Cycling the world’s most dangerous road
La Paz: I am not a natural cyclist. Back home, I have a bike with a basket on the front and nice comfortably high handlebars so I can sit up while I ride. I make short journeys on it (if the weather’s good and the route doesn’t involve any steep hills) to buy groceries or visit friends locally. But I have yet to learn, for example, how to turn my head to check for oncoming buses without also steering my bike into the scary traffic, or how to raise my arm to indicate without wobbling dangerously and falling over.
Nick at La Cumbre
So it’s with no little apprehension that I find myself astride a mountain bike, 4700 metres up at La Cumbre, the start of The World’s Most Dangerous Road. Nick’s bouncing happily on his bike, talking about dual suspension and disc brakes and other technical stuff, while I’m trying to work out which way round my helmet goes on. Even I can see these are good bikes, though. They have nice fat tyres (fully pumped), the brakes work well and they have gears that don’t require my cycling backwards to engage them. Plus we have two enthusiastic blond Americans to guide us, who are cheerful in a way that only young Americans can be, and even though they ride this route every day, it seems churlish to deny them today’s fun by wimping out before we’ve even begun.
Setting off. Nick's smile is genuine, mine not so much...
Observing the ritualistic slurp of 96% proof whisky, plus a dash on the tyres for luck, Nick and I set off in a reassuring guide-sandwich down El Camino de la Muerte (the Road of Death), hoping to survive the next five hours.
Nick takes a swig of 96%-proof for luck
The road maps an incredible path from the capital, La Paz, across the snow-capped Yungas to the Amazon basin in the north. It got its moniker during its construction due to the high numbers of fatalities among the Paraguayan prisoners of war who were building it. The road was built during Bolivia’s ill-fated war with Paraguay in the early 1930s, over territory in the Chaco district, which both countries presumed was rich in oil. Major oil companies, including Standard and Shell took sides and helped fund the conflict, which in common to pretty much all of its international wars, Bolivia lost. It turned out that there was no oil in Chaco, so South America’s bloodiest 20th century conflict (at least 100,000 causalities) was even more unnecessary than most – although it did result in a new road across the Yungas.
El Camino de la Muerte
The road is now more famous for killing Bolivians than Paraguayans. At just 64 kilometres long the Death Road killed almost 300 people a year, on average a vehicle a fortnight, earning it the unfortunate status of being the world’s most dangerous road in a 1995 assessment by the Inter-American Development Bank.
Trucks on the edge
The single-lane highway, which averages just 3 metres in width, drops steeply from 4700 to 1200 metres over less than 50 miles and is a poorly maintained path of hairpin bends that wind along the mountains, featuring vertiginous drops of 800 metres or more. Buses, too long to make the tight turns, have to reverse up in 3-point turns, with their rear ends hanging terrifyingly over the edge.
The road of death
Waterfalls line the route, increasing erosion, landslides and making the muddy road surface still more perilous. Fog, rain and traffic make the road even more dangerous, especially during the November to April rains (when most deaths occur). But it is perhaps the kamikaze drivers, drinking through habit or superstition, taking crazy risks in unroadworthy vehicles and overtaking each other on blind corners that produced such spectacular road death rates. In 2007, a new road was opened that bypasses the Death Road and the majority of traffic and buses take that now. The WMDR is now mainly used by bike companies taking tourists like us.
So far down it looks like a toy. There were no survivors of this bus crash
The road runs for less than 50 miles
Cycling the first stretch was easy enough for me to begin to have fun on the bike. The section is new tarmac for a start, and two lanes are clearly marked. Glaciers and snow line the road, the air is freezing but the views so expansive that it’s more than worth the discomfort. Nick sails on far ahead like a small blob perched on a spindle. I am getting cramps in my hands from the permanent brake squeeze, but I’m not about to loosen my grip. Poor American Cody, forced to ride at perhaps his slowest ever pace, smiles encouragingly every time I stop to clear dust from my sunglasses or warm my frozen fingers or some other excuse to rest.
Bikes and guides
We stop frequently, though. Sometimes to ask about a particularly large cluster of memorial crosses (bus crashes) or to snack or take a photo of the spectacular scenery. It has to be one of the most beautiful roads I’ve ever been on, even if it reminds me of another frightening route we made in Kashmir.
There are frequent reminders of those who didn't make it
Before long, and certainly before I’ve got my BMX skills, the tarmac ends and we’re faced with the true Death Road: a narrow track of stones, dust and slippery gravel that’s lined with extreme drop-offs. One wrong move, one slip on a rock or dodgy turn and the consequences are fatal. In places, the drop is more than a kilometre. I’m told that fewer than 30 cycling tourists have died here (10 have been Israelis), but we know of one 28-year-old Israeli woman who cycled off the edge in fog in April, and passing the spot where she died is a chilly moment for us all.
Me and Nick cycle past
It doesn’t take Nick long to get used to the new road conditions, but I remain nervous and slow. As we descend, splashing through rivers and waterfalls that cascade from above, the scenery becomes greener, more tropical and noticeably warmer. We happily remove layers and I begin to enjoy the lower altitude and first warmth for a month or so. Ravines reveal the enormous valley separating the Amazon jungle from the dry high of La Paz.
Nick is a confident cyclist
Trucks and cars pass us in both directions – each time, it’s newly terrifying for me, but I learn to pull over, to not step back (like the unfortunate French woman of earlier this year) and then wait for their fumes and dust to settle before continuing. Unlike everywhere else in Bolivia, the Death Road is left-hand-drive, the reasoning being that if you descend with nothing but empty suicide on your left, you’re more likely to slow down.
Still on his bike
As we enter the Amazon basin, the road flattens out and widens. Banana trees line the route and small houses with fruit gardens. People are carrying loads, dogs run out: new hazards to negotiate. But in some parts we have to pedal now, when the road briefly climbs, making me far happier. The final few kilometres are wider and more gently downhill and it is here – thankfully far from the kilometre-high cliffs – that I tumble. My back wheel spins off on a rock, I panic, brake too hard and fly over the handlebars, grazing my elbows and knee on the rough road. There’s blood but not much, terror but no tears. I get back on and we head off down again. (At our hostel, we meet a poor lad who suffered the same accident, only he broke his collarbone in 5 places and his arm, so I was very lucky.)
Me and the edge
At the bottom of the 4000 metre mountain, we reach a small stream and the end of our journey. We get given a T-shirt, usefully because I ruined mine with my road belly-flop, and an enormous sense of relief.
I survived with a few scrapes
Chacaltaya: video from a former ski resort
This is what the world’s highest ski resort looks like after global warming takes its toll. (Apologies for my ugly screwed-up face!)
Aprés-ski on the rocks
La Paz: An hour outside of La Paz, at an altitude of 5430 metres – that’s more than 3 miles above sea level – Chacaltaya (‘Cold Ridge’ in the language of the Incas) is famous among skiers for being the world’s highest lift-accessible ski slope – even if that lift is a notoriously tricky tow, powered by a car-engine dating back to the club’s inception in 1939. From around the world, adventurous skiers have flocked to Bolivia’s only ski resort to experience the thrill of flying down a mountain at an altitude higher than many planes fly.
