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April 13, 2004
Its one of the key things we need to live.
Yes, as in: food, water, shelter... salt. These days we
mostly get too much--along with the too much of everything else we eat--but in days of old salt was so important that its
availability actually influenced in significant ways the formation of
primary cities and routes of travel. they say that some of the
primary highways even now in the united states were originally routes of
travel to nearby sources of salt. Ever heard of a salt lick?
They put them out for cows and other animals because they need salt to
catalyze nearly every regular reaction in the body. Same with
people... only we don't generally lick it any more. Too little, too much? Too much salt can kill you. Like nearly any chemical... in high concentrations it kills. So when you see 11,000 square kilometers of it in one place, you think twice. You respect it. And thus it is... the Salar de Uyuni. The biggest salt lick on planet earth. The mother of all salt licks. This is truly a freakish place. There is enough salt here to shake on a universe of Mcdonalds french fries for a million years. It's 'demasiado sal', as they say here... or roughly translated: too much fucking salt. ** There's so much goddamned salt here that you can put your car in cruise control at 70mph, crawl out on the front hood, fall asleep for an hour, and wake up wondering whether you were in the same place or not.
**
There is only one other thing i ever saw before that is even slightly
like the salar. It was hudson bay in spring, from the window of a
virgin airlines 747. It moved me like few things ever had, and so i
wrote this ... thing about it ... anyway... i lost it for a bit, but
mom sent it back to me. It's called Ruminations Before a Peanut.
Here it is. ** The salar is so big they say that you can see it from the moon--along with the great wall of china and the Luxor hotel in las vegas. In other words... it's big. Really big. It's so damned big, that when you're sitting in the middle of it, you would swear to god that the planet you live on looks just like a cue-ball. I rest my case. * * * So gringos usually take a tour around the salar. Actually, there are a few other curios to see as well. Hot springs, a geyser or two, a lake full of flamingos (i'm sure they're not pink-- no shrimp ya know), etc. etc. So the gringos take a tour, a 3-4 day tour in a LandCruiser with as many other gringos as they can wedge in there sideways for $12 a day, and off they go... packed with food, water and gasoline for as long as they can take it. Needless to say. That didn't sound real good to me. I elected for the do-it-yourself tour, the ACME salar-in-a-box, home salt-lick kit. All i needed i figured was my trusty GPS, a ton of gas (bought an extra 70-liter tank for the back seat), 2 bottles of argentinian red-wine, 3 cans of sardines, muchos oreos, and a lot of patience--oh and of course, my trusty steed, jesse.
A friend named Gert in Sucre who runs the Joyride Cafe there (which, by
the way, serves absolutely the finest steak that i have ever tasted in my
life-- new york, texas, and yes, even argentinia included) had been
gracious enough to download all the waypoints for the salar into my GPS.
this was truly the enabling factor. without this information, or
unless you are a guide that has done this a hundred times, you are really
best advised not to attempt the salar. even with a good map (of
which only the hard-to-find bolivian USGS-style 2-quadrangle map of the
salar is really adequate) and a compass, it is still a crap shoot as to
whether or not you will actually find the island in the middle, or the
precise exit points on the soft edges where the salt is still hard enough
to drive on--or where there are artificial gravel roads built out that
will safely support the weight of your vehicle. the landy drivers
delighted in telling me so with all this preparation, and the precious waypoints in my grubby little hands, i struck out across the salar. i got through the salar all right-- and out the other side ... depending on how you go, its about a 3-4 hour trip. it's roughly equivalent to driving from san francisco to santa barbara... all on salt! i sat out on the front hood going 70mph with the cruise control on and whooped it up real good. there's not much more to really say about the salar. its big, its white, its got funny little ridges and cracks running all around it, and its made of salt. 100.000% natural salt. no additives. you can verify this for yourself if you like, i did. then, as the evening was coming, i exited back on to regular terra firma... on the other side of the salar. this has got to be one of the most remote places on earth. its 3 days of nothing after this on the way south, save for 2 teeny little pueblos that the land-cruiser crowd stops at on their way to the chilean border at volcan lincancanpur. anyway, the dirt road that exits the other side of the salar isn't always the clearest thing to follow. sometimes its a veritable highway, but sometimes it splits into 5 dusty little 2-wheel tracks that zigzag and recombine and wander around. and sometimes it disappears altogether into a wash or arroyo where you're left to find your way until the tracks pick up again.
so somewhere in there, long about 10pm, jesse fell in a hole. ok,
to be fair to her, i'll tell you the whole truth, which is that i
drove her into a hole.
