Life As Canvas

In a refuge on Huayna Potosi mountain above La Paz, I turned in my sleeping bag, unable to doze off. Before bed time our mountain guides had made us a soup and some Coca mate, which is boiling water poured over Coca leaves, very popular in Bolivia and said to both give energy and help one sleep. As contradictory as this may seem, I had decided to give it a try.

We went to bed at 8pm, expecting to wake at midnight, as it is the best time to start a trek to the summit. We would dress, sip some hot chocolate, and take off into the dark. At least, that’s how it was supposed to work. But waking up means sleeping and my heart was pounding too hard from the elevation, the coca leaves, or maybe simply nerves, to let me rest.

I’ve climbed a mountain once before, but I was 10 years old and felt at home on its friendly slopes. With my dad I proudly reached the 11,000 foot summit just after dawn, getting to skip a day of 5th grade for it. But this time too many things had changed. I was in Bolivia, relatively out of shape, with a guide who only spoke Spanish on a mountain twice as high as my favorite volcano back home. Though Huayna Potosi is known as an easy 6,000 meter mountain, 30 percent of the people who try don’t make it to the top. Altitude sickness has some of them spinning in their heads and vomiting, others just have bad luck.

These facts mingled in my head as I ordered myself to sleep but then a familiar rumbling sound shook my belly and my already stressed heart took a leap. It sounded like a glacier cracking apart. They do that, these South American glaciers. They rumble and echo and crash. But then it happened again. The wind picked up, pushing against the side of the refuge, and a flash filled the room. Sitting up to find out what the others thought of this, I saw but sleeping lumps on the floor. No one else seemed to notice the lightning storm and, with half an hour left before midnight, I tried to ignore it, myself.

Before long, clinking pots and breakfast sounds rustled the room. Theo and Porfis, our friendly guides, were preparing tea and organizing their ropes and harnesses as they whistled Bolivian tunes in the room below. Sleepily, we rose, covered ourselves in layers of fleece and snow gear up to the nose. We had our hot chocolate as planned, and then headed out the door into the night, wind and snow pelting our faces, unable to see anything but round white headlamp light making circles on the snow. A slow rumble in the valley shook my senses but the guides didn’t seem to mind.

Crampons creaking in the snow, cord dragging between Porfis’ harness and mine, Cyril taking up the rear, ever so slowly we stepped up the mountain and away from the warm refuge. Left foot, pause. Right foot, pause. Making sure not to slip. Tension in the line. There was nothing but darkness to contrast with the white snow flakes flying in front of my head lamp beam.

The higher we climbed, the harder I breathed. Through the light fleece of my ski mask, I couldn’t suck in oxygen fast enough. We were rouding 5,200 meters when I ripped it off of my face and wheezed, a sudden wave nausea rocking my belly. “What am I doing?” I thought. “Isn’t it good enough to travel in South America? Is a 6,000 meter mountain top really necessary?”

Just then Porfis turned around. “Do you hear that? It’s the storm.” He said, but there hadn’t been any thunder. “Hear the static?” I shook my head. “Come closer,” he said, and I leaned into his backpack, my ear hovering above some metal anchors he had strapped to the back. At first I thought he was talking about some sort of local legend. Hearing nothing but my breath and the wind, I smiled politely and shook my head again. But then he turned and I heard it. He was buzzing and crackling like one of those radiation detectors they use in Chernobyl. “Static,” he said, “Muy peligroso.” But he decided we’d keep on going for a while to catch up to the other amigos who had left before us and then we’d decide what to do.

Snow whirled around from every side, up into my hood and down my neck. As the valley kept rumbling below, so my belly turned over and over itself, threatening to spill its contents into the snow. But slowly, we kept trudging on. Left foot, pause. Right foot, pause. Thus we caught up to the amigos, who told us there was so much snow coming down that they couldn’t find the trail.

At 3am we reached 5,650 meters (18,536 feet) and had a good laugh. We were lost, the snow was getting thicker, I was about to throw up, my guide was buzzing and, with a hint of defeat in his voice, he decided it was time to turn back.

Around 8am we woke up warm in our sleeping bags to the sounds of clinking pots again and ran to peek out the windows at the mountain top. We had wanted to see the sun rise from 6,000 meters but our typical bad luck weather got us again. As it was, the sun rose as we slept and by 9am the mountain was gleaming white against a clear blue sky, stirring bitterness in the boys of the group. “Think of how the view would have been from up there!” They said, cranky and let-down.

Through the night, snow had layered the valleys and mountain tops white. I took my hot chocolate outside and reveled in the sun, took in the wispy clouds weaving in and out of the peaks and smiled. I couldn’t be let down by such a sight. And besides, making it to 18,536 feet in an electrical snow storm at midnight is pretty good, I think.

Just before turning back – we’re smiling because we’re thinking about our sleeping bags.

