Leperous Guidebook

The title comes from a spam email I received today. I have had, what could be called, some leperous guides, but not guidebooks. Honestly, the things that come into people's heads.

Today I have lots and lots to say and not much time to say it. The keyboard has stickers covering some of the letters. I like stickers, they give this crazy place some sort of normalacy. Not sure what that says about my life.

I am in Uyuni, a "kind of crappy" town on the edge of the National Reserve in Bolivia. I will give the fuller version next time, when I have enough energy to sort these days out in my head. Suffice it to say I have been sitting in the back of a 4x4 for three days, staring out the window, coughing, and listening to one tape of local music, whose only discernable lyrics are Bo-lllii-vvvah". It's been an amazing few days.
We are all sick, from varrying ailments, not the least of which is the altitude, although that seems to be lessening as time passes (it's been at least 12 hours since I've had a nosebleed!).

I have taken an impractical number of photographs in the last few days, but of course don't have the technology to share them with you from here. Somehow I feel anything I say about the salt flats will make it real to you at all, without a visual.

For the record I want to say the sky really is enormous. That's the thing that strikes me most going through my pictures is that whatever I thought I was photographing is only a tiny part of the frame: some tiny mountain or river and one endless endless blue wilderness. I guess really it's the same size everywhere right- other things just get in the way.

I must say these few days really took me by surprise for their intensity. The car rides have been very long, the company very giddy and cliqueish, the cold very cold, and the sleep... what sleep? I have spent the last four hours daydreaming about tonight, arriving in Potosi at 3 in the morning and washing my hair, which is possibly the grimiest it has ever been. Do not assume that because I am doing this I am not paying full attention to the really spell-binding scenery rushing back. For the first few hours of the first day I could do nothing but gape. However this cannot be sustained over long periods of time, and suddenly my mind is everywhere at once, with a third of a meter's room to stretch.

Must go now. Don't want to. Have so much writing to get out of my system. Hopefully I will get at least some computer time tomorrow.

N.