The Desert Speaks

The frigid high altitude desert of southwestern Bolivia is home to a tough bunch of plants and people.

These hearty desert dwellers harvest salt and they march with llama caravans the same way their ancestors have for thousands of years.

Join us as we journey to the highest desert in the world.

Major funding for The Desert Speaks was provided by The Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Desert Program Partners.

And by Arizona State Parks.

music Deserts are dry but not necessarily hot.

In fact, the highest inhabited desert in the world, in the Andes of South America, it's downright frigid.

The altiplano, which is the name given to the desert valleys of Bolivia, is the oldest continuously populated area in the New World.

My friend, Argentine archaeologist Axel Nielsen, has been studying there for a couple of decades.

Ninety percent of Bolivia lies inside the tropics and half the country has a tropical climatehot, wet and low altitude.

What we're interested in is the other half, the west.

There it is high, dry and cold, a true desert.

Our journey begins in Potosi.

In the 17th century during the Spanish colonial era, it was the third largest city in the world, and the richest.

It was also the highest.

And it still is.

Even today nearly all the residents are indigenous people.

These narrow streets give a sense of intimacy.

You can hear your voice echo from the other side.

And we don't have anything like it in the United States.

But I would like to see some more sun.

I mean I get cold walking down these streets.

Yeah, that's a result of the laws of the Andes.

You know in the 16th century the Spanish colonial authorities they prescribed a very rigid model of how towns should be built.

You know they had to have the essential plaza, the church in front of it and they applied this everywhere with, full of disregard to local condition.

The United Nations knew what they were doing when they declared Potosi a world heritage site.

The architecture is almost beyond description.

Yes, especially the churches.

Oh, there's so many of them.

Yeah, I think it's more than 40 of them.

Each one of these churches would take decades to build.

So the architect that started the building.

He might die before it was done?

Exactly.

So the Indian artisan would take over and that's how local Indian art style developed.

Because these artisans would start creating and adding their own stuff to these churches.

These streets were not designed for wide buses and wide vehicles.

I know.

That's why many streets don't have any sidewalks.

They can barely fit a bus or even a small car.

I suppose a cart would do fine, maybe even cart two directions.

I guess they were wide enough for carts, yeah, and human traffic, and llama caravans.

That's right.

You can tell where a person comes from based on the shape of hat, especially the women.

Here in Potosi they use that straight white wing hat so when you're at market for instance, you see all these different hats so you can tell where a person is coming from and you can predict what kind of product they're bringing to the market.

So it's not just a head covering.

It's also part of a very important symbolic costume, overall costume.

Yeah, it's like an emblem of identity or something like that.

I think it works very well because hats are very visible unlike other pieces of clothing.

Okay.

Seems kind of ironic, but this marvelous colonial city is today I guess the launching off place for expeditions, for trips into the Andes, particularly the western Andes of Bolivia.

Yeah and the southern altiplano.

Yes, that's true.

And that's where the llama herders still carry on the old traditions.

It seems that the 21st century ends as you pass the city limits of Potosi, back to where life is pretty much the same as it was five hundred years ago.

Here the people still speak their native language, they barter using the crops they raise and they venture into the cold and windswept altiplano.

The climate in parts of the altiplano is ideal for raising barley.

Most of it is used for animal feed, some of it's bartered or sold.

Barley is an Old World crop that has fit well into the high-dry climate of the altiplano, supplementing the traditional quinoa and potatoes.

Crop production is still along family lines.

Agri-business hasn't made it here yet.

Barley and other crops are harvested in May, the Andean fall, when we're lucky enough to be here.

It's not just a matter of raising the crops, it's also getting them to market.

Llamas were domesticated for the first time four thousand years ago by the last hunters and gatherers that lived in this region.

Probably from the beginning they used the llamas to carry burdens from one place to another in their seasonal rounds throughout the year.

But it's only with the coming of sedentarism these three thousand years ago approximately that llama trains and long distance exchange trips became very important to the people of the Andes.

It is because the Andean environment is so diverse that people living in these high altitude deserts need it to complement their economy, their products with resources that come from the lowlands.

This is peppers, maize, squash, beans and other resources, even coca leaves.

The word culture is very important for the people of the Andes from very old times.

There are two hundred families that live around here that raise about thirty thousand llamas.

We use them to exchange potatoes for salt.

We make a trip every year and therefore are able to sustain our families.

When you live in the high Andes at over fifteen thousand feet above sea level, there's nothing you can grow.

So that's the reason we exchange goods.

It takes us about three weeks to make the trip with the llamas, in addition to two weeks of preparation; in total, five weeks.

On a second trip we barter for corn, wheat and other grains to feed our family.

These are traditions that have been handed down over the centuries.

Before I leave my house, I make an offering.

And when I get to my destination, I make another.

And when I return home safely, I make a final offering.

The herders are very fond of the llamas.

You know, the llamas provide them with wool, with fiber which they use for all their clothing, their hats, the saddlebags they use to carry the corn back from the valleys, the ropes with which to tie the loads on the back of the animals.

There are two special bags where they carry their coca leaves that they chew on the way when they walk.

