Sorry all for the lack of photos on this blog- I´ve taken hundreds, but I have yet to find a suitable place or manner of uploading them.... this continent isn´t exactly known for its technological wizardry. Tech advice would be appreciated. For now you´ll have to do with some description, and maybe google images if you need a visual aid.
So I finally arrived in Bolivia after several purgatorial days taking night buses through Northern Argentina. I spent two days each in Cordoba and Salta and would have to recomend that if you find yourself on the same trip, spend four days in Cordoba and skip Salta altogether. Cordoba is a facinating town, home to one of South America´s largest universities and a fantastic arts scene. Particularly outstanding was the modern art museum, which was hosting an installation exclusively composed of young artists (mostly from Argentina) who work in and around Cordoba. There were some wild video installations featuring a gay man dancing with a black actor (apparently Barack Obama) while fiery subtitles foretold the begining of World War Three based on the confederation of South America and an American proxy war with Venezuela through Colombia. More interesting, however, was the work of Charley Medina (here´s where you should google), which used cartoonish graphic representation to depict scenes of rampant crime, litter, and drug dependence in Latin America. His bio said that he was strongly influenced by Charles Bukowski, and it shows when you see how irrelevantly and provocatively Medina renders his paintings. You have to see his recreation of the classic ¨The Birth of Venus,¨ where he recasts Venus as a naked crack whore held by her sides by her pimp (wearing gold chains, stunner shades, and an Argentine futbol jersey) and an debautched priest in a tub of urine before a desolate landscape covered in trash. Powerful stuff.
But nothing could have prepared me for the shock of entering Bolivia after close to a month in uber-European Argentina. For starters, everyone is desolately poor and everything is unbelievably cheap, based on the fact that prices are roughly equal to Argentina, but the currency is almost half the value.There are mostly dirt streets, and you´d be hard-pressed to find a bathroom that has a toilet suit or even flushes, and expect to buy your TP at the door from a 5-year-old that can already exchange currencies from several countries. The most prescient issue for me, however, is that since Bolivians are by no means tall people, every doorway in the country is about 5 inches shorther than the international standard. This meant that for my not a day went by in Bolivia when I didn´t smack my forehead on a doorway whi9le passing into the next room (Dane, I´m sure you can relate). I crossed the border with Chris and Jelmer, an English and French duo that I met in Salta and hit it off with talking about everything from Engliah tax code and Literary Theory to Underground Hip Hop and the merits of Argentinian Women. They had a much easier time crossing the border than I did, since I had to pay a fee in American dollars (didn´t think I´d need those) for a Visa that only American citizens need. Reciprocity is a bitch. Nevertheless, together we bordered what may be the only working train in South America bound for Uyuni, and we sat back to see hundreds of miles of untouched scenery that looks as if it came right out of an old western. Think gorgeous sandstone canyons between green meadows strewn with yellow and purple spring flowers. As it turns out, we were passing by Tupiza, which is where the historical Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end the hands of the Bolivian Army after robbing a bank in Tarija, and after seeing the landscape for myself, I´d guess they were happy to meet their end in the only place in the Southern Hemisphere that could be mistaken for Colorado.
I split paths with Chris and Jelmer in Uyuni when I left for a three day four-wheel-drive expedition to the famous Salar de Uyuni (HUGE salt flats) and through most of undeveloped Southern Bolivia. I ended up thrown in with a massive group of Isrealis who prefered Hebrew top English or Spanish, so I spent most of the time silently contemplating the otherwordly landscapes while listening to Isreali pop as we flew across the desert. The Salt Flats stretch as far as the I can see, and since the rainy season just ended, they are coated by a thin layer of water that makes them into mirrors that reflect the surrounding snow-capped Andean peaks. Most people take the oppurtunity to take perspective shots in which you make something look huge in the foreground and yourself tiny in the background. Like that I can appear three inches tall next to a beer bottle because the background is so homogenous and clear. I´ll try to get some pictures up at some point.
But Southern Bolivia has much more than this, as we spent the next two days traveling to Sulphuric Geysers, volcanic rock formations, and lagoons throughout the area. The lagoons in particular are spectacular since they change color depending on the mineral content of each one. One lake, the aptly named Lago Verde, appears as a super-saturated mint green color because of its Borax content, while the even more spectacular Lago Colorado was an unreal orange because of the micro-organisms that thrive there. Due to this algea and bacterial population, the lake also attracts massive flocks of Flamingos, which can be seen in huge groups almost anywhere in the knee-depth lake grazing on the micro-organisms that abide there.That´s right, Flamingos at alomost 1500 feet of elevation.
The undeveloped Southern part of the country is used almost exclusively for mining silver and other minerals such as Borax and Cobalt, but almost none of the money from these resources stays in Bolivia since Japanese and American companies own all the mines and it is all processed and shipped from Chile.Yet the landscapes here, from the lunar white surface of the Salar to the Martian red rock gravekl mountains that border orange Lago Colorade are enough to boggle the mind. ¨Unearthly¨ seems to be the only word fit to describe this hidden corner of the world devoid of development, wealth, trees, or adequate doorway heights.
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