The chalet and slope in better days
One guide book, published in 2002, describes Chacaltaya thus:
The main slope is of intermediary difficulty but the high altitude makes it a harder level. And bear in mind that the diesel-powered tow-lift (the world’s highest ski lift) is fast and difficult to manage. The Bolivian Andean Club has a limited number of skis to rent, but not snowboards, so bring your own. Lodging is available in the club chalet, as are meals and drinks including mulled wine.
An old lift-pass
Chacaltaya is now famous among climate scientists. Ten years ago, it started to becoming increasingly difficult to ski down the mountain’s retreating glacier; scientists predicted the glacier’s eventual demise for 2015. It came sooner.
The notorious diesel-driven button lift
In 2008, the last ski party – a group of Bolivian firemen and military personnel – were able to make a downhill run. Last season, the glacier had melted completely.
The lift today
People used to ski down here
We take a bus from downtown La Paz up and up, past houses that diminish in size and quality as we climb, turning from concrete and glass to rough adobe shacks. At some indefinable point, we leave the 2 million-strong city of La Paz (founded 1548) and enter the separate city of El Alto, founded 25 years ago and one of South America’s fastest growing cities, with already 1 million inhabitants. High, cold and poor, El Alto’s is a sprawling shanty town, which looks down on its richer, warmer neighbours rather like Rio’s faveladors do.
La Paz is on the right, the sprawl around it is El Alto
Climbing above the residential spread, we take a rough, rocky route that emerges onto a grassy mountainside, revealing the snowy high peaks of Illimani and Potosi, and to the far west, the vast blue of Lake Titicaca. It’s mid winter in Bolivia and normally the ground would be frozen hard, but the past three years have been so warm that farmers have been bringing sheep and llamas here to feed, and to local guide Patti Pinto’s amazement, daisies are growing.
Sheep grazing beneath the disappeared Chacaltaya glacier
It’s very dry here, though. Glacial run-off is used by the region’s 10 hydropower plants. The reservoir that supplies drinking water to El Alto and parts of La Paz is less than two-thirds of its size and thousands are without water. “Last year, Condoriri glacier melted, and I don’t know what we will do because Condoriri feeds the city,” says Patti. “Even Titicaca is 1 metre lower this year – scientists say that in 30 years it will no longer be one lake, but four much smaller ones.”
Lake Titicaca in the background. It is a metre lower than usual
Patti used to take ski parties up to Chacaltaya, but has changed her service to ‘guided tours to see the beauty of the mountains’. There was a little snow this year, she tells me, but it immediately melted.
The reservoir supplying La Paz and El Alto is low
We continue up the mountain flank, passing vibrant lakes of red, blue and purple, owing to the lead, zinc and other metal content. Down below, people are mining tin, burying hand tools into great scars in the rock.
Multicoloured lakes full of minerals
Incredibly vivid lakes
The bus climbs a winding and increasingly rocky path up the boulder-strewn slope. At one point, we have to dismount the bus so the driver can escape a particularly bad rut. The mountain sides are now slag and scree, dark rock that accelerated the glacier melt.
Scanty remnants of the glacier and ski slope
We pass scattered steel pyramids and yellow-painted boxes planted by astrophysicists who work at a research centre next to the ski lodge. Before particle accelerators, cosmic ray detectors like these were an important way of learning more about particles like quarks, neutrinos and muons, and understanding high-energy nuclear interactions. The air up here is much thinner than at ground level and there is far less water vapour to absorb the rays.
Cosmic ray detectors are scattered on the mountain side
Our bus parks at a sorry looking wooden chalet, formerly the proud home of the Bolivian Andean Club and, until the 1990s, its Olympic ski team. Curling posters and memorabilia testify to its sporting history. We climb up the rock slope with heaving lungs, every step worsening our dizzy heads, until we reach a concrete construction holding a winch, part of the button lift that would haul skiers up here.
The ski chalets. People are walking up the dry ski slope
Out of the wind, the sun is warm and it feels unsurprising to see no snow. But this whole mountain was 50 metres thick with snow and ice 50 years ago.
A forlorn pair of old skis
People skied here for the last time 2 years ago
Bolivia's Olympic ski team used to be based here
We’re on the Tropic of Capricorn here; this used to be the ski resort closest to the equator. Global warming has hit tropical glaciers like Chacaltaya fastest, and the close proximity of industry and habitations in El Alto and La Paz have only enhanced the melting.
The chalet is a long way from snow
A few months ago, I spoke to tropical glaciologist Lonnie Thompson about Andean glacier melt. “We are seeing melt rates faster than anything I would have predicted 10 years ago,” he told me, describing his findings in neighbouring Peru, home of the largest tropical ice cap, which is also melting at an alarming rate.
The local Aymara people worship the glacial mountains as life-giving
The icy mountains have been worshipped for centuries as life-giving deities by the local Aymara tribe of Bolivians. You don’t have to be Aymaran to recognise the deadly consequences of glacier melt here.
The mountains above this dry landscape used to be laden with glaciers
As we head down the dry rock slope to the redundant chalet below, I am conscious that the ski slopes of Europe are approaching a similar fate, and that the water supply to Europe’s Alpine towns and villages will become similarly dry.
Before the mountains were formed, this whole area was a giant lake. Evaporation and erosion created this strange landscape south of La Paz
Out of the wilderness
La Paz: After being turned away yet again by our bus company, which at 8 pm cancels our bus and tells us to come back in the morning at 8 am, I lose my temper. Other buses are leaving, I point out. We’ve been waiting here for days and we’ve checked out of our room now, I plead, in vain. We trundle back to our hostel, rebook our dark room and wait another night.
A local bus on a diversion across the treacherous salar
Morning arrives and with little expectation we return to the bus office. Things are looking good: an expectant crowd with bags is huddled around one of the best-looking buses we’ve seen in Bolivia; tickets are being inspected; and best of all, someone is administering gasoline to a generator outside the bus office – the bus has brought fuel with it. Soon, lights are on and the passengers are talking to each other in the over-friendly, slightly hysterical tones of people who have survived some sort of ordeal together and are about to embark on another.
Within the hour, we are on our way, leaving the dust, grey and desolation of Uyuni, bound for the bright lights and imagined comforts of the capital, La Paz. The journey is supposed to take 10 hours, but we’ve already been informed that our diversion route to avoid the blockades will stretch it to 13 or 14 hours, but nobody cares – we’re glad to be on our way.
Suddenly people appeared out of nowhere clutching suitcases
Our changed route takes us back across the salar, treating us to a second look at the incredible ocean of salt that fills the southwest corner of Bolivia. We drive slowly in the tracks made by other vehicles in the blank emptiness of white that stretches to the horizon on either side. We are an hour or so into our journey, when the bus pulls to a stop in the middle of the barren plain. From the windows we see the unbelievable sight of people running towards us holding suitcases. Where did they come from? It’s as surreal as if they had been dropped from a spaceship.
