Mirages of Uyuni

“You have to put them between your molars and your cheek and let them release their sap”, says Huáscar, our guide, holding a handful of coca leaves out to us. “Yes, it is one of the ingredients of cocaine, but its effects are by no means comparable”, he reassures us on seeing our faces. “It’s to prevent soroche”, he adds.

Soroche, of course!... That’s the Bolivian name for altitude sickness. We had almost forgotten that we were 3,650 metres above sea level, where oxygen is scarce and the air is thin. Headaches, nausea, exhaustion, low blood pressure... The string of symptoms prompts us to accept the leaves of this traditional plant which is consumed like coffee in these parts, and indeed has similar effects. It’s cloyingly sweet, it makes you feel good. We’re ready to get into the jeep now.

A great white mantle stretches across the desert as far as the eye can see. That has to be snow, our senses tell us. But on the Andean Plateau you can’t trust your senses, clouded as they are by the altitude and the beauty of the place. A mirage in the middle of the desert? No: this is Salar de Uyuni, 10,500 square metres of salt, piled layer upon layer to a depth of up to 120 metres. The largest salt desert in the world, and the highest. So broad it can be seen from space. The world’s biggest reserve of lithium, an indispensable material for manufacturing the modern batteries of electric cars. Sought-after terrain since time immemorial due to its mineral deposits, in the heart of the Department of Potosí, Bolivia. The Spanish expression “vale un potosí”, literally “worth a potosí” but translatable as “worth its weight in gold”, says it all with regard to the ancestral riches of this land.

The train graveyard we come across close to the salt flats looks like another mirage, but it’s as real as the rusty metal the 19^th-century locomotives and carriages are made of. They were used to transport the silver extracted from the mines of Potosí to Antofagasta, in Chile. We can’t help imagining the bandit Butch Cassidy (played by Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), holding up one of these trains; this real-life person spent the final years of his life in this region.

Known as “the mirror of the world” because in rainy season it reflects the sky in such a way that it is impossible to determine where the horizon is, Salar de Uyuni is inexhaustible. Only after several hours immersed in total whiteness, when you start to think you’re about to go mad, can a small rise be glimpsed on the horizon. Another mirage? No: it is Inkawasi island, located in the heart of the salt flat and populated with cactuses just like those seen in westerns.

We move away with the strange feeling that the Butch Cassidy’s bones are buried somewhere here, to spend the night in a refuge in the middle of the desert, with enormous stars contemplating us as we drink a restorative coca infusion that helps us cope with the cold, the exhaustion and the altitude. Meanwhile Huáscar chews his leaves and tells us that the region is inhabited by around 7,000 people from the Aymara ethnic group, who make a living from growing quinoa and herding llamas.

Near the salt flat there is an abundance of other mirages too: the red lagoon, the waters of which have this strange colour due to the pigment of a variety of red saltwater algae, matching the pink flamingos it is packed with; the green lagoon, emerald in colour due to the high magnesium content of its waters; the Siloli Desert, populated by capricious rock formations in a typical ‘wild west’ landscape which once again makes us think of the outlaw Cassidy, and Sol de Mañana, a desert area with intense volcanic activity, full of craters, vents, geysers and hot water holes where we took the most surrealistic dip of our lives.

We left understanding why Latin America is the cradle of [...]

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