Sailing though the Galapagos with Mom

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By David Abel . Globe Staff. 11/13/2011

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, Ecuador -- With her nails perfectly manicured, lips freshly painted, diamonds on her ears and neck, and with an appetite for nature limited to the golf course, my mom gingerly followed the trail from one lava rock to the next, sidestepping hundreds of marine iguanas snorting saltwater, finches pecking at the bloody placenta of a sea lion, and a covey of blue-footed boobies nuzzling with their spear-shaped beaks.

None seemed the slightest bit perturbed by our presence as we meandered past, my mom sweating in unnecessary layers of rain gear on this sunny morning and me wondering how she agreed to join me on this journey to the Galápagos, what remain among the world’s most remote islands.

‘‘I’m not much for mountain climbing,’’ she said as she ambled up a gentle slope, holding her wide-brimmed, lemon-colored hat as it flopped in the breeze.

When I reminded her that the island was basically flat, she smiled and said, ‘‘Well, I’m not much for rock climbing, either.’’

There are more forbidding places to take your mom than on a cruise through the Galápagos Islands, the famous archipelago 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, where Charles Darwin honed his ideas about evolution and I began to wonder how many of my mother’s traits I had inherited and whether I had benefited from natural selection.

The idea of a trip with my mom, Syd Abel, which I worried might be an exercise in masochism, began when she asked if I would help with the family flower business after my father died last winter and she turned 65. She wanted me to meet some of the growers in Quito, and I suggested we take the opportunity to do some mother-son bonding in the Galápagos.

I took the lead in finding the right boat to ferry us though the chain of more than 20 islands and islets, which are spread across nearly 17,000 square miles of turquoise waters along the equator. The options included budget boats with multi-bunk rooms and cold showers, so-called tourist-class boats with more amenities, and a range of luxury cruises.

I might have leaned toward the budget cruises had I been doing it on my own, although no excursion through the Galápagos could be described as cheap. (Tourists have to pay $100 just to leave the airport.) When I found two options that seemed to offer a mix of comfort and adventure, I e-mailed the links to my mom for her to choose.

‘‘I’m afraid none of the above,’’ she replied.

After some prodding, we agreed on a 16-passenger boat called, pleasingly enough, Eden, which promised hot showers, an experienced guide, and freshly cooked meals. About a week before leaving, we transferred more than $2,000 to a travel agent I found online, which included a round-trip flight from Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, to a small island in the Galápagos called Baltra.

When we arrived in late September, a time when the flow of tourists starts to dwindle and waves in the Pacific swell, we descended onto a parched landscape formed some 3 million years ago during a series of volcanic eruptions that left a scree of lava rock and little that could grow besides cacti.

After paying the entrance fee and passing a scrum of tourists, we found a man holding a sign with our names, dispelling our concerns that we had fallen for an Internet scam. We followed him to a bus, where we joined dozens of others for a short ride to a water taxi to Santa Cruz, the second largest island in the Galápagos. The man then drove us across the island, an hourlong ride through deserts and rainforests, to one of the archipelago’s few inhabited areas, a growing seaside town of about 18,000 residents called Puerto Ayora.

Crew members were waiting for us in a dinghy and took us across a harbor crowded with tour boats, allowing us a glimpse of everything from the unpainted, listing hulls of budget vessels to yachts that looked like schooners. When we spotted the Eden, a sturdy ship with spacious decks and newly painted in white, my mom exhaled with relief.

There were large frigate birds — with their iridescent black feathers, red throat pouches, and long, forked tails — hovering above, a school of puffer fish visible in the clear water, and a pair of sea lions lounging on the stern.

‘‘This is going to be exciting,’’ Mom said.

The young captain helped us aboard and showed us to our below-deck cabin, which had a private bathroom, chocolates, and fancily folded towels on our small beds, and ample room to store our bags. It seemed comfortable, but it would be close quarters.

My mom didn’t appear impressed, and she flashed me a look that suggested I was asking her to spend the next four days in a prison cell. But then she surprised me. ‘‘It’s clean, and it’s nice,’’ she said. ‘‘No complaints.’’

The staff served us a freshly prepared lunch, the first of a series of finely wrought meals, and then we joined other passengers for a rainy hike to see the lava tubes and giant tortoises of Santa Cruz.

‘‘Well, this is adventurous,’’ my mom repeated several times, as her white sneakers became slathered in mud and her blown hair turned curly.

We passed dozens of tortoises, some chomping on grass and others seemingly asleep, their heads retracted in their shells. Our guide, Ruben Montalvo, said many appeared to be more than a century old.

As we descended into a cave carved from lava, Mom reminded me that hikes weren’t her thing. ‘‘I like golf,’’ she said. ‘‘But I can roll with the punches.’’

That night, the crew passed around pills to prevent seasickness before we left for Floreana, the archipelago’s sixth largest island, known for its flamingo lagoons. My mom decided to take a sleeping pill instead, but that was no match for the hours of heaving as we crossed the choppy sea.

She was wide awake when my alarm rang at dawn for our first swim. The crew provided wetsuits and snorkeling gear, and Montalvo took us in a dinghy to a cove teeming with sea lions, giant turtles, and other large creatures. As we slipped into the cold water — Mom decided to stay on the boat — several sea lions began to swim alongside us, performing somersaults and other graceful acrobatics, and the turtles floated around as if in slow motion.