thinking i probably couldn't get out on my own, i grabbed my flashlight and hiked what i knew from my GPS wasn't too terribly far into the next little cluster of adobe huts that they call a town. there was a landy parked there from some gringo tour, and so i imposed on the drivers--who were deeply engrossed in a plate of potato stew--to come give a fella a hand. they seemed a little reluctant, but after a fashion, and after finishing their stew, we drove back out the several kilometers to where jesse lay waiting. believe it or not, even with the landy tugging on jesse's backside, and me reversing in 4-wheel drive, there was no way jesse was coming out of that hole. these guys tried for all of about 10 minutes to get me free, and then, abruptly decided that they had had enough. they told me that maybe someone would be along in the morning, and that i should ask the next fella for help. then they left me out there to figure it out on my own. now i don't know, maybe these guys deal with gringos all day long, and maybe they were tired from a long day, and maybe they had to get up early the next morning, but i was left pretty damn disappointed in the bolivian 4-wheelers creed. i don't mean to toot my own horn or anything, but if some fella stuck way out in the middle of nowhere had come and asked me for help, i would have been out there all night giving a hand. and at the least i would have offered to come back in the morning with a buddy and give it another go. anyway, standing out there in the middle of nowhere, looking at my sweet honey stuck in that hole, i figured there had to be another way. it seemed ludicrous to me that i would have to spend the whole night sleeping in the back seat at some absurd rakish angle, just because i was too stupid to think of a way to get myself out of this predicament.
up till now i had relied on my trusty hi-lift jack (which to my amazement
is literally known and depended on the world over--even in little out of
the way spots down here in south america) only for changing the
occasional flat tire. but just like they
this turned out the be just the thing. i placed the jack behind the
front tire, and with a little shovel work to make some room for the jack
handle to work, i lifted her out of the hole. it was with much
anticipation that i put her in reverse and let fly.
[hi-lift hint #2341 -- don't put your jack behind the driver's front tire, and then put 'er in reverse while looking out at the back wheel]
However, the good news of course was that in return for a good whack, i also got a good move out of the hole. not quite enough to get out, but with a second lifting and subsequent grunt by jesse (this time with head retracted safely into the cabin) i was able to clear the edge of the hole. boy were those yokels with the landy surprised to see me... lol. i think the blood and everything probably made 'em feel pretty bad. serves 'em right. [handy hi-lift tip #2342... ever find you've bent your hi-lift into a rather nice banana-shape-- that is, for a banana? just stick it under your tire and back over it a couple times to restore that perfect, just-from-the-factory look]
here's a pretty crappy map of the salar. sorry. it's about 200km across at the widest point.
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stories of families of fools, out for a weekend drive in the salar, whose
skeletal remains were found years later--their car submerged in one of
the many 'soft-spots' in the middle.
i
suppose it wasn't a terribly big hole. maybe not even as big as a
mini-cooper. but it was big enough. no amount of fancy
footwork or 4-wheel, low-gear action made any difference at all.
all four wheels were spinning like the bejeezus trying to haul her heavy
butt out of that hole, while her undercarraige simply lay flat on the
dirt. 
talk
about in all the 4wd mags that i've never read, i decided to try to see
if there isn't a way i could use this trusty workhorse to pick the front
end up a little out of the hole so i could try giving her a little gas
again. thank the lord i had my custom hi-lift bracket (thanks to
tony maniago for a terrific fabrication job on that) which i could use to
find purchase and lift up on the otherwise sloping, undercut surface of
the rocker panel just behind the rear wheel. this little bracket
that we built lets me lift anywhere that i want to between the two wheels
on the side of the car--and by leveraging back in against the actual
frame rails of the chassis, is strong enough to support lifting the
entire side of the scout. otherwise, i am really left to being able
to lift only from the front or the back. 
the only problem is, nothing happened. well, nearly nothing.
i mean i could hear the rear wheel(s) spinning and all, but i sure wasn't
going anywhere. so what do i do? well, i stick my head out
and crane around to look back at the rear wheel of course! that
is--of course--because i'm a complete idiot and i forgot that the top of
the 'ol hi-lift jack was set up to come a whippin' by the front door as
soon as i got any traction whatsoever. i suppose in the day time i
would have easily seen what was about to happen. but at night, with
everything dark, i just plain missed it. well, i missed it until
the rear-wheels got traction and that ol' hi-lift jack came a whippin'
along and cracked me in the back of the skull, that is. and it
wasn't just a little tap-tap-tap, 'scuse me,
need-to-get-through-here-if-you-don't-mind crack. it was a
full-blown gunshot going off inside my cranium. WHACK! It hit
me so hard I thought I probably was 3/4 dead, with the rest only a tweety-bird
chirp away. 
