Bolivia is often referred to as an explorer’s gem mine. This week I got to experience one of Bolivia’s natural beauties when I hopped on an overnight bus for my off day and visited the Salt Flats in Uyuni. Uyuni is a vast, spread out town. It seems to more or less sit between a few snow capped mountains and a huge stretch of flat land that is sprinkled with wild alpacas.
There is a train cemetery outside the edge of town that sets a better feel of being trapped in an old wild wild west movie. Engines and train cars rest in the dirt. Some still hooked together true to the course they were heading, and others derailed where the tracks have gone missing. The rusted skeleton wears brushes of graffiti from people who have visited, and is more or less ornamented with the people of today who are scaling up, down, and across it’s pieces.
During the half hour car ride further out from the tracks I could see distant mountains that appeared to be floating due to the casted mirage of sky at their bases. Between the blue sky and brown earth another layer of pure white intruded. Salt. Lots and lots of salt. And then I was there. The vehicle’s tires moved through the slushie substance and took us further and further out until we were surrounded on all sides. What started as an unsubmerged white field gradually became a mirror that was steady covered in two inches of undisturbed water for as far as the eye could see. Or couldn’t see.
I actually had no idea what my eyes were looking at out there. It was a complete illusion of ground and air. The water reflected the sky and they merged into one with no existing horizon. I was inside of one of those infinite rooms that are portrayed in the movies when one finds themself inside their empty imagination. But this empty room was painted with Heaven.
“This is where Heaven meets Earth”, I thought.
Either that, or the people of olden days were right about the Earth being flat and this is the trail to the sheer drop off where everything ends. Or begins. I walked deep into it watching others do the same. They seemed to be floating in nothingness. They seemed to be walking on still waters into the clouds. Even when I could make a good guess as to where the horizon should be, my eyes couldn’t find it. So I did what I wanted to do; I allowed my logic to slip away and let the dreamer in me believe it was true.
This was where Heaven meets Earth, and if I wanted to venture into enternty I had only but to walk further ahead until the car behind me was swallowed up by the distance. And then, there I would be, inside of an infinite stretch of beautiful nothingness. Only the occasional rising of a mountain would exist anywhere. I wonder where it would take me or how far I could go. I have found this place to get lost in. I didn’t know it existed so flawless compared to photographs.
This is where Heaven meets Earth, I’m sure of it.