We spent the rest of the day exploring a water-filled cave — Mom declined to descend into the darkness — snorkeling with tropical fish, and watching blue-footed boobies dive into the surf like missiles, spearing prey with their beaks. At one point, my mom suited up in a wetsuit with the rest of us. She followed us into the water, tentatively. But it was a tad colder than she would have liked, and it had been a long time since she had breathed through a tube in her mouth.

The effort lasted only a few minutes, though she insisted it was much longer.

The next day, after another all-night voyage on bumpy seas, we awoke to views of the rocky beaches of Española Island, the most southerly spit of land in the chain. The crew dropped us on a landing where hundreds of marine iguanas seemed to be in a collective coma, lounging inertly on the warmth of black boulders, their long tails offering the only signs of life. Few took notice as we stepped over them on our way to the beach.

Our path, however, was blocked by a troop of sea lions, a much sprightlier species. They had such little fear of us that they insisted on crossing the narrow trail at the same time we did, forcing us to make way by standing in bushes. On the nearby white sands, we found wide-eyed, playful sea lion pups nursing, crimson-colored crabs basking in the mist of the sea spray, and seemingly every kind of bird, from yellow warblers hopping about to mottled hawks sharpening their lethal talons.

Farther inland we came across a colony of albatross, their furry hatchlings camouflaged to blend in with the surrounding rocks. In pairs, the adults nestled in a field, primping each other before shuffling off to a prominent cliff, spreading their enormous wings, and gliding into the misty wind. Nearby, we came across a colony of masked boobies guarding eggs and blue-footed boobies marching about in their comical courtship dance.

‘‘A lot of nature, for sure,’’ Mom said, approvingly.

‘‘They’re beautiful — very graceful,’’ she said of the birds. She wasn’t as much of a fan of the iguanas. ‘‘Very ugly, and smelly,’’ she said.

Later that morning, the crew took us to a place called Shark’s Rock, where I had envisioned the possibility of offering my mom as bait, if things didn’t work out. Again, she chose not to join me and the others snorkeling.

‘‘Not my cup of tea,’’ she said of swimming with the white-tipped reef sharks that inhabit the area. ‘‘I just don’t fancy sharks. That’s your thing, but thanks anyway.’’

After an hour of swimming that included a close encounter with one large, toothy predator, which seemed more interested in the shade of a small cave than dining on tourists, we emerged to freshly baked cookies and other pastries aboard theEden.

There, Montalvo, 37, a trained naturalist who has been leading tours for more than a decade, explained how the islands are changing.

He said the water is now warmer in the winters, offering fewer nutrients to the abundant marine life, and breeding patterns from sea lions to boobies seem to be changing. He said many colonies of birds appeared to be significantly smaller than when he began visiting the islands as a child, which he attributed to dwindling food supplies.

‘‘It’s a combination of climate change and the increasing human presence,’’ he said.

This year, about 175,000 tourists will visit the Galápagos, more than four times the number in 1990, according to the United Nations, and some of those inevitably make poor decisions. Montalvo said he has seen tourists try to pet the wildlife. While they seem tame and exhibit little fear of humans, they know how to protect themselves. Montalvo said he has seen sea lions bite hapless tourists who pad on their turf and boobies strike those who have come too close.

‘‘The more this happens, I worry, the more their behavior will change,’’ he said.

A few hours after we reached the final island of the trip, San Cristóbal, where we circled a stark rock formation off the coast and watched pelicans prowl for breakfast, the crew brought us to land and took us to the airport.

We exchanged hugs, and my mom looked content, a beatific smile banishing any remnant of anxiety.

‘‘Well, it’s been quite an adventure,’’ she said.

As our plane took off, she held my hand in hers, which she began to stare at with alarm.

‘‘I need a manicure,’’ she said.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

If you go: Galapagos Islands

There are no direct flights from abroad to the Galapagos. American, Continental, LAN, and other major airlines fly from Boston to Quito for between $700 and $1,200, depending on the season. There are also direct flights to Guayaquil, which is closer to the Galapagos and less expensive than flying from Quito. LAN, TAME, and AeroGal offer flights connecting to the Galapagos from both cities, for $350 to $500.

There are hotels in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz, and it’s possible to book day trips from there to the other islands. But most tourists take 4- to 8-day cruises, which range from budget boats with multi-bunk rooms and cold showers, tourist-class boats with more amenities, and a range of first-class and luxury cruises.

The Eden

www.galapagoscruise.com.ec/eden-yacht

Rates per person for this 16-passenger boat range from $700 for a four-day cruise to $2,800 for eight days, depending on the time of year and how far in advance you book. Last-minute deals purchased a few weeks before departure can be considerably less expensive. Deals are also available by booking in Puerto Ayora.

Sites to search for cruise options:

http://www.galapagos.com

http://www.galapagosisland.net

http://www.galapagos-inc.com

http://www.galapagosislands.com/galapagos-cruise.html

http://www.galapagosonline.com/Cruises/Galapagos_Cruises.html

Egypt: Before the Revolt

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By David Abel . Globe Staff . 4/15/2011

CAIRO — In historical terms, it was eons before Tahrir Square became a symbol of liberty.

A month before a popular revolt here swept out decades of authoritarian rule, when the only sign of dissent we encountered was grumbling about a system impervious to change, a clean-shaven young man with a bright smile would not allow me to politely decline what seemed a kind offer.

“You are my brother,’’ he had said with affable persistence a few hours earlier over the phone, though he had never heard of me before that moment. “Get your bags together. You’re staying with me. I have a flat ready for you.’’