We pass an ancient volcano
We wait on the bus for many minutes while the men, women and children gradually grow in size until they are at the door of our bus, hurrying on and gasping thanks. The bus moves on and we question our new companions.
Its multi-hued crater
They tell us that they set off last night across the salar as passengers in a caravan of six buses, but every one got stuck in the salt by 9 pm, falling into the ‘eyes’ of the salar – patches where water rises to near the surface. They spent the night there in the freezing conditions.
Sheep with ribbons in their ears
We drive on, sombrely. After another hour, we exit the salar and climb the dirt tracks used by llama herders into the mountains. The scenery is stunning, but it’s a slow, tense journey, hoping that we don’t burst a tyre on the perilous rocky paths.
The poor, fastest growing 'city' of El Alto rises above La Paz in a sprawl of substandard housing that lack water
Luck and the careful driver are on our side, though, and after 10 hours on the road, we stop in the cold miners’ city of Oruro, whose name means ‘where the sun is born’. We eat our first meal since the night before, gulping down chicken and rice greedily. This is President Evo Morales’s province, an indigenous region that’s home to South America’s most ancient tribe, the Chipaya people, who are thought to be descended from the Tiwanaku civilization. Chipayas speak a language related to Arabic, live in beehive-shaped stone houses and keep ancient traditions. But they are being wiped out by climate change as the rivers on which they depend dry up and their communities dissipate, migrating to cities.
An elegant door in La Paz
We pass the amusingly named Lake Poopó (Nick maintains that Lake Titicaca has a funnier name) and the landscape flattens out and becomes slightly greener – I even spot a few cows grazing.
Local bus
Fishmonger in La Paz
It’s midnight by the time we reach the twinkling slopes of La Paz, stand gratefully under a hot shower and crawl happily into bed.
Political T shirt
Dazzling skirts
Signs
This evening, we met a Dutch girl who had left Uyuni on a bus the night before we did, got trapped in the salar and spent 36 hours awaiting rescue. We heard tales of people who toured the salar in jeeps that ran out of fuel and from others who got stuck crossing icy rivers on their tours. Last year, 17 people died on the salar. We feel lucky.
Guarding the presidential palace
Inside the palace
Through wind and sand to the the ghost of an ocean
Update: We have now heard of four tourists who died while out on desert tours at the same time as us – three from hypothermia and one from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Uyuni: I’m writing this by candlelight in a small dark cell that’s big enough to accommodate a bunkbed and our backpacks but not once the door is opened, a logistical challenge that we meet by wrestling our filthy bags onto or off the lower bunk every time we need to use the door/bags/bed. I’m wrapped up in 3 hats, all my thermals, woollens, coats and scarves, yet still I’m freezing. Outside, a screaming typhoon is lashing through the town. The air is opaque with dust and flung stones, the town is boarded up but windows are still smashing. It’s impossible to leave our room, so we stay until our candle burns out. There has been no power for days and now the taps are also dry.
The Iron lady: Pachamama stands in Uyuni
Uyuni is a desolate, windswept outpost at the best of times. Its exposed location was chosen deliberately when the town was founded in 1889 as a pitstop for trains between Argentina, Chile and the Bolivian mines north of here: a sheltered site at the foot of a mountain would leave the silver-laden train carriages easy prey for robbers (and this was 20 years before that errant mormon Butch Cassidy and his wonderfully named mate even made it to Bolivia).
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid were shot near here. There's a large reward for their guns which were never recovered.
The town is 3670 metres above sea level and the extreme cold reportedly prevented epidemics breaking out among Uyuni’s first citizens – railroad workers and army personnel at the military base – rendering the town’s new cemetery embarrassingly barren for a few years. This was apparently such a problem for the townspeople that they ‘borrowed’ corpses from the nearest mining settlement of Pulacayo until they could produce their own.
Entrance to Potosí mint
We’ve been trying to leave Uyuni for a couple of days now, but the storm, a transport workers’ strike and blockades on the road north are keeping us hostage. And now the town has run out of gasoline. Our clothes are noticeably heavier with grime, I’m desperate for a shower, for some warmth, but our sorry forays to the bus and train stations have been futile.
Silver coins minted here were used all over the world
Bolivia truly is the nation of blockades. Every day, somewhere in the country, a road will be blocked by anything from rocks and logs to sticks of threatening dynamite. It disrupts travel, hinders the transport of people, goods and trade, leads to produce rotting at the side of the highway while people go hungry waiting and prevents medication reaching those in need. But as a political tool, it’s had some impressive successes here, including the Cochabamba blockades of 2000 that restored the region’s water into public ownership, after a 1990s sell-off that involved price hikes that made the basic necessity unaffordable (read more here).
Fantastic lock on a 16th century chest. To open it you had to use 2 keys and turn twice to the left and once to the right
My empathy and understanding for the peasants’ cause is waning somewhat. Last week, we spent a few days trying to get from Potosí to beautiful Tupiza, prevented again by blockades and other disturbances. After one particularly memorable morning, in which we rose at 5 am to get to the bus station and then proceeded to spend the next 8.5 hours running with our bags back and forth between various bus stands and the euphemistically named Information Desk, we gave up and decided to skip Tupiza for Uyuni. The extra time we spent in Potosí, in between journeys to and from the bloody bus station, were not unpleasant.
Disturbingly well-preserved mummies
We visited the old mint, which used to supply many of the world’s coins – now, Bolivia’s coins are made elsewhere and imported. The building is a grand design housing some wonderful paintings, a great collection of minerals and some fantastically macabre mummies, many with cranial deformation – the more noble your birth, the more pointy your head.
On our bus to Uyuni I spot this unhappy reminder of Bolivia's road safety record
We leave Potosí eventually, arriving 8 hours later in Uyuni, excited to be on our way. In the morning, we join 6 other tourists – a 19 yr old English boy, a young Dutch girl and a slightly older Swiss couple. We squeeze into the back of a LandCruiser jeep driven by an Uyuni-born guide, who is accompanied by his wife and toddler in the front passenger seat.
Plenty of room for 2 in the front of our jeep. Pretty squashed in the back tho
Llamas have ribbons in their ears
We head off into the increasingly ferocious winds, leaving the town and its kilometre-wide plastic-bag strewn halo. Then we are in the desert. We drive through icy streams and over frozen ground, casting a sympathetic glance at the few flamingos that remain here, too young to have the strength to join their parents in warmer lakes. Golden vicuña, the wild ancestors of domesticated camelids like llama, leap in alarm as we break the horizon with our shiny steel can.
