My first encounter with the Chilean was spotting him, hauling booty, across the giant frozen deer lick (if you didn´t grow up in Michigan, maybe it escapes you that this is a referance to a giant block of salt). He was wearing some sunglasses-goggle-things that made him look strikingly like a grasshopper. The carload of us took to hooting and hollaring at him, giving him props for taking on such an expidition by bike. Later we actually met him while our 4x4 stopped off on the "Isla del Pescado", a fish shaped island peppered picturesquly by cacti. We learned he had actually come all the way from Chili, on his bicycle. And then again he and I met, the night the three-day tour concluded, and I was aboard my next overnight bus to Potosi. I´m sitting there waiting for departure and guess who stumbleds aboard, hagarded as ever? Having removed his sun-goggles, it was clear and comical to see that the combination of relentless high-altitude sun, its intensified glare off the blaring white salt flats, and his buggy eyewear had produced serious facial tan lines that made even the worst farmers tan look normal. Now, goggles down, he had an incredibly impressive liking to a racoon. We became instant friends.
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