My wife, Jessica Leffler, and I had reached Ahmed Adel, a friend of a friend of a friend, shortly after our dawn arrival in the center of what was then a different kind of chaos, when the first tinny call to prayer rings from minaret to minaret, as if trying to muffle the less pious bleating of taxi horns and police whistles. We had agreed to meet at a cafe just off Tahrir Square — an otherwise obscure intersection in the middle of the city — where we had hoped he would help us arrange a tour of the pyramids.

The meeting would be our first lesson in the difficulty of deciphering intentions, calculating risks, and calibrating how to haggle during a 10-day trip through Egypt.

When we met Adel at the cafe and invited him to sit for a drink, he told us he had a car waiting and insisted we come to his house, where he said his mother was preparing dinner. More than an hour later, we arrived at his concrete building in a village with dirt roads, heaps of burning trash, and lots of stray animals — well south of Cairo.

“This is where you’re staying,’’ he insisted as he brought us a plate of fruit and rice-stuffed cabbage leaves in a spare, drafty room lighted by one fluorescent bulb.

As the evening wore on, Adel put me on the phone with his cousin to discuss our pyramid tour. The cousin had a package that went well beyond what we wanted — for nearly $1,000 a person. It was at that point — a moment similar to what we would experience repeatedly as we ventured across Egypt without the convenience of a package tour — that we insisted it was time to go.

Still, for nearly every encounter fraught with dubious motives, we experienced random acts of kindness, such as when we came back to our hotel that night and the owner, Mohamed El-Naggar, greeted us with a tray of cakes and candles for my birthday. “You are welcome,’’ he said, repeating a mantra we heard frequently.

At the least, as we parried touts hawking everything from spices to camel rides and police pushing illicit tours of ancient temples for a small payment, we honed our negotiating skills. That helped as we made our way from the traffic-choked maze of Cairo to the vast emptiness of the western deserts to the southern cataracts of the Nile River and ultimately to the Sinai Peninsula.

But first we had to learn how to cross the street in Cairo, where there are next to no stoplights and the traffic police hold little sway against the crush of diesel-chuffing vehicles. The key, we were told, was using the residents as human shields and following them as they waded through the traffic.

With that knowledge, we made it to the city’s important sites: the Egyptian Museum, which features mummies and relics of King Tut’s tomb; the towering mosques of the Islamic section; and the Khan al-Khalili bazaar, where we devoured our first tahini-drizzled falafel, downed fresh-squeezed juices, and browsed for baubles. We also visited less frequented sites, including the Art Nouveau-styled Chaar-Hachamaim synagogue, one of the few remaining Jewish temples in the Arab world, and Al-Azhar Park, a strangely pristine oasis of gardens and fountains that provided an especially peaceful perch at sunset, when the city’s pollution gilds the dusk in a fiery haze.

We devoted a day to exploring the pyramids of Giza, Saqqara, and Dahshur, where with throngs we gawked in awe at the precise lines of the massive crypts, some of which have defied the harsh sun and pummeling winds for more than 4,000 years. We also marveled at their proximity to the city and the surrounding squalor.

Afterward, we took a six-hour bus ride to Bahariyya, a small town built around an oasis in the Sahara, where we joined an overnight jeep tour of the Black and White deserts. Our guide, Hamad Hamdy, drove more than 100 miles per hour down a desolate road, past black, volcano-shaped hills, to the Dalíesque spires of the White Desert. We spent the night sleeping on the cold sand beneath a canopy of stars and a full moon.

In the morning, as the large, glowing moon disappeared in a cloudless sunrise, we noticed a bushy-tailed fox prowling for crumbs from the chicken dinner Hamdy had cooked over an open fire. “They’re part of the tour,’’ Hamdy said after we noticed its footprints beside our sleeping bags. “We feed tourists to him, if we don’t like them.’’

When we returned to Cairo, we found our way through the crowded metro to the overnight train to Aswan, the most southern city in Egypt. We awoke the next morning in the balmier climes along the Nile and sought help from the nearby tourist office in arranging a two-day sail on a felucca, a traditional wooden sailboat.

We experienced the same problem as elsewhere. Hakeem Hussein, the director of the tourist office, said he would arrange a trip for us, but it would cost more than five times what our guidebook said we should pay. “Your book is out of date,’’ he insisted, pressing us to hurry.

We ended up paying half the price Hussein quoted, which was still nearly double what others on our boat had paid. It was another frustrating experience, but the anger dissolved once we set sail. A cool breeze swept over the old boat, propelling us past reed-covered cliffs and skinny cattle. Later, when we docked for the night, our hashish-smoking captain took us to his concrete house, where he offered us sugar-filled tea and his son sold us a wooden crocodile.

The felucca ride ended abruptly early the next morning. We floated across the river and the captain told us to carry our backpacks up a steep bank, where a minibus was waiting to take us three hours north to Luxor, the tourist haven often described as “the world’s greatest open-air museum.’’

We stopped along the way to see the towering temples in Kom Ombo and Edfu, both of which retain ornate hieroglyphics and towering columns. We passed multiple police checkpoints — the legacy of terrorist attacks over the past decade — until we came upon a large, menacing portrait of the recently deposed long-ruling President Hosni Mubarak in dark sunglasses, the welcome sign to Luxor.

When we arrived, the minibus driver asked for triple what we expected to pay. As we argued, a dapper man with designer glasses and a sleek suit appeared out of nowhere and insisted, despite our protests, that he would pay the difference. “You are welcome,’’ he said, refusing to take our money.