We cross icy rivers
This lurid native plant is actually related to celery, but is now endangered because it is used by the local people as a fuel and grows just 1cm per year
We pass the world’s second biggest mine (the continent’s biggest), San Cristobel, which turns over 100,000 tons of dirt a day, exporting mainly silver and zinc. New houses huddle around a 17th century Jesuit church, which was moved here brick by brick when the villagers reluctantly relocated from their higher site.
A crashed plane hangs over Villa Mar
We take our lunch at 4000 metres up in the 900-strong village of Villa Mar, named, despite its location in the middle of a desert, in honour of the Bolivian coast lost to Chile in the War of the Pacific. Pre-Incan rock paintings adorn the surrounding cliff-face, but more eye-catching is the fuselage of a wrecked plane perched on top of the cliff, swaying alarmingly in the wind. It’s a dusty, forlorn place where smiling earns you a mouth full of grit, and we are glad to leave, driving further into the emptiness.
Through the desert, mountains seem to float on the horizon
Surreal landscape of wind and dust
The landscapes are big and brutal here: wind-sculpted rocks stand incongruously against earth and sky; volcanoes crown the horizon in fantastic colours, their ancient lava petrified where it spilled in foamy release; and the minerals of this planet are laid bare and bright, naked in the absence of vegetation. Every few kilometres the landscape transforms utterly.
The tiger and the seahorse
Vivid mountains
We stop every few hours and unfurl from the jeep to look at a new marvel, emerging into the minus 20 degree winds that steal our breath and shock us quickly back into the car. By the time we reach the Lago Colarado, near the Chilean and Argentine borders, the conditions have turned frightening. The winds are hurling pebbles at the car and I am nervous we will be blown into the frozen water below. The lake, named for its deep crimson colour, a result of the algae and minerals, is now mostly white – drought, ice and the harsh winds have dried its waters.
Lago Colorado - it's supposed to be red, but the icy conditions drain its colour
Young flamingos shiver on the lake
Sun falls and we head to a nearby refugio, where we spend the night in temperatures of -45 degrees celcius, sleeplessly willing the roof to stay on under the wind’s assault.
Borax flats
Morning, and the winds are no less. We decide, on the advice of our guide, to skip our planned visit to the hot springs, geysers and, most regrettably, the Green Lake, because it’s too dangerous to drive south into the winds. Instead, we head north with the wind behind us, sitting scrunched in the jeep, nursing chillblains and a new headcold.
Frozen lake
Icy edges
The landscape continues its ever-changing show of incredible beauty. We pass salt flats of borax, being mined for export, the wind casting veils of white dust over their shimmering expanses; lakes glassy with ice and spiked with crystals of algae and salts; a terracotta backdrop of mountains and volcanoes, the biggest of which, Licancabur, is so alien that Nasa tested its Mars Rover in its crater. In that same crater, 5916 metres up, were found the mummified corpses of sacrificed young girls, which the Incas sent there to freeze to death.
It gets to -45 degrees at night
Ancient volcanoes rich in minerals
Petrified tree
We pass the small quinua-growing village of San Juan, another ancient habitation that’s relocating elsewhere because climate change has robbed them of the rains that allow them to make food from the earth here. By afternoon, we reach a small salt hotel on the edge of the salar and stop for the night. It’s a homely place with textile tablecloths and curtains, and it’s a million times better than the poor shed we slept in the previous night so our spirits rise as a group.
Inside the salt hotel
Mmm quinua soup
We head to a nearby grotto called the Galaxy Cave, formed by the explosion of hot lava into a freezing lake. A tiny Aymara man in his eighties strings lights through the cavern to illuminate the lacy spider’s web of petrified lava froth. A small shrine to Pachamama, the earth goddess, is at the far end.
Strange crystals in the Galaxy Cave
Nick finds a puppy
After a better night’s rest, we rise before dawn and drive into the surreal landscape of the world’s biggest salt flat. At 12,000 square kilometres, it’s the size of a small country, the size of a sea – which it was once. Many years ago, the Atlantic Ocean flowed from present-day Argentina as far west as La Paz in a huge channel. Land eventually sealed off this liquid ingression from the ocean, creating a vast interior lake. The clash of tectonic plates that created the Andes forced the lake higher, where, over time, it evaporated producing this incredible expanse of brilliant white salt.
Dawn breaks over the salt flats
Me and the nothing
Nick's shadow and the curvature of the earth
Nick and the jeep
The sea of white, hemmed by the azure sky is unlike anything I’ve experienced and my eyes are confused by the enormity of it. Perspectives are distorted and it becomes impossible to gage how near or far, big or small something is. We play tricks with the camera, failing to create the perfect illusion because the terrible wind and cold makes it impossible to spend time manipulating the focus. But it’s fun – the white and blue make a perfect photographer’s studio.
Me and Nick dancing on a bottle
Me on Nick's finger
Legs on his head
Dancing on his hand
Shrinky Nick
On the tips of my fingers
In the distance, we see a small island in the salar and, on approaching, discover it to be alive with more than 6000 cacti. This is Incahuasi island, an unreal place of gold and green in the deathly white salar, and a place of refuge for the Incans who once crossed these flats with their llama trains. At the heart of the island, which is an atoll of fossilised algae and coral, stands a small ceremonial centre and a 35-metre-deep gorge which once held precious freshwater.
Cactus growing on a salar atoll
Alive in so much salt
The salar is tessellated with polygons, cracks in the 5 metre deep salt layer down to an underground lake beneath. Capillary action drives lake water up through the cracks where it crystalises at the surface forming ridges. In many places, the tessellations are disturbed by large ‘pools’ of salt. These are the ‘eyes’ of the salar, where water is nearer the surface, and lethal patches for those who drive over them.
The railway through the salar
Salt crystals
In time, we cross the salar and reach the salt-mining community of Colchani. Hunched men and boys with pickaxes and shovels carve up the salt by hand, piling the white ground into conical heaps, where it dries and is transported out by truck. It’s back-breaking work in the freezing wind and blinding sun. Boys paint their faces with charcoal to dull the reflection and help spare their sight, but the old men are unpainted, burnt as bark, their eyes milky with cataracts.
Digging for salt in Colchani
Dust and grit
More than 20,000 tons of table salt is produced annually from this ‘Puerto Seco’ (Dry Port) of Colchani, but the white stuff is more than a seasoning. The Uyuni Salar holds more than half of the world’s supply of lithium, a light metal that is used in mobile phone, laptop and camera batteries, and which is essential for the efficient, quick-to-recharge batteries of the oil-avoiding electric and hybrid cars of the future. If Bolivia could somehow tap into the lithium production market, the impoverished country would finally be rich. At least, that’s what President Evo Morales is hoping.
Golden vicuña
It’s an exciting prospect, and everyone from Japan to France wants in on the act. But history has not been kind to Bolivia. The country, one of the continent’s richest in terms of natural resources, is home to many of the poorest people, largely because of the way that foreigners have exploited these lands for everything from gold to silver. Evo is so far refusing to let this precious new find out Bolivian state control. He’s set up a pilot project to extract lithium from the salar and is trying to process 1200 tons per year at first, rising to 30,000 tons a year by 2012. Sceptics say that Bolivia lacks the knowhow and infrastructure to extract lithium efficiently, certainly in the quantities needed – around 500,000 tons a year to supply a small market, car manufacturers estimate. But if the pilot project works, the nation may well become the Saudi of lithium.
