As one accustomed to sloping out bed as late as possible, one 5am start is a rude slap in the face.
A succession of them, particularly after a bad night’s sleep, is a mild form of torture where you get breakfast between beatings. But when the choice is between missing a few hours of sleep and making your own way across the most inhospitable landscape in South America, the options soon come into very sharp focus. It’s like the surface of the moon.
Only with less air.
We left the colonial charm and comfort of Salta and within half an hour where bouncing down a dirt track to the unaltering landscape that we had to cross for the next week. Northern Argentina and Southern Chile and Bolivia are dominated by an inhospitable hinterland occupied only by scrub, Lamas, local madmen and lakes the colour of spilt paint.
Oh, and mountains.
The area is vast and almost exclusively unpopulated. We drove for hours without seeing another car or any signs of habitation. Occasionally there was an attempt at cultivation but this had failed and all that was left were the wind-blown furrows of futile labour. By the water there were deer in twos and threes and sometimes a hardy flock of Llama or Al Paca eked out sustenance from the barely nutritious heath grass that is the only success story in the thousand kilometres ahead of us.
We climbed and climbed with ears popping periodically. Dave hinted at altitude sickness but was keen not to tell us too much as its effects are commonly regarded as being magnified by knowing about the symptoms in advance of contracting them.
As we hit 2,500m he spelled it out. Headaches, nausea and breathlessness may affect any of us at any time, even the seasoned altitude travellers. Oxygen was stored behind the rear seats in the event of an emergency but hospital was a possibility. When up in the mountains there was no help and those who developed the condition would have to tough it out until we reached Uyuni, three days hence.
As we hit 3,000m, the first headaches began to appear and by 3,500m, we stopped periodically in the shadow of giant escarpments, looking for all the world like out-sized termite mounds.
As we gawped at the natural wonder, the people retching behind the back bumper never even looked up.
We wound up a spectacular road.
You could almost hear the cries of the Top Gear Locations Director as Clarkson subjected him to ritual disembowelment live on air for missing this one from the supercar road-test. Back and forth the road turned, doubling back on itself time and again like the coils of an angry snake.
As we reached the upper section buses crawled far below us like steel and glass ants, glinting in the sunshine. Above us, lorries appeared from behind the bluffs and the wind carried down the sound of their engines screeching as they inched up the incline at little more than walking pace.
Ivan was at the wheel and overtook one after another, while we held our breath, praying that everyone coming down the hill was exercising a similar degree of caution as those coming up. The precipice beckoned and if we had come off worst in a collision, the truck would not have stopped cartwheeling for 2000m of vertical drop.
The seatbelt talk that Dave gave us bat the outset seemed academic at this point.
I jumped out from time to time to video the truck grinding its way up the hills and round the turns, regretting it only when, panting and breathless I jogged the short distance to climb aboard, the thinness of the air burning my lungs and making my eyes water like an astringent.
Finally we reached the top and parked up by the 4,170m marker.
Andean types in ponchos and big hats, craned their necks into their collars while the cold wind whipped over the top of the enclosures they had erected from stones and tarpaulin. They carved small stone medallions for three Argentinian pesos but didn’t seem to get enough custom to make it worth their while.
We all paused for photos at the marker and scurried back to the truck to escape the biting gale, the nausea abating temporarily for some, in the face of the chilling blast that funnelled up the mountain gorge.
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