I take another break from my 4,000+ mile bus journey through South America to do some proper sightseeing. Today, I ride in a medium-sized tour bus from the coastal city of Arica, Chile, and visit the Andes mountains, right on the border with Bolivia. Lauca National Park is my destination. Its most iconic site is Lake Chungara, which is surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes.
All of the other passengers on the bus are Chilean and Brazilian tourists. Like Noah’s Ark, they all came in pairs. I am the exception, as I am doing this trip on my own. I will rendezvous with my wife at the bottom of the world, in Ushuaia, at the end of the bus trip. More on that later.
The bus will take us up 15,000 feet above sea level. The fancy tourist buses come equipped with oxygen tanks for the passengers. My bus is not fancy. I pop a Diamox because I had suffered an unforgettable bout of altitude sickness in the Pamir Mountains along the Afghan-Kyrgyz border with China.
The drive starts off tame. From afar, we see large hillside geoglyphs. They’re no Nazca Lines, but they are extraordinary nonetheless. As we traverse the Lluta Valley, we stop at a 17th century Catholic church. Then, it got interesting.
As we climbed out of the verdant valley, the parched Atacama Desert emerged. The region averages 0.04 inch of rain per year. Many weather stations have never recorded rain. The only life form to be found is the candle-holder cactus. The cactus grows just five millimeters per year. It gets water by absorbing moisture from fog.
We stop for lunch at a truck stop. The waitress asks me if I want coffee or tea. I said tea and got this, a cup of coca leaves steeped in hot water. Being the perfect Boys Scout, I was prepared. Before this trip, I asked my physician and pharmacist friends if coca and Diamox contraindicated each other. They confidently said no. So I drank up. It tasted like diluted Japanese green tea. I couldn’t tell if it helped with my altitude sickness, but it certainly gave me a boost of ENERGY.
Let me digress for a moment. A word about American excess. While dining, I noticed how thin and small the paper napkins were. But they did the job. In America, some paper napkins are so thick, they feel like cloth. After lunch, I used the men’s facilities. The porcelain urinal was shaped like half a coconut and would barely be able to fit a bowling ball. But it did its job (let’s face it, no matter how big a urinal is, men will still miss). American urinals, by mass, are probably ten times larger.
Why do I mention this? We in the West consume way too much in resources. Just think of all the extra trees we could have saved if we had thinner and smaller napkins. Or how much fuel we’d save by manufacturing lighter urinals. Is our standard of living that much better with bigger things?
While everyone else is in the warm dining hall, I decide to take a stroll around the parking lot. Coming up from Arica, I noticed a lot of 18-wheelers with Bolivian plates. Because Bolivia is landlocked, it has to use ports in Chile and Peru. That goes a long way in explaining why Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. I saw a group of men around a parked truck, so I thought I’d see what they were up to.
Here are the guys. I’ve managed to take a picture and obscure four of the five guys. But if you look closely, you can see all of them. After some quick salutations in Spanish, these guys went back to speaking some indigenous language. The guy on top has diesel in that container, and that’s about as much information as I could gather.
We continue our journey. As we ascend, the scenery changes dramatically. Not only is it greener, but I don’t recognize any of the flora or fauna here. It’s like being on another planet. This could possibly be the most beautiful stretch of road I’ve ever traveled.
There are vicunas everywhere. And if I look hard enough, I can see condors hundreds of feet above me, circling, waiting. This is heaven.
Images source: Maxichamp