Injured young flamingo on the bus
It’s while we’re passing through Colchani that the winds take a more violent twist. By the time we drive into Uyuni, the town has disappeared in a blinding blanket of swirling dust.
The winds are too strong for the birds
After a some days, we emerge from our hostel cell to inspect the aftermath of the storm. The few trees are ensnared by garbage, a thick layer of dust coats everything so that the entire town is in brown monotone. In the main square, people are rescuing flamingos blown there with broken wings. There is still no power, no water, no diesel.
Life in the salt
We seek refuge in a small cafe run by a Boston man, who makes superb pizza and pasta dishes. Chris has lived here for 9 years with his Bolivian wife. You moved here from Boston, I ask, amazed. I’ve never been to Boston, but if it’s worse than Uyuni, I’m never going.
Jumping off the bottle
Pachamama before the storm
An encounter with the Devil
Potosí: There is no three-headed dog but the blood splattered entrance is unmistakable. Like the millions who have gone before me, I take a last look at the sun and then enter the underworld.
It is here that most of the climate change refugees from the region’s villages, end up – making a pact with the devil that few will survive. I’ve come to see what happens to these people once drought forces them from their country homes, and it’s not pretty.
Cerro Rico
At over 4000 metres, Potosí is the world’s highest city but it is overshadowed by the rainbow-coloured Cerro Rico (Rich Hill), which looms above the citizens – an imposing reminder of the cause of the city’s splendour and horror. The city was founded in 1545 following the discovery of silver in the Cerro Rico, the veins of which proved to be the world’s most lucrative, bankrolling the Spanish Empire for more than two centuries.
Silver made Potosí one of the world's wealthiest cities
The extraordinary quantities of this precious metal – it is said that at one time you could have built a silver bridge from here to Spain and still have enough silver to carry across it – led to the city of Potosí becoming the richest and biggest in the Western world, with more than 200,000 inhabitants in the 17th century. The city had its own mint, whose mark – the letters PTSI superimposed on each other – is thought to be from where the dollar $ sign originates. In all, nearly 70,000 tonnes of silver were shipped from this hill during the colonial times.
The city's colonial centre is full of ornate buildings
It came at a terrible price: 8 million people died working in the industry during the 350 years of Spanish occupation. The first to be ‘used up’ were the indigenous slaves, who expired in such numbers that the Spanish had to import tens of thousands of African slaves and, in 1572, invoked a military law requiring all slaves to work 12-hour shifts, remaining underground for 4 months at a time. Average life expectancy of a miner was just 6 months.
Many miners still use acetylene gas lamps to warn them of carbon monoxide
By the 1800s, the silver was depleted and its global price diminished, sending the city into a decline that it is only recently recovering from, thanks to the demand for tin, lead and zinc.
For a couple of dollars, Nick buys enough explosives to blow us up
But Cerro Rico still draws silver miners as only the devil can. They get a worse deal than Faust, exchanging not just their souls but their bodies too. Miners here die within 10 years of entering the mine; on average, before the age of 35. They die from silicosis, mesothelioma, accidents and poisonings from the various noxious chemicals they are exposed to including, cyanide, mercury and carbon monoxide.
We buy coca leaves and soft drinks for the miners
For their efforts, those working in the sought-after cooperatives can earn an average of 1500 Bolivianos a week (£150/$225); those working alone usually earn a great deal less. It all depends on the quantity and quality of the minerals they produce. At the moment, silver is selling at US$18 per ounce, but once the intermediaries have been paid, the miner gets a far smaller percentage of this. If a miner manages to join a cooperative (he must pay $7000 for the privilege), then 16% of his earnings (evenly shared by all members) goes into the cooperative. After tax, this money is used to ensure that miners have a pension and healthcare when they inevitably get silicosis or suffer an accident, that their widows get a stipend and to pay for things like ventilation in the stifling (45 degrees) deeper sections of the mine.
Miners' houses
These stone houses, perched 4200 metres on the edge of the mountain, are unheated
After working this mine for 3 years, Juan knows the labyrinthine passages by heart
Juan Mamani Choque worked the mines for three years, carrying 50kg sacks of rock from the deep (60-metres-below) drilling depths to the next level up (25-metres-below) where the trolleys could move it. Juan weighed just 45 kg himself at the time, working in the same way as his father, dead from silicosis, had. At the age of 25, Juan slipped and fell down a shaft, injuring his back. During the six months he spent recuperating, his wife talked him out of returning to the mines, and he went back to school, eventually graduating from university in languages.
The mine entrance. Llamas are sacrificed here and their blood ritually sprayed across the entrance to feed Tio.
Before we visit the mine, Juan says, we should bring gifts for the miners. We go to the miners’ market, buy orangeade, some coca leaves plus alkali catalyst and, for $2, a terrorist’s dream: a stick of nitroglycerine, a stick of ammonium nitrate and a fuse long enough for a four-minute escape. “Argentinian dynamite is the best, but there’s some problem with the factory, so get the Bolivian – the Peruvian is for children,” Juan instructs. I decline to buy the 96% proof alcohol drink that is visibly distilling itself in the container.
Juan walks ahead
We take a bus up to the mine. There is a small cluster of low, unheated stone hovels clinging to the mountain sides and between them is the low dark entrance, stained black with llama blood, remnant of a sacrifice to the devil made a couple weeks ago. Miners are extremely superstitious creatures, the reality of their predicament sending them searching desperately for hope of supernatural help. In the sunny outside, they are fervent catholics; once in the underworld, it is the Tio (devil) who holds them in his hands. The name ‘Tio’, which usually means ‘uncle’ in Spanish, derives from the Spanish overlords who threatened the miners with an all-seeing Dios (god), should they slacken. There is no ‘D’ in Quechua, so his name became corrupted to Tio.
Miners in the world's most dangerous mine.
The mine interior is full of brightly coloured minerals
Many roads lead to hell, and we enter through the Candelaria Bajo mine, one of the oldest of the 700 mines in Cerro Rico, dating back at least 350 years. It is immediately dark and dusty, the air infused with a peculiar smell – a caustic combination of the many chemicals here.
It's only possible to stand upright in a few places
I stumble along behind Juan, crouching under the low rocks, trying to forget that 10 years ago geologists predicted that the mountain, riddled with tunnels and crevices, will collapse within 8-10 years. I bash my head frequently, alternatively grateful for my hard hat and cursing it for falling down over my eyes and obscuring my view of obstacles.
Me in the dark
Hard at work
Suddenly Juan shouts for me to get to the side, off the tracks. We struggle to mount a rock, just in time as a series of steel trollies come speeding down the tracks towards us, pushed and pulled by ghostly men, wide-eyed from coca.
