‘Edge Of Nowhere’ Has Its Own Dust-Covered Set Of Charms

Who would pass up a chance to time travel?

“Touring the arid, icy cold highlands of southwestern Bolivia is like taking a trip back in time,” wrote Logan Ward in an effusive New York Times article, “On the Edge of Nowhere.”

Since I was in semi-nearby La Paz, Bolivia, when my mother, one of the premier article clippers on planet Earth, sent me Ward’s story, I figured I couldn’t miss the opportunity.

My only reluctance was that riding in an ordinary bus in Bolivia is like being trapped in a paint mixer, so the prospect of four days off-roading in an old truck wasn’t too appealing.

Getting to southwestern Bolivia was the first trick. According to his article, Ward had flown from La Paz to Sucre, then taken a short bus ride to Potosi, where he met his Bolivian guide, Yamil. He spent the night at the Liberator, “a cozy colonial inn with electric radiators and layers of blankets for the beds.” Ward and his gang of “well-traveled friends” had signed up with a tour company in Potosi and paid $180 for a four-day journey.

Since I didn’t have that kind of money, I opted for a gall-bladder-busting night bus from La Paz to Potosi. Unfortunately, a general strike started in town an hour after we arrived, so our little band of stranded travelers chartered another bus for $5 each. We waited until night and bribed our way past the first blockade. Luckily, most of the protesters were sleeping or passed out, so we were able to complete the 7-hour ride to the frontier village of Uyuni.

There, at 4 a.m., we checked into the Avenida, a $4 hotel with no electric radiators and beds shaped like hammocks. Uyuni is where penny-pinching travelers book four-day trips for only $60 to $70 that go to the exact same places as Ward’s pricier tour.

In the morning, there was frenetic negotiating as all my fellow dollar-crunchers tried to form groups of six, find a tour company, bargain the tour price down and pick up some snacks at the market - all before noon, when the tours left. I ended up in a group with an Irish computer engineer, a German flight attendant, a Swiss law student, an Israeli psychologist, an Uruguayan biologist and a Harvard medical student.

We boarded the Tortuga (turtle), our well-used Toyota Land Cruiser piloted by Fermin, also our guide. A 34-year-old Bolivian with a confessed addiction to his Nintendo Game Boy, Fermin was not someone I would describe as talkative. Getting information out of this guy was like asking him to cough up major organs. But every once in a while, he’d toss us a gall stone.

Us: Can you tell us about the terrain?

Fermin: That’s a mountain.

Us: That’s it?

Fermin: It’s a very old mountain.

We also had a cook named Isack, who turned out to be Fermin’s 16-year-old nephew. Like his uncle, Isack didn’t say more than 20 words the entire trip. And I’ll hazard a guess he never attended culinary school. His specialty was “make your own sandwich.” He would cut up some vegetables, put out bread and bottles of ketchup and mustard and disappear. Isack did appreciate food, though. We often caught him appreciate food, though. We often caught him eating ours.

The scenery was certainly beautiful: one of the world’s largest salt flats, a series of mountains and a desert. Unfortunately, it was all a little hard to enjoy. We spent most of the day inhaling copious amounts of dust, nursing massive headaches from the altitude (13,000 feet), and listening to Fermin’s cassettes - synthesizer versions of Bolivian folk music.

Aside from the view, the most enjoyable part of the trip was chatting with other travelers during brief pit stops. In just four days, we developed a peace plan for Israel and Syria, found a face-saving settlement for the IRA, solved the world hunger crisis, and restructured America’s health care system.

Our comic release came by way of a game we invented called TOTALO CRAPOLA. It worked like this: We’d pass around Logan Ward’s New York Times article and try to find the most excessively poetic passage just after we’d seen each spot he mentioned with our own eyes. Points were awarded based on the group’s reaction.

I received high marks for this selection:

Subject: We saw some rocks.

New York Times: “The smooth stones, the wind, the sense of timelessness all brought on a Zen-like calm.”

The German flight attendant did well with this one:

Subject: We drove off the salt flat onto a small land mass and ate Isack’s self-serve breakfast.

New York Times: “Like ripples frozen for eternity, the crusted plates seemed to lap the shoreline. We pulled into a half-moon bay, as if to dock, then drove right up on the bank, where we ate a camp breakfast of toast, apricot jam and coffee.”

The Israeli passenger made a valiant entry with this beauty:

I think I subscribe more to Mark Twain’s philosophy about travel writing:

“I offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of travel writing that may be charged against me - for I think I have seen with impartial eyes, and I am sure I have written honestly, whether wisely or not.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO “Lot’s Wife: Salt and the Human Condition.” Tisdale, Sallie. H.Holt 1988. “The Conquest of the Incas.” Hemming, John. Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich. “Bolivia: A Travel Survival Kit-2nd ed.” Swaney, Deanna & Strauss, Robert. Lonely Planet Pub. U.S. $16.95 “South American Handbook.” Box, Ben. Passport Books 1995.