Every llama has a name and the herder knows every single llama's name which usually depends on the color of the feet.

They address the llamas as if they were a part of their families.

You know, they will call it dear, please move.

You never throw a rock at a llama to make it walk.

You ask please, walk forward.

You have to get to the next campsite.

So it's very interesting how these people have developed these human-like relationships with their animals.

The llamas are extremely resilient creatures.

They are hearty and can travel eight to ten hours daily.

That's about 45 kilometers a day.

These are just male llamas on the caravan.

The females are used only for breeding.

I've got three hundred male and three hundred female llamas.

The red serves as a brand.

Each owner has his own brand.

Mine is red.

Other herds of llamas are marked with green, blue, depending on who owns them.

Another way to brand the llama is to make a mark in the ear with a knife.

See it there?

Up here not only do we speak Spanish but also our native languages of Quechua and Aymara.

All of us grew up as herders.

That's all we know.

It's the only way to transport goods in the Bolivian altiplano.

We inherited this way of life from our ancestors.

Our fathers did this.

We do this.

And our children will keep doing this.

It's our tradition, our culture.

And it will be forever.

The llama train is heading down to the lowlands.

Had we followed them as Axel has done, it would have taken us more than a month.

We're continuing upwards to the frontier town of Uyuni at the edge of the largest salt lake in the world.

And from Uyuni on it's wild, desolate, inhospitable and magnificent.

I know that Uyuni is the jumping off place for the wilderness expeditions into the Lpez but why is the town here in the first place?

Well, this is basically a railroad town.

It was founded by the end of the 19th century when they built the railroads and it's a very important crossroads for trains.

Because you have the railroad that goes from Argentine south, north to La Paz and they meet here, the other branch that goes to the Pacific coast to Antofagasta.

You know when I think of a railroad town I think of people from all over.

It looks to me as though almost all the people here are indigenous.

I think it's just great.

Yeah, well, most of Bolivian population is indigenous basically.

We've got enough tangerines here to last for a week and a half.

Axel's hand woven alpaca shawl.

That's a beautiful.

It's llama.

Llama, yes.

In the old days they used to work with this a lot but nowadays they use just the factory stuff.

But they are little by little doing it again.

Well, we're going to need it.

I expect the temperature tonight to get down to around fifteen degrees Fahrenheit.

If we're lucky, it'll stay a little hotter than that but we have to be prepared for it.

And then in the day it gets up to sixty degrees.

So there's a big fluctuation.

We start taking off layers and you don't know when to stop.

Here in Uyuni, which is a little town, we're at a little over twelve thousand feet and I'm not quite used to it yet.

We'll be going up to about fifteen thousand and I'll be huffing and puffing.

But the air is very clear and the stars are as bright as anywhere in the world.

A very important thing for high altitudes is te de mata de coca, which is coca leaf tea.

Everyone here says that it will help you get used to the high altitude.

And since I've been down here I've been doing it and so far I'm still alive.

And that's better than some people can say.

Coca leaf tea.

So where do we head now from Uyuni?

Well, we have to go north along the eastern edge of Salar de Uyuni to Colchani which is a salt producing community.

Is that where the guys cut the blocks?

Yeah, that's right.

So we'll get a chance to see that hopefully.

And then we cross the salar.

How long will that take?

That will take like three hours, just about three hours at full speed crossing the salar to the west.

Three hours to get across a lake?

Yeah.

And that's one of the smallest parts you can cross is salar.

Oh, that's huge isn't it?

That's a huge lake.

Salar de Uyuni is the largest flat in the world and probably one of the highest too.

It's at twelve thousand feet or thirty seven hundred meters altitude.

It's in the southern Bolivian altiplano.

And actually it's an old Pleistocene lake that dried about ten, twelve thousand years ago.

So the salt pan you see now is just a remnant of that old lake.

Salt is a necessary element for human life and human diet.

So it's been a very important resource since pre-Hispanic times so we know for a fact that since the beginning of sedentary life in this area which goes back to three thousand five hundred years ago, people start needing in many places salt.

When they settled probably people had less access to food stuff that would have salt in them so they would have to supply the diet with extra salt.

Probably that was the time they started trading salt.

For the whole region.

How far away would people come to get salt?

Well, you know people, the herders, the llama herders that lie in this area that's part of the altiplano, they would trade the salt away say to the valleys in the eastern Andes and would take it as far as five hundred kilometers away to the edge of the jungle.

That's three hundred miles.

Yeah, just about.

And what do they trade for?

Well, they would barter it for corn.

You know you can not grow corn here in the altiplano because of the altitude whereas corn is the main crop in the eastern valleys.

So the pastoralists will trade the salt for corn and they still do it today.

Like for a household they will take say twenty, thirty llama loads of salt and they would exchange it just for the same weight of maize and that's enough maize for them to survive for the whole year and then the next year they will travel again to complete the cycle.

Do they still do that?

Yes, they still do in some parts here of the altiplano which are away from roads and they go all the way to valleys because otherwise they have to compete with the trucks that also distribute the salt nowadays.

The salt blocks you cut out here, where do they end up?

Here in Bolivia?

Yeah, but they're also exported to Peru and Chile.