We spent two days combing through the vast array of temples and tombs. The size and grace of the temple complex of Karnak, which once employed some 80,000 people and until recently welcomed nearly as many tourists daily, was overwhelming.

When we finished exploring the antiquities, we caught a five-hour bus to Hurghada, an aging resort on the Red Sea, where we boarded a 30-minute flight across the bright blue water to Sharm el-Sheikh. From the city on the southern tip of the Sinai, we bargained with a hotel shuttle driver to take us to Dahab, a rocky outpost about an hour north on the rugged coast, where we finally had a few days to relax.

We spent the time lounging at pillow-filled restaurants along the water, where we negotiated prices for dinner; diving along untrammeled reefs and beside barracuda, where the only sharks were those wheedling us for more cash; and climbing to the top of Mount Sinai, where again we had to haggle at hovels along the way to stay warm.

At the end, exhausted yet enlightened, Jess and I rolled north along a mountainous road in a minibus, drifting between sleep and stress about the final challenge of negotiating how to cross the border into Israel.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Sloshing up Mount Sinai

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By David Abel . Globe Staff . 4/15/2011

MOUNT SINAI, Egypt – Well before the cutting winds and frigid rain made our bones feel like they were wrapped in ice, I persuaded my wife Jess, against her better judgment, that it made more sense to climb this hallowed ground at night rather than the day.

We were in the desert, among the driest places on the planet, and it seemed like it would become a magnifying glass for the sun during the day. Moreover, we were advised that the sunrise over the biblical land was like watching the almighty deliver the Ten Commandments all over again, or something like that.

With that image, an admittedly peculiar pull for a pair of nonbelievers, we took our seats in a crowded van for a late-night, two hour ride from Dahab, an old fishing village on the Red Sea that now attracts legions of backpackers. When we arrived at the foot of the mountain at 1 a.m., there were few stars to see and the moon was hidden by a wall of clouds.

Even more foreboding was the parking lot, which was crowded with scores of buses that unloaded hundreds of tourists who planned to make the climb at the same time. It was also where we met Nasser, our required Bedouin guide, who insisted we walk beside him and shout “Nasser’s group” every few minutes to ensure we didn’t lose him.

The hike began on a wide trail with a gradual ascent and a soft breeze. As the rock-strewn path wound around the 7,500-foot mountain, it narrowed and became increasingly steep, making it a challenge to share with all the others, especially the camel traffic. With only thin beams from our headlamps to guide us through the darkness, it was hard to spot the lumbering animals coming from both directions. On more than one occasion, a shout from Nasser kept me from being stomped.

About half way up, we stopped at the first teahouse, where we took shelter from the strengthening winds and donned hats and gloves. We had reached the point where the exertion no longer checked the dropping temperature.

The higher we climbed, the stronger the winds blew. We passed more teahouses, where the soup and tea beckoned, and saw camels resting on their knees and fellow climbers passed out.

At about 3 a.m. and still far from the summit, the cold wind brought an icy drizzle, fogging my glasses. The leisurely hike had become a test of endurance and ability to ward off fatigue.

We stopped at another teahouse an hour later and nobody in our small group seemed eager to leave. Half of us conked out and the rest huddled for warmth. Jess looked at me with anguish in her eyes.

Still, not wanting to miss daybreak, we pushed on to the hardest part of the climb – 750 uneven stones that make up the path known as the Steps of Repentance. As we ascended, the drizzle became a heavy rain, which turned the staircase into a waterfall, drenching our shoes and soaking through supposedly impermeable layers. Misery is a word that only approximates what we were feeling.

About an hour before dawn, we reached a plateau with more teahouses, where vendors barked at us to leave when they noticed we just wanted to stay dry. As we sat in one shelter, where everyone seemed to be shivering and dripping, we rented an old wool blanket that smelled like camel dung.

We were so cold and tired that the stench didn’t faze us, and we wrapped it around each other like it was a godsend. Then we passed out.

Moments later, which felt like eons, there was some commotion. Someone had seen a streak of light in the sky, and we scrambled out to make the final ascent.

We climbed the final set of slippery stairs slowly, still clinging to the blanket. The sky brightened but the rain persisted.

At the top, the girth of the clouds came into view. Through the mist, we saw a horizon etched by jagged boulders and the silhouettes of holy mountains, a stark panorama that spread for miles in every direction. It was a sight to behold, the kind of splendor that makes it easier to fathom religion.

But the awe was fleeting as the rain pelted us and the wind pierced our soggy blanket.

We waited for the sun as long as we could, but it never came. All we got was a damp light dabbed up by all the clouds.

Still, as we made the long walk down, we felt more than cold and regret. Even in the freezing rain, even with our minds clouded by fatigue, something more seeped through. It was, I would say in retrospect, a sense of the sacred.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Seeking Peace in the Golan Heights

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By David Abel . Globe Staff . 2/11/2011

GOLAN HEIGHTS, Israel – In this disputed land, secluded waterfalls are bound by minefields, rolling, flower-filled hills are etched by tank treads, and dairy farms border live-fire zones, close enough that the rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons accompanies the mooing of cows.

The dark soil, rich from ancient volcanic eruptions and millennia of cultivation, had been a battleground for years between Syria and Israel, which seized the strategic highlands during the Six-Day War in 1967 and parried a Syrian effort to retake the area in 1973. The legacy of that conflict remains visible in the remnants of old tanks rusting on the hillsides and more modern arms at the ready nearly everywhere else.