Pushing 2 tonnes of rock on trollies
We continue on in our nightmare journey, heading deeper and further into the mine. The air becomes impossible to breathe even through my scarf, and it becomes harder to see with every step. Soon we are reduced to crawling on hands and knees through tunnels tight enough to panic in, and still we descend.
Nick descends a vertical shaft
Sliding down a rabbit hole – although no rabbit would live this far down – we reach a lower level, where demonic workers with mad staring eyes push and pull trollies laden with 2 tonnes of rock past us, seemingly not noticing our presence. We are a couple of kilometres inside the mountain now and it is stiflingly hot, lung-searingly difficult to breathe and incredibly exhausting – and we are not even working.
We have to leap into wider cut-aways every time a trolly speeds past with its load
Further along still, we descend through a passage so tight that I must slide on my belly, and reach two men shovelling rocks onto trollies unstoppingly. I offer them the orangeade and, after two more trollies have delivered their loads, one pauses for a few minutes to talk to me.
Damaso Condori takes a brief break
Damaso Condori is 40 years old and new to the mine. he’s been here just 5 years, driven from his country village by worsening droughts to seek his fortune in the back-breaking hell of Cerro Rico. He started to cough (the first sign of silicosis) a few months ago and he is worried for his family back in the village, he says. But for now he must keep working here because there is no other way to pay for his five children’s education.
Tipping out the trolly-load
At 4200 metres above sea level, in temperatures above 40 degrees, Damaso and his colleague are each shifting 40 tonnes of rock in a (short) 8-hour shift. The air is so thin and the dust so thick that I have a pounding headache and streaming eyes simply from standing here.
Damaso and his pal shovelling away
Damaso returns to his shovelling as another quartet of men arrive with their trolly-load, and we turn to head back up. It’s a long and painful journey, hauling ourselves up the vertical shafts we came down, and I am humbled, remembering that Juan did this same journey many times a day carrying 50 kilos on his back. What if your son said he was going to work in the mines, I ask him. “I would put dynamite up his arse,” Juan says. “No way.”
Only 1% of this rock is precious silver
On the way up, we detour through another indescribably awful passage (which I think is also used as a toilet) to visit the Tio – every mine has its own Tio. We find the ghoulish figure sitting with hideous features and an unfeasibly large penis, surrounded by what first appears to be a pile of junk. I soon realise that the cigarettes, coca leaves, bottles of whiskey and rum, food and, most bizarrely, soft-porn playing cards, are all gifts for Tio. The miners come here regularly and appease him with these gifts, hoping he’ll be distracted long enough not to kill them with an accident.
Tio
After what feels like an entire day, but is in fact just an hour and a half, we emerge, blinking into the sunlight. I gasp in the cold fresh air, grateful to be alive, to have cheated Tio. The dusty air has taken my voice, I will have to shower for 20 minutes to clean off the grime and my clothes stink of the underworld, but for me, it was a brief foray. I simply cannot imagine having to work in those conditions for 12-14 hours, sometimes doing a double, night-shift, and for years. Children work in these mines from the age of 9 or 10. There are no middle-aged men, only widows shovelling rocks outside.
Dealing with the raw material. Notice his coca-stained mouth.
There's no one to give our dynamite gift to, so Nick lights the fuse.
After lunch – another pleasure denied the miners, who chew coca leaves all day instead – I head to the Caja National de Salud, a hospital for miners. An incredibly pitiful sight awaits: men in their 30s, looking ancient, lie listlessly in beds with drips in their arms and enormous oxygen tanks behind them. This is the fallout of our love of silver, the result of climate change forcing villagers from their farms into the mines, the result of government policy that allows people to work and live in such conditions.
Simon Arcibia already has silicosis
Simon Arcibia, bed 5, was born in Potosí and worked in the mines from the age of 17. He’s been in the clinic, which is paid for by his cooperative, for a month with silicosis and he tells me that he’s getting better. Really, I say, delighted. “Yes, usually people die, but I won’t. I’ll be okay. I have a son, you see.”
Does your son work in the mine? “No he’s studying. I want him to be a doctor. It’s expensive, but the whole cooperative is clubbing together, and I am working more shifts.”
We chat a while and then, as I turn to leave, he says: “I think the government should close the mines. They killed my father and now they are killing me.”
*****
Here are some images from the refinery:
The raw material arrives at the refinery by truck and must be shovelled
The rocks are crushed into a suspension
Cyanide, copper sulphate and other colourful agents are used to help separate the minerals
Pallets further filter and separate the minerals
The machinery is unguarded and many accidents happen here
This sludge is 98% silver. It will be dried by evaporation in the sun and then transported to Chile or Peru for shipping (Bolivia lost its coast in the War of the Pacific)
The sludge of toxic waste is flushed straight into the river
Tio
Why I exposed Seed
I wrote a piece in the Guardian this week exposing the lack of editorial independence at the science magazine Seed – an article I wrote for Seed was rejected out of fears that it might upset one of their potential advertisers.
My article followed a furore in the science community over the decision by ScienceBlogs – owned by the Seed Media Group – to host a blog on nutrition written by the food giant PepsiCo. ScienceBlogs, home to some of the world’s top scientific minds, swiftly bled some of its star writers in response. Scientists were angry that the integrity of the site they had helped to develop had been compromised by the too-subtle inclusion of a promotional blog by the fast food company.
Adam Bly, owner and CEO of the Seed Media Group, has now removed the offending ‘Food Frontiers’ blog, no doubt concerned at the backlash.
So why did I add my piece? It goes against everything I believe in to kick a man while he’s down – even if he acts like a twerp without integrity. I really don’t like to deliberately upset someone (who does?), and I knew this would probably further damage his reputation.
And I have to declare a conflict of interest: Seed treated me pretty badly, not paying me for months and months, and very nearly ended the journey that I left my well-paid and well-respected job for. So am I doing this as some sort of revenge?
No, I am not. Seed is not the only company to have treated me unprofessionally or to have not paid me, sadly. But by not running the Bhopal story for the reasons they gave, Seed displays utter lack of editorial independence, or journalistic integrity. They not only treated me badly, by backing out of paying me for the article, they treated the Indian people still suffering the effects of the world’s worst chemical disaster badly: preferring to appease their potential advertiser, Dow Chemical, than publish this story of how impoverished Indian people are still suffering 25 years on. And the ridiculous thing is that my article was not some new reveal of Dow Chemical’s involvement – this is accepted and widely known information.
My reason behind telling this tale is that some people think that the ScienceBlogs fiasco has been a lot of fuss about nothing. That Seed was just trying to make a buck and went about it in a rather gauche way. That the scientists who left the site in response are blowing the whole thing out of proportion.
Freelancing, as I have discovered, after years of being an editor, is a vulnerable occupation and it can be almost impossible to earn enough to get by. Those who left the security of ScienceBlogs may not have jeopardised their entire earnings, but it was a brave decision and I want to let them know that they were right – this is not some one-off by Seed, the company is grubby and without integrity. And it should be revealed as such.