Before eyeglasses and sunglasses were available the old timers wore pieces of black llama skin to give them eye protection.

They cut slits in them and that way they got protection from the sun.

Whenever the cutters begin to chew the coca leaf, they let a leaf fall to the ground.

It's a very ancient custom that they believe is in honor of the Pachamama, an ancient goddess of the indigenous people.

They also believe that doing it will bring them good fortune and make their work go well.

The blocks that you cut are perfectly square.

You've had a lot of practice out here, haven't you?

Yeah, more than twenty five years of practice.

Each block weighs approximately twelve and a half kilos.

About twenty seven pounds then, and it's pure salt?

Yeah, it's pure salt.

I agree.

So in five days work how many pieces do you cut?

So in five days work how many pieces do you cut?

Five hundred.

In Calchani people start working in salt extracting at the age of ten more or less.

And they keep working til, you know, the age of fifty, sixty.

They work ten, twelve hours a day, from sunrise to sunset.

I talk to people that have been for forty years working on salt making every single day of their lives.

This is Rofredo's casita.

He lives in here for five days while he's working.

The house is built completely out of salt blocks and to seal it he takes some salt water and rubs it over the salt blocks and it makes for a mighty secure small but very comfortable place for him to live.

He's got his bed, he's got his little kitchen here.

And he will seal the door with boards and with some sheepskin and none of the vicious wind enters in.

So he's very comfortable.

The way of extracting salt has not changed a lot since pre-Hispanic times.

In fact, some of the axes they use today that are made of metal, we have found stone blades, which are very similar to those axes.

So we know that they are working salt pretty much the same way they were doing it two thousand years ago.

Now we've been driving over this salt lake, this Salar de Uyuni, more than a hundred miles.

There's not a lot to look at.

But if have you noticed the different patterns you get where it's dried out.

Hm-mmm, yeah.

Like hexagons, right?

Yeah, a lot of those hexagonal shapes that only are found when there's no disturbance of the drying flow.

Well, I guess there's not roads.

Are there any markers to tell you where you are?

No, not at all.

I mean, the way people navigate through this, a lot of the Uyunis by looking at the mountains.

So they try to drive towards certain mountains they know and that's the way they guide themselves.

I guess the way sailors do using a fixed point.

See, in the last twenty years especially there has been a boom of tourism in this area.

More and more people are attracted by salar.

Currently there are about twenty thousand people that come to Salar de Uyuni every year.

Most people are European tourists.

They come to Salar de Uyuni, they cross it and they go to the lagoons in the far southwest of Bolivia.

If you need any more evidence that this is a desert, just look around the edges of the salar.

I was tickled pink to see these pasacanas growing here at over twelve thousand feet.

Well, I think these are the highest ones I've seen myself.

In fact they are very useful here because I see now there are no trees at this altitude.

So this is the only wood people have to build roofs and you know they make a lot of things with the cactus wood.

With the wood, yeah.

The other thing that pleases me is I see how fat and sassy these guys are.

They are fat.

Of course they have these very long spines and maybe that helps them here to cope with the low temperature and maybe the low rainfall.

Yeah, well, actually it gets really cold, you know.

In the winter, cold winter morning it can get as cold as twenty degrees below.

So that's, man that's about twelve, thirteen degrees below Fahrenheit.

Yeah, that's right.

And yet here they are, flourishing.

Why here's a spiny critter.

These things can be lethal.

But these spines are a good seven to eight inches long and needlelike.

And I know the native peoples in Argentina use them for needles.

Have you heard anything about that?

Well, we find them in archaeological sites, in the excavations.

We find needles made of this.

They even made the hole, you know, to pass the thread.

Well, they'd be perfect.

And each one has several thousand of them so they never hurt for needles.

Who needed steel?

One thing we know about these pasacanas or cardones as they're called, is that they cannot tolerate much rainfall so they have to have desert conditions.

So I expect that, since we're on the edge of the salar, which is also desert, it's perfect.

They pick up about three months of rainfall, they know it's never going to rain again for that year.

Yeah, and precipitation is pretty low here, you know.

It's only two hundred millimeters and down to one hundred millimeters as we move west.

Being where the desert meets the sea is a stimulating experience.

But there are a lot of places in the world where you can do it.

If you want to see giant cacti at the edge of an ancient sea, at twelve thousand feet above sea level, there's only place you can do that and that's at the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.

Daily life in the high altitude desert of southwestern Bolivia goes on pretty much like it has for thousands of years.

A tough life but not without its rewards, celebrations and its incomparable landscapes.

Join us next time on The Desert Speaks as we step back in time to people of the highest desert in the world.

But all I see is lawyers, abogado, all over the place.

Is there kind of a zoning for lawyers.

You know I think that's also related to old Spanish organizations.

They tend to localize the single guild into a certain part of town.

You think lawyers are a guild?

I guess you're right.

Yeah, I guess so.

But here you find, like haircutters would be all in one block.

And then the next block would be carpenters.

And the next one would be healers.

And the next one would be a mercado, you know, marketplace.

All of these zones within the area of the town.

Major funding for The Desert Speaks was provided by The Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Desert Program Partners.