their
homemade snacks offered to passengers. Our
twenty minute midday break served as both a
comfort stop in the open and an opportunity to
buy packaged snacks and bottled drinks. The
afterthought establishment included a
makeshift distribution counter in a mud brick
shack, no doubt operated by the driver's
brother-in-law. The place was an embarrassment
to Bolivian tourism, but as there were few
Western tourists on the bus, hardly a priority
in this remote region.
The six hour bus ride from Potosi arrived in
the bleak dusty town of Uyuni at 16:00 on
Thursday. I started my usual search for the
best hotel in town armed only with sketchy
advice from a copy of Lonely Planet: Bolivia.
The entire village of Uyuni can easily be
scouted in under an hour. Six lane streets in
all directions suggest overly optimistic city
planners either must have had big plans for
the settlement or unlimited land in the early
days when the community had its beginning. The
asphalt paved streets soon became dirt three
blocks in any direction of the center.
Construction on numerous structures continues,
with some already occupied. Others remain
shells, revealing the future grand plans of
their builders. The deserted central plaza
contains an amazing array of children's play
equipment, suggesting unrealistic hopes for
this out of the way settlement. The actual
center of the city sits two blocks to the west
of the plaza, breaking Latin American
traditions. Most of the people on the streets
downtown seemed to be foreign backpackers.
Surprisingly, I saw not a single beggar during
my explorations, possibly because even the
most determined panhandler would think twice
before plying his trade in this chilly
weather.
Uyuni at 3700 meters above sea level is always
cold and the longer I walked the colder it
got. My down vest and double layers of shirts
underneath usually provide adequate warmth in
most chilly climates, but proved just adequate
here. Uninformed staff provided bad
information at the first descent hotel I
checked some distance from the center of the
town. The next four were either fully booked
or miserable. As dusk approached and my tired
legs began to complain I settled on the $13.50
(double the Internet advertised rate!) Palace
Hotel on a small
plaza in the center of town with
NO heat and
freezing outside temperatures, hardly a palace
and no doubt named to deliberately be confused
with the famous and expensive Salt Palace
Hotel out in the Salares. The grizzled
barrel-chested manager spoke no English and
had little tolerance for my disturbed Spanish;
I think he tried to offer help with the
electric shower head, should I need it, but
nothing about heating for the room. He did
manage to direct me to an excellent restaurant
nearby where I enjoyed a remarkably good $4.30
steak and eggs dinner complete with a large
bottle of beer in preparation for the
uncertain night ahead in the cold hotel.
Shivering as I pondered the possible stupidity
of my chosen travel habits, I decided this
would be a night to simulate a camping trip
and crawled into bed fully clothed, down vest
and all.
The next morning I jumped out of bed before
the sun rose and hurried out to explore the
town for more comfortable accommodations,
awakening the obviously sleepy,
unshaven grouchy manager to let me out the
locked front door in the process. Walking
the entire town in all directions, snapping
pictures as I went, it became clear no one
should expect a five star hotel in this
rustic little burg. In fact, I found
little of much interest to photograph, just
dusty unpaved wide boulevards surrounding a
half dozen paved streets that served as the
developed part of the city. I did manage to find both of the
"better" hostels within a three block radius
of the city center and learned the rates for
either would be $35. My Lonely Planet guide
hinted there were truly luxurious resorts to
be had some thirty kilometers distance around
the Salares.
When the restaurants opened I filled up on
coffee and eggs, then inquired in several
travel agencies about the resort options. The
recommended $120 per night
Hotel
Palacio de Sal or Salt Palace Hotel in
Colchani turned out to be available only
through one of the hotels in town and they
could not guarantee a vacancy! Totally
befuddled I wandered around considering my
options: abandon this whole salty episode as a
bad idea, book one of the economy $100 three
day tours crammed three across in a 4X4 with
hardy backpackers accustomed to crash-pad
accommodations, spend a few days in one of the
two reasonably decent hostels in town, or hire
a cab to take me out to the supposedly
fully-booked luxurious $120 resort and try to
negotiate availability with a more sensible
rate. Finally I opted for a 200 Bolivianos
($27) two hour taxi tour of the Salares which
would include a stop at the Palacio de Sol for
lunch and time to check out the possibility of
accommodations there.
My young cab driver, Carlos spoke no English,
but demonstrated a remarkable patience with my
stuttering attempts to give directions and ask
questions in Spanish. Off we went and rather
quickly left the main dirt highway onto a
rutted one that looked like it headed nowhere.
Shortly we were on the salt flats themselves
and on a hard packed stretch of glass smooth
salt highway. With white everywhere it is
amazing how interesting white can be when you
look closely. Some places looked like a frothy
sea, others like a lake covered with tiny
frozen ripples and still others like an
artist's canvas covered with modern designs in
subtle shades of white.
