The Uyuni Salt Flat, Bolivia. (Erin O’Mara photo)
My first taste of avocado happened on the windy, freezing Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia.
I took a packed night bus from La Paz, every passenger cold and worn down by adventure. The bus was an old school bus, the faded lettering of the U.S. town it came from peeking through the weathered overcoat. I couldn’t sleep at all. My high school trick of wedging my knees against the green seat back in front of me, capturing an upright fetal position, didn’t work. I spent the ride listening to snores and rolling with every bump in the road.
We arrived in the pitch-black morning hours, and the bus driver left and locked us in the bus for our safety. A few people banged and tried to pry the door and, when it wouldn’t budge, huffed back to their seats. Without air forced through the moving bus, our collective breath was trapped, condensing on the metal ceiling and raining down on us.
I took the night bus because I’d been warned the town was icky, so the best plan was to travel overnight, see the flats and take a train out that same day.
We trekked across the flats, wind burning our cheeks. I was wearing nearly all my clothes: every fleece, my windbreaker, multiple T-shirts and two pairs of socks. The mittens I bought in La Paz were saving my fingers. I’d just recovered from food poisoning and my stomach was so raw, the only food I’d had in days were the crackers I bought in the bus station. That didn’t feel strange. Food wasn’t that easy to come by.
I’d spent months traveling and everything was awe-inspiring and novel and exciting. And normal. I’d learned to expect the unexpected; I’d learned my job was to adapt.
On one bus ride, I sat in a school bus seat with a family of five. They insisted and didn’t stop insisting until I joined them. They taught me something about generosity and personal space.
I walked down streets with high-voltage power lines strung at shoulder height, and I ducked under them to jaywalk. I rode in a cab with a rusted-out floor. I sat in the back seat, legs tucked crisscross style, my arms tight around my pack, watching the road beneath rush by. I was in a jeep that caught fire twice, and when we put the fire out each time, we got back in and kept going.
Is this outrageous or unnoteworthy? How do you label the thing you do — the thing everyone is doing so they’re not left at the side of the road?
The salt flats were extraordinary. Where water pooled, nature formed a pristine mirror. The sunrise was pink and gray, and the hazy sky melted into the white, salty ground.
There was a train graveyard — the end of the tracks, literally and figuratively, and the rusted, broken locomotives haunted the horizon. It was stark and beautiful and freezing and mind-boggling.
And that avocado.
Our guide stopped and pulled puffy white rolls and avocados from his sack, sliced the rolls and, after adding avocado to the bread, bent down and took a pinch of salt from the ground — the salt we’d driven over and were standing on — and seasoned each sandwich.
It was the most satisfying meal I’ve ever had. Wind whipping salt into my eyes, fingers frozen past feeling, my brain starved for nutrients and sleep. I will never forget that first bite. I will never forget the instant my stomach healed and my soul sang.
We caught the sunset before we sprinted for the only train out of town. The white salt bed held and reflected all the colors. It seemed to be directing the sky. As the bed turned pink, the sky followed; as the bed turned blue, the sky followed.
When I got back to the U.S., “our normal” seeped back in and I restarted doing all the stuff we all do — navigating career ladders and politics, figuring out finances, health care, saving or not, and calling my family to say hello. I can’t see them all the time because they live hours or even a country away.
I have two angel figurines on my bedside table, a gift from a young woman in Nicaragua who lived in a tiny, broken house with her children, parents, grandparents, sisters, and their kids. She was young, scraping to feed her family, and she worried about my poverty. She hoped these cherubs would manifest the wealth of family for me that she already had.
I live in a place where power lines stay (mostly, in the summer at least) in the sky. Is that lucky or unnoteworthy? Maybe just different. I, just like everyone else, am doing my best not to be left behind at the side of the road.
And when it’s all too much, I think about the perfection of that avocado and how this bumpy, foreign fruit feels like home.
This Cinco de Mayo, I’ll be making guacamole and, since we’re all in this together, I’ll share the secret recipe: ripe avocados, onions, tomatoes and cilantro to taste. Mash the avocado, but not too much. Chunks are satisfying. Add the onions and sea salt. Stir, but not too much. Be sure to dry the cilantro and sluice the seeds and juice from the tomatoes before chopping. Add both, soft stir and sea salt again.
Finally, add a liberal dash of love. Just because.
Erin O’Mara lives in Harpswell and serves on the Harpswell News Board of Directors.