Over the last three decades, however, this windswept territory with a temperate climate has been transformed into a breadbasket of Israel, giving rise to kumquat and apple groves, spicy cabernets and tangy olive oil, sweet milk chocolate and dainty pastries. There are now artist colonies and multimillion-dollar industries, hot springs and ski slopes, and settlers and soldiers who drink tea and eat falafel at shops owned by local Druze, the thousands of Muslims who live here and still identify as Syrian.

“This place is really heaven,” said Tzvi Raish, 31, who has spent the past four years working at the Golan Heights Winery, which is expanding and planning for the future as if it were in Napa Valley. “Everything here moves at a better pace. It’s quiet and slow. It feels like the definition of peace.”

I had long read about this small patch of earth from the comfortable distance of New England, where the equation to end the madness of the persisting conflict seemed so simple: Israel should trade much of the Golan Heights for a viable peace agreement with Syria, just as the Jewish state and Egypt did with the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel also occupied in 1967.

But the clarity of such a straight-forward formula, a version of which nearly came to fruition during peace talks three years ago, began to dissolve after I spent a few days last month roaming from the serene waters of the Sea of Galilee in the south to the foothills of the snowcapped peaks of Mount Hermon in the north.

In my short time here, it became easier to appreciate how difficult it would be for Israel to cede the valuable high ground to its longtime enemy and how both sides could harbor such an intense attachment to the beauty and bounty of this stark land, where about 40,000 people now live, almost evenly split between Jews and Druze.

Indeed, the prospect for a peace agreement anytime soon became even more doubtful in recent weeks as a wave of unrest swept through the Arab world, raising concerns here about the durability of Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. While some have suggested that peace with Syria could bolster the previous agreements and muffle simmering tensions between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which borders the northern Golan, many here who were dubious before now feel it’s even more unlikely.

Among those I met who long for the stability of real peace but question whether such a pact is possible was Tamar Sorkin, 59, an artist who has lived here since 1983 in a barbed wire-surrounded settlement that now has 150 families.

Like many Israelis who have settled in the Golan, Sorkin first came when she served in the Army. “I loved it,” she said while at work in the shop where she sells her colorful paintings. “I decided to stay because I thought it would be a great experience to build a new place.”

She has trouble imagining leaving. “This is my home,” she said “But I really want peace.”

A few weeks later, after the revolt in Egypt, she wrote me an email expressing her deep doubts. “In this hectic region, where everything can change in a moment, it would be a sound policy, I think, to be very cautious,” she said. “Of course, I want peace now, but in this neighborhood of ours, to make peace you have to carry a big stick, and in the meantime live as normal a life as possible, making wine and olive oil and thinking about what gift to give my grandson for his birthday.”

I came to the Golan after spending a few weeks traveling through Egypt and Jordan, where my fiancée Jess and I met a number of people who – despite the years of peace – still regarded Israel as their enemy. Still, there were others who insisted that, even if the peace remained cold, it made sense and would endure in new regimes.

I wanted to know what the people here thought and how they co-existed even though their countries are still technically at war.

Our trip to Israel started in the southern city of Eilat, where we had arrived after walking across a demilitarized, no-man’s land from the adjacent Jordanian city of Aqaba. Unlike the border post in Jordan, the one in Eilat was adorned with images from the 1994 peace treaty signing in Washington, including one endearing photo of King Hussein lighting a cigarette for former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

We took a five-hour bus ride from the beachside city in the Negev Desert to Haifa, the country’s largest city in the north. The next afternoon we rented a car and drove from the old port on the Mediterranean coast along a modern highway to the Galilee.

After a few hours in traffic, we arrived at night under a canopy of stars that mingled with the twinkling lights of Tiberias along the west coast in Israel proper and the settlements on the Golan’s rocky plateau to the east. We followed a winding road along the large lake, where Jesus was said to have walked on water, and climbed the steep hills of the Golan before coming to the gate of Givat Yoav, one of the territory’s first Israeli settlements founded shortly after the Six-Day War.

It’s a sleepy place of squat homes and dairy farms and we had come to stay in a yurt at a Mongolian-styled tent village built by Sara and Benzi Zafrir, both of whom have lived here for decades. After inviting us to their house for dinner, they talked about the history of the land and told us where to find ruins from the many civilizations that had ruled the region, including ancient Israelites, Romans, Assyrians, and Persians. We also discussed what the land meant to them after so many years here and whether they would ever agree to leave.

“I have two hats on this question,” Benzi Zafrir said. “I live here, and this is my home. I don’t want to leave. But I wear another hat. That hat is that I live in Israel, and if the government tells me we must go for peace, well, we will go.”

As we drove from the hills in the south to the mountains in the north, stopping at wineries and chocolate makers and passing military vehicles and war memorials along the way, we met settlers and soldiers, recent immigrants and shopkeepers, each of whom talked about their mistrust of the Syrian regime and fears that a peace agreement would once again allow Syria to use the high ground to shell Israel. Others said they were satisfied with the status quo and noted that the Golan has been among Israel’s least violent borders since 1973, when Syria launched a surprise attack here on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.

But we also met Druze who said that while they were comfortable here and had good relations with their Jewish neighbors, in the end, they wanted this land to revert to Syrian control, as it had been since Syria declared its independence in 1946, two years before Israel.

