Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

Seven cans of meat paste, two kilos of pasta, three packages of crackers, one kilo of oatmeal, and thirty-six liters of water crowded the flanks of our industrial porters. Soren, I admit, carried the bulk of it. Within the narrow strip of sand-infested quinoa farms that separated the two salares, we ransacked the only sizeable village of its entire sotck of cold consumables. If the Salar de Coipasa was a formidably empty section, the Salar de Uyuni would be an inter-planetary mission.

From the shore of Uyuni, fifty kilometers separated us from our destination that day: an isolated island overrun with cacti, liquified by the light-bending mirage that swept over the salt surface. Compass in hand, I confirmed our bearings with the pictographic map that beautifully, if inaccurately, depicted Southwestern Bolivia with shaded earth tones and precision cross-hatching. The landmarks were evidently an afterthought. With a familiar rush of uninhibited planar freedom, we launched into the void that would consume our reality for the following few days.

For four hours, we veered back and forth on our sloppily-plotted route, comforted by the impossibility of losing our way with a singular landmark on the horizon. As before, Soren would cruise ahead - 5, 10, or 20 kilometers - and I would plug along in solitude. When engulfed in such strange terrain, one gets the urge to glorify diversions that, in other places, might seem childish or mundane. To illustrate this, I stashed my bike and took to spinning dizzying circles - for ten minutes. The horizon maintained perfect consistency as I twirled like a lunatic, and at one point - eight minutes in - I had the sensation of being on a giant, horseless merry-go-round. It was the white platform that was spinning, not me.

Games aside, I carried on, finding Soren crouched beneath a customized umbrella. In the middle of the flats, shade is as uncommon as sugar, but thankfully, Soren had crafted a rickety device to soothe our singed skin. When moving, the breeze was enough to cool my bones, but as soon as I stopped, the radiation assaulted me from every direction with 360 degrees of relentless ultraviolet exposure. Lunchtime came, but, according to tradition, we had to do the Meat Paste Dance before we indulged in our pureed pork-beef. Games commenced.

The ¨Island That Never Got Any Closer¨ finally did. For the first time in fifty kilometers, we experienced an elevation gain, but not more than ten meters to our elected campsite. To our great fortune, a neatly stacked pile of aged cactus beckoned us to burn it. That night, we slept in an aura of campfire aroma, dreaming of off-white garnishes.

From the saddle in which we slept, we watched the sun rise directly over our next destination. For a moment, before the sleep flaked from my eyes, I thought we were looking down on a blanket of clouds, through which only a few mountaintops punctured the fluffy sheet. In past experiences when I have, indeed, experienced that nebular phenomenon, I have wanted to run out onto the untainted plane and slide along the white condensation. This time, I could satisfy that fantasy.

Approaching the ¨Island That Attracts Tourists,¨ I met a familiar specimen clad in grungy garb, perched atop two wheels. This guy had been cycling for 20 months from Alaska, en route to Ushuaia, and had just crossed the 30,000 kilometer mark. There were volumes of such accounts enshrined on the island, bursting the spines of four, tattered accounting books. For the remainder of the day, I pored over the interesting anecdotes of past cyclists, hikers, and pilots that have made the pilgrimage. That night, I crept over to the other side of the island and camped beside another blazing cacti-fire.

The next day, our route bore no recognizable landmarks, so we navigated solely by the magnetic pull of our compass needles. Once again, the emptiness consumed me and I took to experimentation. To begin with, I craned my neck upward and dove into the deep, blue sky. For thirty minutes I rode like this, not once glancing at the terrain I passed over. Next, I perched myself high on my saddle and rode without hands. Big deal - although I did so for twenty minutes - often closing my eyes for ten seconds at a time. These activities, among others, can be realized in such desolation.

Approaching the opposite shore of Uyuni, the Jeep traffic became dense, relatively speaking. Twice in one hour I saw the distorted silhouette of a beetle-like trajectory, far in the distance. As we approached the Salt Hotel, their frequency increased, and I began to witness the peculiar activities of salt-bound tourists from a closer, recognizable vantage.

Depth perception ceases to operate in a world of blue and white, much to the advantage of the surrealist photographer. As I passed a pair of parked Jeeps, I witnessed the process by which a Japanese schoolgirl, from behind the lens, will be eaten by an unconcerned cannibal, slowly spooning mouthfulls of innocent flesh. Elsewhere, a frying pan full of unsuspecting gringos was simmering on an imperceptible flame. Soren and I constructed similarly fantastic photo ops, given the few props we had.

With red dirt in sight, we rolled through the last remaining kilometers of salt-pack with grateful, gritty smiles. Over the past five days, we had traversed over 250 kilometers of untainted sodium chloride. Once ashore, I relished in the fecundity of familiar turf, but relented the fact that now I would be bound to previously tread tracks. Everything after cycling the salares will seem normal, no matter how diverse the vistas. Nothing compares to nothingness because everything is usually something.