Journalism is not often held in high regard. But I am certain that my fellow reporters went into this profession for the same reason I did, to bring truths to a wider audience: to tell an honest story. In many of the fields that I report on, including climate change, medicine and social issues, I feel a great responsibility to tell an honest story both to accurately represent the people in the article and to provide a true picture of the issue to the reader. In my previous roles as an editor within a publication and as an editor of a publication (when I edited a small, soon-folded magazine), I felt the added responsibility of ensuring that the reporter’s account was represented.
The way that Adam Bly responded to the ScienceBlogs upset showed me that he has not understood this basic tenet of journalism, and that he has grossly underestimated the integrity of his ScienceBloggers.
As I watched the fiasco unfold, I realised that I was in a rare position to be able to back those brave scientists who had given up their secure platforms on a principle.
Nevertheless, it was a big decision for me. Journalism is a small, inter-dependent industry. Science journalism, like every specialism, operates in a particularly small world and I knew that by telling this story, my colleagues may close ranks behind Seed. I also considered that out of all my colleagues there is only one who I think might do the same as me were they in my position. Which is a lonely position.
But in return for all the times we journalists ask others to blow the whistle and expose corruption, I know I must be willing to do the same. And because I visit countries where receiving ‘the honest story’ from the media is impossible, where my international colleagues undergo far greater hardships in order to deliver a true story, and where I interview people about corruption in their lives, it would be incredibly hypocritical for me to shy away from my small contribution to truth now.
I have been touched and bolstered by the kindness and support that my colleagues, twitter friends and scientists have shown me in response. Just as Adam Bly appears to believe that everyone operates according to his principles, so I believe in the inherent compulsion of people to know right from wrong.
And I have learned of many more examples of Adam Bly’s lack of integrity, of his desire to appease advertisers to the detriment of the honest story. I have also heard, from those who have worked closely with him, about his empire built on the labour of unpaid interns and of others who also waited months for payment.
And now to respond specifically to comments made by Seed editors in response to my Guardian article:
The first response came from Lee Billings, senior associate editor of Seed magazine (aka Bly’s nanny/rottweiler?), who in a series of tweets, wrote: “that the Seed editor in question is no longer with the company”…”for what should be obvious reasons”, and “Behavior unacceptable”.
So, to Lee, I say: yes, it is unacceptable. The individual who wrote me the email detailing Seed’s edvertorial policy rejecting my piece, while reproachable is not ultimately responsible. All responsibility for this must and does rest with the CEO Adam Bly. And to imply, as Lee Billings does in his tweet, that the individual is no longer with the company because they were sacked due to their lack of editorial integrity, is a pretty serious character assassination that I doubt bears out. I say, grow up, stop blaming the fall guy and accept responsibility for your company’s actions.
Lee Billings’ further response in a comment to my Guardian article, details some articles published by Seed that criticise companies, some of which advertise with the Group. “It stands to reason,” he says, “that if the supposed editorial policies Ms. Vince claims are endemic here at Seed actually held sway, none of these articles would have ever seen the light of day.”
So, firstly, I didn’t suppose any editorial policies in my article, I merely retold my experience – having heard since from other people, I know understand that my experience was not a one-off, but that such editorial policy likely is endemic. Anyway, I don’t have the time or inclination to read the articles Lee lists, suffice to say that all that might be reasoned from them is that Seed has also published material that is critical of its advertisers.
Now to Adam Bly who has commented on his own blogsite:
Firstly, he says: “The Guardian article is ridiculous” before deferring to Lee Billings. But he does eventually manage to speak for himself, to call the rejection of my Bhopal article “an isolated mistake”. Is that an apology, Adam? He then tangentially asks whether any of my “other big employers have made any mistakes”, which is a rather bizarre response to being caught with your pants down in the ethics office. I can’t answer for other media I’ve worked for, of course, except to say: not in my experience.
Adam Bly’s second par, complains that “the Guardian article is not balanced” – er, it’s not supposed to be balanced, Adam. It’s a blog, an opinion piece. I have no doubt that the Guardian would afford you your right to reply, should you choose. The rest of the paragraph boasting your “editorial freedom” is another bizarre irrelevance in my opinion.
In terms of this being “a malicious attack”, I don’t intend malicious sentiment, but the facts do paint an unflattering light on your character and editorial decisions.
A proper response to my article (and to the ScienceBloggers), would, I think, be an unreserved apology and a recognition of why your actions have caused such offence.
And now I think I’ve said everything I should on this subject!
Walking with dinosaurs
Cal Orck’o: A long long time ago, before I was here, before the Spanish were here, before the Incas, before even the indigenous Bolivian tribes, some 68 million years ago, this spot 6 kilometres outside Sucre was a busy thoroughfare for dinosaurs.
Dino marks the spot, 6km from Sucre
We know by accident. In 1994, cement workers at the factory that bankrolls much of Sucre dynamited a hillside and revealed what is the world’s biggest collection of dinosaur tracks, bearing 5,000 prints of more than 250 individuals. Trucks still ply away at the site, so it’s unsure for how long the prints will last, especially while the quarry owners talk about blasting the rock “to discover more tracks”.
Tracks criss-cross this vast limestone cliff. Meanwhile, trucks continue to ply the quarry below
Cal Orck’o is an awesome sight: a criss-crossing testimony to extinct herbivores and carnivores on their way to somewhere long disappeared; a flat, even newer America, from before the Andes formed. The Bolivia of the Cretaceous was a swampy landmass, home apparently to several species of dinosaur and a few primitive mammals. At least 8 different species of dinosaur have left their footprints in the clay bed of what was a dried out lake, including T-rex, Triceratops and Brontosaurus. A massive volcanic eruption, 68 million years ago, threw sediments over the precious prints, preserving them for posterity. By 65 million years ago, these impressive animals were extinct.
Three-toed Theropod prints can be clearly seen.
A clash of tectonic plates forced the flat land upwards, so that the lake is now a limestone rockface 100 metres high. Now, in the 21st century, when so many large beasts have been restricted to the fringes of our planet, put behind bars or limited to dwindling ecosystems, the clear prints – some, a metre long – of these enormous free-ranging dinosaurs is a reminder of how small and vulnerable we humans are, of how short a time we’ve been here. The prints are so clear they could still be warm and it’s easy to trace their journeys up and down, some running, others stumbling. The three-toed gait of Theropods like Tyrannosaurus rex are easy to pick out, the big roundish trudge of the armadillo-like Ankylosaurus, and the longest track of all, a baby T-rex, they call Johnny Walker.
A cast of the prints and my hand for scale (which doesn't really work because my hand is higher up. The prints are at least 5x the size of my hand)
We approach the spanking new Cretaceous museum, where a plump, umbrella-twirling man approaches us and informs us that he is our guide. He peers disappointedly at the empty expanse behind us and asks if there are any other tourists joining us. Just the two of us, I tell him.