“I have complicated feelings and the future is a very hard question,” said Naeif Gorzallden, 45, who sells sweets in a village near Mount Hermon and has lived in the Golan all his life.

Like many Druze who live here, he speaks Hebrew and welcomes his Israeli customers, but he lacks a passport and wants to be reunited with his family across the border.

“This is a developed country and there is the rule of law here,” Gorzallden said. “But Syria is my culture. I think it would be easier if it was part of Syria.”

Sahar Safadi, 27, who owns a nearby restaurant and also grew up in the Golan, thinks he would earn a better living if the land remains part of Israel. But he, too, feels disconnected from his culture and explained the hardship of seeing his family.

“Because I don’t have Israeli citizenship, I don’t have a passport, and that makes me stateless,” he said. “That’s not right, and I have to say, this is Syrian land. But the only answer to solving any of these questions is peace.”

He added: “More than anything, we all want peace.”

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

SIDEBAR:

The Depths of the Western Wall

By David Abel

JERUSALEM — The giant slabs of limestone, which have remained standing for two millennia despite repeated efforts to demolish them, make up the most sacred structure in the world for Jews, the ancient wall that once protected the Temple Mount.

Since at least the time when Roman legions destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD, the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, has been a source of longing and lament for Jews around the world, a focal point for their bygone glory and their yearning for a new unity in a Third Temple.

The area around the wall — or Kotel, in Hebrew — had been off-limits to Jews for many years before Israel seized the Old City in Jerusalem from Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967. Since then, it has attracted Jews from around the world who come here to pray, leave notes for God, or celebrate a bar mitzvah or wedding.

Over these intervening years, Israeli archeologists have excavated the area and found that the wall — which is considered holy because it is as close to the most sacred chamber of the First and Second Temples as Jews can worship — is just a small portion of what amounts to a 1,600-foot-long retaining wall that was hidden underground as succeeding generations built over it.

The painstaking work of exploring the underworld along the hidden portion of the Western Wall has led to perhaps the most interesting and controversial tour in Jerusalem, one that has to be made by appointment.

In 1996, when Israel began allowing visitors into the tunnels below the Temple Mount — where Al Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the third most sacred site of Islam, now stand — it sparked violence that left nearly 100 people dead. Muslims feared the Israelis were burrowing underground in an effort to destroy the Dome of the Rock, where they believe the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

The tunnels have enabled Jews an even closer place to worship the so-called Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary of the First Temple, where the Ten Commandments were said to have been kept in the Ark of the Covenant and near the Foundation Stone, which Jews believe was the first stone God used to create the world.

It also allows tourists a perch to see the breadth of the wall and the area’s long arc of history, everything from a Byzantine pool to a Roman street to an aqueduct built by the Maccabeans in 2 BC.

The tour starts with a “secret passage’’ that opens to a vaulted hall with evenly cut stones that were hewn at least 2,000 years ago, during the time of the Second Temple. It passes rows of massive, less evenly carved stones along the Western Wall, some weighing more than 600 tons. There are remnants of ancient gates used to enter the Temple Mount, a medieval cistern, ancient quarries, pools, and a dam.

There is also an audiovisual exhibit that includes a mockup of the Temple Mount on which stood the First and Second Temples — before they were destroyed — and shows how the area has changed over the centuries.

The narrow, dimly lighted passages are filled with explanatory signs and guides who help synthesize the long, complicated history. There are also devout Jews facing the wall and praying throughout the tunnels.

A passage from a tour brochure sums up the importance of the area for Jews: “Here at the foot of the Western Wall, more than any other place on earth, the memories of the Jewish past mingle with the hopes of the Jewish future.’’

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Roaming through the Rockies

Click here for more pictures of the RockiesBy David Abel . Globe Staff . 10/15/2010

BANFF, CANADA – The way the sun gilded the emerald waters seemed like a beckoning from the great beyond – that increasingly remote space outside our expanding electronic bubbles.

It was the peak of summer, amid another draining heat wave, when I was loafing online and happened on a website featuring this idyllic image of snow-capped mountains and bright flowers ringing what looked like a secluded lake in a kind of alpine, sun-splashed utopia. I had no idea where it was, but I knew I had to go there.

That night, after a few minutes of research, I learned the placid lake was in the Canadian Rockies. The next day, my fiancée Jessica and I booked tickets to fly there a few weeks later. 

“We need this,” she said, as the open windows of our apartment made it warmer inside.

It would be a 10 day break from the heat– in fact, there would be nights when it was so cold we wrapped ourselves in multiple sleeping bags – that took us across 1,800 miles, to peaks higher than 6,500 feet, through seven national parks, two time zones, and more glacier-fed lakes than we could have imagined.

Our trip began in late August with a cross-country flight from Boston to Spokane, Wash., where we arrived well after midnight our time, rented a car, loaded our camping gear, and drove an hour east to the Idaho border. We spent the night at a crowded campground, with freight trains running past every hour, but sleep wasn’t the priority. 

We were out early, if groggy, for our first stop: Coeur d’Alene, an old mining city beside a large lake in northern Idaho. We stopped at a bed and breakfast and warmed up over organic tea, homemade, fruit-covered waffles, and apple slices glazed in a cinnamon sauce, a meal we savored over the coming days as we lived mainly on gorp. Afterward, we drove around a well-appointed downtown, stocked up on supplies, and took Interstate 90 east to Montana, leaving Pacific time for Mountain time. 

