Uyuni to San Pedro

I thought later about the surrealism of long bus rides during the night. Looking out the window, I couldn't tell the stars from city lights, nor could I tell snow from salt, because the hole in my belly had swallowed my weary consciousness, and the hole in my weary consciousness had swallowed my sense of reality.

The salt flats in Bolivia are the biggest salt flats in the world. The surface of the earth is a crust of salt that spreads as far as the eye can see. It's whiteness and dreaminess inspired me to write a little poem:

I found a place

to cast a net

and fish for dreams

of cloud, or lace

and race across

this lovers' land

a wedding dress

of silver frost

Back in the township of Uyuni I took a wander around the streets, taking myself away from the main tourist drag for a little bit. I found myself in a school zone, just as school had ended for the day and the streets were swarming with children in uniform. The older ones wore gloomy or indifferent looks on their faces and dragged their feet, in groups of three or four, clutching their books, the girls twirling their hair and giggling behind girly magazines. The younger girls skipped along the footpath holding the hand of a parent or older sibling, with sparkly pink barbie backpacks, still young enough to have a bounce in her step at the end of the school day. A lot of the kids had cold popsicles. I suddenly had a pang of nostalgia, remembering the times when I'd get home from school in the summer months, very tired, throw my backpack down in the livingroom and head straight to the freezer to see if there were any iceblocks left. Remember those packs of long icypoles in different colours and flavours? There was lime, and strawberry, blackcurrant, lemonade...

How hard and long, and yet in hindsight how incredibly easy, those days of being a young kid were. The last time I had felt this nostalgic for my childhood was not long ago, when I was taking a walk in the Bolivian pampas. I had picked a mushroom and was transported immediately back to the time I truly believed in fairies.

Is that what travelling does? Does it draw into a dark, quiet closet of childhood dreams, packed to the top shelf with fairies and elves, daisy chains, Robin Hood bows and arrows, dark and dangerous forests, dragons, hidden treasures, and all those memories of being small - brushing close to your skin as you crouch in that closest - whispering in your ear things that suspend all belief?

Is it something to do with being small again in a big world? Or being an explorer as you were when you were a child, only the space under the dining table is now Argentina or Chile, the broom closet an entire city, backyard fence now stretched further to become national borders and coastlines?

Or maybe, when you are travelling, you just have a lot more time to think.

To be continued