From a bus in Bolivia, looking out at the small chaos of the streets, the carts of food on bikes, latin music blasting from the taxi nearby, young ladies with babies slung to their backs, markets of fruit and skinned meat, construction in the middle of the street and Jesus stickers about everywhere, I felt like I was back in Mexico again, which was a pleasant sort of disoriented nostalgia.

Bolivia is lively chaos from the low sultry jungle to the tippy top of the civilized world. We flew from beautiful Argentina where poverty is guilded by European facades and pretend luxury falls short of its promises to Santa Cruz, Bolivia where nothing is hidden at all. To my utter and predictable delight, Bolivians have a raging sweet tooth and the streets of Santa Cruz were lined with ice cream and cakes.

Two days later on the bus to Potosí, the highest city in the world (3,967 meters), we wondered at what we saw. Lush fields lit by warm evening light like quilts lined the road and whenever we stopped women in skirts and bowler hats with colorful bundles on their backs sold corn, strange drinks in plastic bags, and other goodies to the Bolivians aboard. The fields then turned to canyon walls and we snaked up the road, dodging kids on bikes in the mud, landslides from recent heavy rainfall, gaping holes in the road that would quickly have brought us to our death, farmers and vagrants, cows, goats, pigs, llamas.

I fell asleep and then awoke with a start, looking out the front window to see the edge of the dirt road stop, followed by blackness. My belly lurched as I felt the bus swoop to the side and realized we’d just missed sliding off the dirt into nothingness. Later I woke up again and noticed the drivers trading places… one took over while the other went to sleep in the luggage compartment. Some people got off to pee in the bushes and I rubbed my eyes sleepily, watching a pig nose through some garbage on the side of the road. Home felt so far away from this weird, magical world.

Potosí itself is a wonder, and one to be earned.

13,015 feet above the sea, about 2,000 feet above Mt. Hood, my lungs struggled, my diaphragm spasming. I felt like a poor, struggling fish out of her bowl. From the hotel to the market – three blocks uphill – I had to stop to pant for a while. But once acclimatized, we toured the silver mines which once brought great wealth to this part of the world, or at least the Spanish Conquistadores, hungry for easy riches and quick to employ Inca and African slaves to get it. 8 million people died working there over 250 years.

The mines still function today, and are still dangerous. It wasn’t until after we took the tour that we were told a Japanese tourist fell 70 meters down a mine shaft to his gruesome death only a few years before. Workers range from 12 to 40-something years old and are happy to do the sweaty, heavy work for 100 Bolivianos a day (about 12 dollars). Life in the mine is mostly one thing… dark. And it’s like the mines you see in movies with carts going by on tracks and sounds of picks clinking into stone and far off explosions shaking the walls. To calm the nerves, stand the heat, and keep their mouths occupied, workers chew on coca leaves, which are completely legal in Bolivia as long as they’re not made into cocaine. We bought some as gifts to the miners before our tour and chewed on a few to see what they might to. My cheek turned numb.

Our guide lights some dynamite with his cigarette.

Miners drag the one-ton cart back into the tunnels.

Our next adventure was a three-day 4wd trip through the desert to the Salar de Uyuni, the largest (and of course, highest) salt flat in the world. The first two days were mostly spent cramped in the back of the car, bumping along the road for three or four hours at a time. Sometimes the driver let us out for photos for 10 to 30 minute intervals.

Laguna Verde was one of our short stops. It had a strange soap-like foam around the edge from the natural chemicals in the ground.

We ate llama meat and chicken that had been in the car the whole time but so far, so good, belly-wise. All of this rear-numbing time trying to occupy ourselves with ipods and conversation ended with the third day, which made the whole trip worth while.

We stopped in a little village to buy some touristy things and then off into the Salar we went, our tires squishing through the water on the surface, a great whiteness stretching out before us.

In some places it was dry and sharp, the salt forming perfect square crystals. In other spots, an inch of water covered the white mass, making a mirror of the world and erasing the horizon.

The light blue of the sky stretched on until it hit distant mountains and, where there were no mountains, seemed never to stop. Here, men work piling the salt into cones for 10 hours a day. Paid by the ton, they make about 30 Bolivianos a day, which pans out to about $3.75. They wear ski masks to avoid cooking in the sun, its rays already intense in the high altitude bounce off the white salt and burn any color of skin in sight.

While we wandered around taking pictures of this strange other-planet-like land, one of the workers waved us over and asked if we’d like to take a picture. “What have you got?” He asked, “Do you have any Bolivianos to give me? Do you have any presents?” He asked Cyril if he could have his hat, even though he was already wearing one. Then he asked me for my watch. “Por favor, señorita.” He pleaded, adding I could buy a better one in town later. We refused but shook his hand and made our way back to the truck to wait for the sunset, one of the most colorful I’ve seen.

Now we’re in La Paz, ready to embark on a new adventure tomorrow… our biggest yet. But I’ll save that for the next entry.

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