It felt liberating to cruise at 75 mph along a highway with one of the nation’s highest speed limits – until we got a speeding ticket. (The irony meant nothing to the police officer, who cited us a few minutes after we exited the highway, with too much exuberance, perhaps.) We drove more carefully over the next four hours as the road wound across rolling hills, beside large lakes, and through small towns with wineries, hot springs, and shops offering more permutations of buffalo jerky than I thought possible. Before dusk, we made it to Whitefish, a century-old station on the Great Northern Railway that has become a stop for legions of tourists on their way to the nearby Glacier National Park, where we were headed.

As we ate at a restaurant in a downtown that looks like it was plucked from the set of an old Western, the air outside cooled and dark clouds filled the sky. By the time we made it to the car, thunder claps seemed to shake the surrounding mountains and it appeared we had entered a monsoon. It didn’t feel like the best night for camping.

We debated whether to skip our reservation at a campground in Glacier, but as we rolled through the driving rain and called nearby inns listed in our guidebook, we found few options. Despite a gloomy forecast, we decided to stick with the plan. We passed through the western gates of the park, where signs warned that we were in bear country, and found our lakeside campground. There would be no fire or Smores; we set up our tent in the rain, using our car’s headlights, and wrapped ourselves in multiple layers for the night. 

By the next morning, the rain had given way to a drizzle, and despite the low clouds and thick fog, we witnessed the crystal grandeur of Lake McDonald, the park’s largest lake, where a rainbow of colorful rocks glinted like jewels from below the clear water. 

After buying a canister of bear spray, which looked like a fire extinguisher loaded with potent chemicals, we spent the next few days hiking in raincoats along muddy trails shaded by towering cedar and pine trees. We followed the meandering Going-to-the-Sun Road, passing waterfalls and rapid-filled rivers, as it climbed up to Logan Pass, the park’s highest drivable point, where patches of snow covered the mossy earth and we came upon a waterlogged bear lolling about on the road. The shaggy predator looked at us with little interest as we drove by slowly and waved.

As the sun finally broke through the clouds, we got our first glimpse of the jagged peaks that give the Rockies their name and the remnants of the vast tracts of ice that give the park its name. (There are now only 25 glaciers left that are larger than 25 acres, down from 150 recorded in 1850, and those that remain are meager relics. If the planet warms at current rates, scientists expect the park’s glaciers will disappear within 20 years.) We hiked to the top of several mountains, at one point trudging knee-deep through snow while wearing shorts. We passed bighorn sheep and ospreys and kept a hand on the bear spray as we crossed berry-filled trails with fresh scat. Bears, we learned, thrive on berries.

After three days in Glacier, we drove north and crossed a lonely checkpoint into Canada to explore Waterton Lakes National Park, which with Glacier became the world’s first international peace park in 1932. We had hoped to catch a boat across the sapphire-colored lake in the heart of the park, but heavy winds kept the boats moored. So we spent the day climbing a steep trail, passing overfriendly squirrels and a less gregarious elk, until we came upon a pristine lake in a clearing near the summit. As we hiked down, a large double rainbow arced over Waterton Lake, forming something of a halo over the Prince of Wales Hotel, an elegant 83-year-old chalet on a bluff where we later sipped hot chocolate during high tea. 

That night, under an oversized moon, we drove north toward Calgary. We stopped to camp in a small town on the outskirts of the big city, and the next morning, we did a quick tour of the glass towers and enclosed walkways of a downtown burgeoned by the local oil industry. Then we headed west for the reason we came. 

We drove across vast prairie lands and through rolling hills until we were again back among the soaring peaks of the Rockies. The weather was different from the city, colder and stormier, and a bank of clouds hung over the mountain-etched horizon like a fedora, lending it a certain mystery.  

Yet when we arrived we discovered something familiar. Unlike American national parks, those in Canada often have cities at their center, which is where our trip to Banff National Park began, in the town of Banff, which has thousands of residents and everything from large buildings and luxury hotels to a Starbucks and Thai restaurant. 

We spent the day hiking on the periphery of town, along one well-beaten trail suspended over several miles on the side of a deep canyon. It took us through a series of increasingly large waterfalls, with the tallest cascading nearly 100 feet into a translucent pool, to a host of small springs called ink pots, where we watched a steady stream of bubbles rise through the turquoise water. That night, we soaked our swollen feet in swimming pool-styled hot springs, which like too many things in Banff in the summer was crowded with tourists.

Still, it was easy enough to separate from the throngs, which we soon found in an empty campground far from town, where the only lights came a canopy of stars that looked like sparklers shooting through the darkness. 

The next day we drove north to find that virtual oasis I came upon on the Web. We first had to pass through another urban center and park in a crowded lot. When we found the lake, its gentle waves splashed the shores of another fancy hotel, and unlike the cropped photo, a beatific scene that seemed to promise a sweet solitude, the milky jade waters seemed to attract as many tourists as Niagara Falls.

And for good reason. At the bottom of a large bowl sculpted by moving glaciers, with pine-robed mountains all around, Lake Louise was even more impressive than the post card picture I had seen online. No matter how many people walked along its rocky banks, the cool breeze washing over the still waters oozed a soft serenity.

After hiking to the base of a nearby glacier, passing smaller, similarly colored lakes in the mountains above, we drove a short distance to Moraine Lake, Louise’s little sister, which once graced the back of Canada’s $20 bill. Similarly set at the bottom of rocky, snow-topped peaks, Moraine’s cobalt waters mirrored the cloudless sky, making the light at sunset seem to float as it sparkled.  