The museum entrance
Yikes, who jammed that rod up me?
We march silently behind him up the winding path to the museum entrance. There, a sudden transformation occurs, and with a beaming, showbiz smile, he begins his booming, rehearsed introductions over and above our heads to an imaginary crowd: “Hello, to all of you guys and WELCOME to Bolivia’s premier attraction. My name is Juan-Carlos, but you can call me Wanky, most of my friends do,” he announces, dead-pan. “We are fuckers today on prints of reptiles. Do you know what is a reptile? A dinosaur,” he answers, redundantly.
A model of ankylosaurus
And there ends the informative portion of the tour. The rest of our visit involves me and Nick trying to lose our ‘guide’, while he pants up to us telling us we can touch the models so we can know what dinosaurs feel like.
Nick for scale behind a model of a theropod
The plastic ‘recreations’ do nothing to dispel the wonder of catching a glimpse of the cretaceous world, of footprints left unknowingly by the previous rulers of this Earth.
Next door: the cement factory behind the prints' discovery and their possible destruction
This is how a village dies
Ovejeria: Three-quarters of a century of sun and toil have shrunken Luciano Mendez so that his dry brown skin wrinkles around his body like a walnut shell and his discoloured clothes hang loosely from his small frame. But under his hat, his face is sharp and pointy as a bird’s.
Luciano Mendez lost 3 goats to a puma last week
He walks over to us from his parched field and I ask him how his maize production was this year. The question has to be translated into Quechua because Luciano doesn’t speak Spanish. But the pause before his answer is overlong.
He laughs a dry, gasping sigh of a laugh and tells me that there wasn’t enough to eat this year, let alone to sell. Some of his cows died of hunger last year, he says, and more will die this year because he has only managed to store enough to last another week or so. Luciano points to the corn husks cradled in the branches of a tree.
Great view, shame about the climate
He lives alone in his adobe hut, and walks the 3-hour journey twice a week to the valley, so he can pick up transport to Sucre, where his wife lingers on in hospital. Of his eight children, four live in Potosi, three in La Paz and one he thinks has made it to Brazil.
Climate change has devastated the village of Ovejeria: in 2000, there were 90 families living here; now just 9 remain. It is a village of old people.
This used to be a busy farm, now just one family remains. Notice the gas pipe (top, right) that runs for hundreds of kilometres past their house.
But it wasn’t always like this. Up until fifteen years ago, the village was a farming community whose maize, quinoa, potatoes, avocados and fruit were sold as far afield as La Paz. The village is located in the fertile bread basket of Bolivia. In recent years, the bread basket has diminished somewhat, and now only includes the lower valleys that directly line the rivers’ course. Even there they are experiencing terrible drought, but up here, in Ovejeria, rain is a luxury that no one can be sure of.
Our route to the village over a dry riverbed
Ovejeria is 2400 metres above sea level and a few hundred metres above the Rio Chico – those few hundred metres make the difference between hunger and plenty. The village relies entirely on rainwater for drinking, washing and supplying its agriculture and animals. In the past, the rains were reliable and sufficient, arriving in November and lasting well into April. But over the last decade, much has changed.
Women from the village. "We do not have enough to eat," one tells me.
The rains now arrive, if they are lucky, in late December and last until April. The past two years, the villagers have had to wait till January for paltry rains, which petered out in March.
“We only get 20 minutes of rain every few days – a maximum of one hour a week during the rainy season,” Luciano says. By August, he will have to walk his animals up to 30 kilometres away over 2 days in order to feed and water them. It’s no job for a 75-year-old, but he has no choice. “The cows die first, then the donkeys. Goats are the hardiest,” he says.
Animals seek shade under a tree bearing their food.
Others in the village have had enough and plan to leave. Leaving the village that they were born in, that their parents and grandparents were born, in is impossibly hard, they say, but they also feel they have no choice. Villagers migrate away at the age of 14. Most end up in Potósi or Sucre, poor villagers easy to spot because of their country clothes, their belongings wrapped in a shawl over their shoulders and because it is obvious they are sleeping rough. Eventually, the lucky few amass enough odd jobs to sustain themselves with food, rather than simply sucking at a ball of coca leaves to numb the pangs of hunger.
Some even make it to Santiago in Chile, or to Spain, but it’s getting harder to emigrate with so many doing the same.
The villagers collect for a meeting
“There is nothing to keep young people here, no opportunities, not enough food even,” says Effrain Peducassé Castro, director of the department of agronomical engineering at Sucre’s University of San Francisco Xavier. “Because of the drought, the region has lost much of its biodiversity – the plants that used to survive here and feed the animals are gone, and so too are the cereal varieties that people planted.
What maize grows is stunted and deformed
“And the drought is also affecting the wild animals,” he says. “For the first time, pumas and other wild fauna are attacking domestic animals, which is leading to conflict. People are shooting endangered endemic species.” Last week, three of Luciano’s goats were eaten by a puma.
A protected waterhole. This fetid pool is the villagers' only drinking water.
Effrain is working with an organisation, Pasos, that’s trying to help the villagers. Some have been given a potato variety that reaches maturity in just 3 months rather than 6, and the NGO is also building a large storage tank to supply water for the animals during the year. It cost more than $3000, and a lot of labour to build. But the villagers want more help.
It will be another 3 years before the new storage tank is full. Water will first be absorbed by the earthen sides and base before it accumulates.
In a meeting to elect new village representatives, they tell me that most NGOs from Europe or the US – of which there are many in Bolivia – send money that they never see. “Nothing changes. The NGOs are not helping. Nobody helps,” one woman says.
Luciano's house
The water tanker is very welcome, however, although the villagers complain that they would like to irrigate their crops, rather. But it’s certainly better than nothing, which is what they had before.
The only plants that thrive here are cacti
Meanwhile, they discuss their planned migration. Many years ago, the ancestors of these people used agricultural methods that much better conserved water and their shared environment. They planted by digging small narrow holes for each seed, rather than tilling the land with donkeys, for example, and they used mud embankments to protect the moisture around each seedling.
Local varieties of maize
Over the past 15 years, people here have all but denuded the mountain slopes, chopping trees for firewood and their cooking pots, for construction or for animal fodder. The soil is poor now and erodes quickly with each rain, or blows away in the dry winter.
Walking goats to pasture across a dry riverbed
Much can be blamed on the villagers’ poor environmental guardianship. But climate change has casued the rains to become irregular so that the farmers do not know from the first downpour whether to plant – whether the rains will last for the growing season. At the moment, they can be fairly certain the rains won’t last. And these Bolivian subsistence farmers, living in their mud houses have done nothing to contribute to climate change. They don’t even get to use the gas in the pipe that runs past their emptying village.
The villagers cook in outside ovens using wood or charcoal for fuel
Of the 9 remaining families in this village, a member of every one told me they were thinking about migration. From producing their own food, to probable begging.
Images of Sucre
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