Volcano Day

Monday 19 April
Salar de Uyuni – Reserva Eduardo Avaroa

We woke up while it was still dark. We had breakfast in the half light and watched the sun rise, not as spectacularly as last night’s sunset but beautiful all the same. We then heard news from the driver about the blockades. Apparently they were in place but they wouldn’t trouble us today. Tomorrow was a different matter.

We drove off and today’s expedition included lots of volcanoes. We were in the heart of the Andes, well over 4,500 metres high in the Atacama desert, close to the border with Chile. There was volcano after volcano, windswept desert, dramatic, unusual rock formations, almost like they were sculpted deliberately. There was the odd lagoon with strangely coloured water surrounded by dried salt and sulphur, some with geysers that would let off a spurt of steam every now and then. There was the “tree rock,” which is a rock that looks like a tree, though to me it was reminiscent of Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), but then that’s just me.

My driver recommended that I buy some coco leaves, as it was a good protection against the altitude, and, well, you have to try it once. Sometime in the afternoon I gave it a go. I immediately wanted to go to the toilet, which given that it contains amphetamines, makes sense. I didn’t get a strong feeling from it, a slight heightening of the senses as Michael Wood might put it. What I did notice is that as I chewed the leaves and the saliva built up, I was swallowing the chewed leaves as well as the saliva mixture. It didn’t taste too nice and after a while I had a lot of saliva in my mouth. I jumped out of the car and spat it all out.

My mouth was very slightly numb but the most noticeable thing was that I was feeling very serious. It was an odd sensation. We had arrived at a lagoon and I busied myself with taking pictures of llamas and flamingos (lots more than I saw in Ecuador) as well as the surrounding volcanoes.

I also noticed that I had a dodgy stomach. I’m guessing that it was from the coco leaves as the timing was about the same. Unfortunately it would stay with me until I reached Colombia.

That evening we reached another place to stay, not made out of salt this time, and our whole group – all seven of us – were in one room. We had a dinner of casserole which wasn’t great and wasn’t ideal for my stomach either. But I managed to eat anyway. It was freezing cold and although there were thick sheets I went to bed with about three different layers on. As the night progressed the number of people in the room must have slowly heated it up as by morning I was down to a single layer. Tomorrow – blockades.