on the lookout at isla de pescado

if i were to infer something about south america based only on this past month's travels, there is just one conclusion i could come to:

there are no south americans in south america.

ok, technically, there are about 350 million people living on this continent. but the ones that can actually afford to see the remote wilds of patagonia or the atacama desert are---in order of the frequency in which i encountered them---israeli, german, australian, british, north american, or scandinavian. (can i also just add a special note that, for being such a tiny country, isreal dispatches an impressive amount of backpackers to south america. i would say that a healthy majority of guests in our hostels hailed from isreal. fortunately, like the europeans that made up the rest of the tourist population, they all spoke english if not a handful of other languages---making us feel abashed as usual for our country's unilingualism---and were all fun and helpful travel companions.)

but as i was saying...if you just knew south america from its national parks, you would have no clue that latinos own the place, much less populate the surrounding cities. at times i almost forgot that spanish was the official language. the only exception to this trend would have been our 4x4 venture into the altiplano, during which i spent days in conversation with leo, our bolivian driver, maria, his wife, and rigoberto, the sole passenger on my return trip to chile. below is a snapshot of leo and maria on the salar, posing with our crap 1985 toyota landcruiser. it needed its tires changed three times and frequently broke down during our journey. (even leo was fed up with the heap of scrap metal, which was assigned to him randomly by the agency. fortunately, we were a patient bunch. we all got along and enjoyed ourselves regardless.)



it was leo's idea to head out early on the salar to catch the sunrise. afterwards, he even managed to coax the landcruiser out to the isla de pescado, a marooned island of giant cactuses in the middle of the salt flats that had been declared inaccessible days earlier due to the water. quite a strange sight, watching a lonely patch of land appear out of a vast sea of blinding white. true to its name, the island did indeed look like a fish rising out of the salar. during one of our stops, maria searched around and found crystallized salt gems for all of us.



all in all, i think we ended up with the ideal driver/guide/travel companions...once i get these photos printed, i promised them i would send them their way. i realized the extent to which i took my technology for granted when i couldn't get their e-mail addresses, though...leo doesn't even have a phone, much less internet access, so i either have to call his boss or mail things to the travel agency in hopes that they will eventually get to him!

....

so i guess this entry finishes up my travelogue of the southern cone tour. there weren't many updates last week because sam came down to chile for his spring break. we had an awesome time exploring la quinta region, staying close to santiago but taking in plenty of new sights, foods, and, of course, drinks. sadly, he has since returned to boston, so it's back to work for me. because i do get work done here. really. i do.