Landmarks were just visible in the distance as
we moved deeper into the nearly featureless
landscape. During that initial taxi
exploration of the region around the salt
flats before discovering the hotel we ran into
a herd of many dozen llamas that seemed
unperturbed by our close approach. Well out
into the flats a dozen or so individuals
wearing black ski-masks like the shoeshine
boys in La Paz were working the salt: raking
it into piles a meter or more high. Around
each drying pyramid water pooled making it
clear how near the surface it actually is. In
the distance men were shoveling rock-salt into
small pickup trucks. Such small scale
harvesting goes on all the time and provides
work for some of the people who live in the
dilapidated village of Colchani... not really
a village, more like an unplanned assemblage
of neglected shacks surrounding a gasoline
station and several warehouses. Carlos
obviously did not know which of the several
structures visible on the horizon was the
Hotel Palacio de Sal, my specified
destination. Stopping twice for discussions
with salt harvesters he set a zig-zag course
for one of the nearer groups of buildings. The
unremarkable assemblage did not inspire
confidence and on entering what seemed to be
the main lobby I found the place in disarray,
workmen busy with restoration projects and no
one who would admit to having registration
information. After that discouraging brief
stop we headed off to the other place, Carlos
jabbering away unintelligibly with multiple
use of the phrase: "mejor hotel." That is how
we found to utterly splendid Salt Moon Hotel
about which I have written so much previously.
Peace Fred L Bellomy
PS:
I have long been a critic of Global Warming
deniers. The evidence for climate change is
overwhelming and any educated person can
review it with only one conclusion: human
beings have accelerated rises in global
temperatures! However I, nor anyone else knows
what exactly, if anything we can do about it.
Cutting
greenhouse gases:
water vapor,
carbon dioxide,
methane,
nitrous oxide,
and
ozone
deserves obvious consideration, but when and
how are open questions for both the scientific
community and the World's political leaders.
Now, an eminent scientist,
Bjorn
Lomborg has
taken a systems approach to global problems
facing our civilization and offers a
cost-benefits analysis with some startling and
controversial conclusions that deserve close
study by the World's decision makers. His
recent book,
Cool It already
has attracted a good deal of
praise
and
controversy,
some of it
mind boggling.
The summaries and
editorials I
have read convince me his suggestions for
dealing with humanity's problems deserve the
widest consideration. Special interests are
likely to focus attention on one aspect or
another that supports their selfish objectives
and care must be taken to embark on programs
that address the broadest spectrum of
humanity's woes... simultaneously... a mission
impossible, if ever there was one... but the
highest of righteous missions for our
generation. (Thanks
to Andy, one of my most prolific
information gate keepers who
knows my interest profile well.) FB
PPS: After
doing the research for the above comment I
revisited my early professional interest in
the
overpopulation
of the globe. In the process I came to a new
enlightening realization. As an undergraduate
at the University of California in Berkeley I
added my voice to other unruly students vainly
attempting to alert the world to the pending
population crisis. In those days a half
century ago I supported the work of
organizations like the Population
Reference Bureau
and
Planned
Parenthood Federation,
both of which are still doing good work today.
Thomas
Robert Malthus predictions
of world populations outstripping the
abilities of food producers were compelling...
and still are, not withstanding religiously
inspired opposition.
Because his predictions were based on
erroneous statistical data available in his
time and ignored mankind's resilience and
ingenuity, his time-lines for disaster were
dramatically shortsighted.
Populations do tend to grow exponentially
while food supplies can increase only
linearly, requiring at some point in the
future food demands outstripping production
capabilities. So far supplies have always kept
pace with the growing population demands.
However, the reasoning of the eighteenth
century Anglican cleric, demographer remains
sound. At some point, at the boundary
condition certainly, one more human being will
occupy that chunk of land or sea needed to
feed that one more person, dramatic advances
in technology not withstanding.
So, why hasn't high population growth received
more attention in high places? Two logical
explanations dawned on me today! First, the
financial markets love economic growth, and
economic growth is fueled by population growth
in the last analysis. Even good people with a
social conscience love to see their investment
portfolios increase in value... and resent
economic downturns. Second, the competition
among religions for universal dominance
historically has benefited by a policy of
high birth rates. So, the world's two largest
religious organizations prohibit
low birth rates! Religious institutions
competing for adherents promote high birth
rates as a primary means for increasing their
numbers and influence: Roman Catholics vs.
Muslims in particular. They are literally
engaged in an arms race: along with the rest
of the anatomy and minds that go with the
arms. Misguided fear, greed and the lust for
power seem to me to be at the core of this
most critical challenge facing mankind.
In my extensive travels through
socioeconomically deprived regions of the
world I have seen first hand the consequences
of unrestrained population growth on the
quality of life and resulting social
discontent. Anyone with a television set can
watch the epic battle between Christianity and
Islam play itself out around the
world. Attention to the causes of unbridled
population growth must be secularized, a
prospect which seems as remote now as in the
past. As long as fanatical true believers set
the agenda for their movements, hypnotically
entrapped fellow travelers are sure to follow.
It has always been so and there is little
reason to hope human nature will noticeably
change in the near future, moderate successes
in
China not withstanding. Evolution takes
centuries... millennia... eons! Only
uncontrolled disaster occasioned by famine,
pestilence or war is likely to intervene. How
sad. Shame on humanity! FB
PPPS: As I sit here in Sucre Bolivia writing this, numerous wildfires are devastating Southern California. Thousands of homes and mountain cabins already have been destroyed and a number of my friends and neighbors are reporting either losses or threats of losses. It is a heartbreaking reality and my compassion for all the victims makes writing about travel adventures seem pointless. To all those who have suffered from this calamity, my heartfelt sympathy. FB
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 Reference photo:
authorAugust 2002 |