It was hard to leave such splendor, but there were more sights to see as we drove further north on the Icefields Parkway into Jasper National Park. At one point along the 150 mile drive, where we watched one massive glacier melt before our eyes and glimpsed the breath of the Rockies as they cut through the clouds as far as we could see, I had enough of gazing from afar. 

I wanted a more immersive experience.

When we approached yet another inviting lake, I decided to heed its call. The sun was shining and the water, of course, looked just right. After a few moments of wavering, I leapt off a small cliff and glided into the stinging cold of the bright blue water, every pore of my body screaming with delighted terror. It was a short but quenching swim.

We spent the last few days taking the long way back to Spokane, passing through Yoho, Canada’s Glacier, and Mount Revelstoke national parks. We left the highway for back roads, at one point boarding a ferry to cross a river. We visited a farmer’s market where we ate Indian food and drove miles down an unpaved road to find a hidden, riverside commune built around natural hot springs.

As dusk fell on our last night, we began to worry that our meandering would leave us stranded, unable to cross the border. Some border posts in the area close shortly after nightfall. 

In the end, the one we chose remained open and we cruised through the night back into a land where distance seemed longer measured in miles than kilometers.

Near midnight, a few hours before our flight back, we filled up for the last time, returned the car, and checked into a hotel near the airport. We took long showers – savoring the heat after so many frigid nights – and discovered our phones and Internet connections were working again.  

In the warmth of the climate-controlled room, back with our glowing gadgets, it was comforting to know the world remains more vibrant than the simulacrum of pixels on a computer screen. 

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Chile: The Longest Country

By David Abel . Globe Staff . 3/21/2010

GOLFO DE PENAS, Chile – Well before we boarded the old cargo ship, before it plodded past the protection of the mountainous fjords, before the skies turned stormy and the seas swelled, we were warned.

We were warned not to expect a cruise. We were warned about the smell of the cattle often herded below deck. More than anything, we were warned about the inevitable nausea.

So when the smoky, diesel engines of the 360-foot ship prodded us into the open sea and the rolling waves began sloshing us around, we expected to feel it in our stomachs. What we didn’t expect was that the pummeling would last nearly a full day – through difficult-to-digest meals, perilous showers, and a lot of restless sleep – and that Dramamine would be no cure for the persistent urge to hurl.

“It’s called the Gulf of Punishment for a reason,” said German Balboa, the ship’s second mate, who like most of the crew seemed impervious to the queasiness as he monitored our course for southern Patagonia.

The passage through the Pacific was one leg of a 15-day trip my fiancée Jessica and I took late last year from the top to the bottom of Chile, a sliver of land that extends no more than 109 miles between the Andes and the ocean and stretches 2,700 miles from the sprawling salt flats in the north to the south’s snowcapped volcanoes – longer than any other country.

Our journey began some 14,000 feet above sea level at a lonely border post in the cold, dry mountains of southwestern Bolivia, where we had spent three days on a road trip through the desert. We stood in a field of rocks for about an hour, with strong winds nearly barreling us over as we waited with heavy backpacks for a bus to take us across the border.

When we finally left, the difference between South America’s richest and poorest country was apparent immediately, a contrast that makes it easier to understand how Chile fared as well as it did after being rocked by a massive earthquake last month. In Bolivia, we had traveled for hundreds of miles without roads, but as soon we crossed into Chile, out of the barrenness of the high mountains, there appeared a modern highway – with smooth pavement and clear dividing lines, reflecting signs and guard rails, even carefully constructed turnoffs for runaway trucks.

It was clear, even in this remote corner, that we had arrived in a developed country.

As we descended, we felt the atmosphere change, literally. The altitude slowly released its grip on our heads and the frigid air turned sultry. In the distance, as we pealed off layers, we began to see patches of green, an improbable copse rising from a seemingly lifeless land.

The road took us to San Pedro de Atacama, a 1,000-year-old desert outpost of squat adobe buildings, dusty streets, and flocks of tourists who come for the arid air and nearby natural wonders, including geysers, salt flats, and flamingo-filled lagoons. After the bus dropped us off near the central plaza, we changed money, found a place to stay, and set our watches forward an hour.

With little time to explore, and the afternoon slipping into dusk, we rented bicycles and rode into a howling wind for the Valle de La Luna, or the Valley of the Moon. It was a long 10-mile trip, against a sand-strewn wind, under a hot sun, and up steep hills, but the slanting light and the spreading shadows embossed an eerie, desolate beauty on the surrounding lunar-like landscape of goopy rocks and rolling dunes. As the sun sank over the horizon, the sky ignited in a slow symphony of colors, with orange and gold strands of light burning out in wisps of pinks and purples, until darkness revealed the bright arc of the Milky Way, lighting the way back.

The next day we hopped another bus for an hour ride to the copper mining town of Calama, where we caught a flight south to Santiago. The two-hour trip offered a glimpse of the oddity of such a long country, in which the small northern cities are separated from the capital by a vast emptiness of fallow plains, rocky mountains, and dry canyons. The only green we saw arrived with an accompanying cloud of smog just a few miles before we landed in Santiago, where nearly half of the nation’s 17 million people live.

Friends picked us up and drove us into the city on a modern highway with high-speed electronic tolls. They gave us a quick tour of the downtown, including a stop at La Moneda, the 205-year-old presidential palace that was partially destroyed in 1973 when Augusto Pinochet, then the army chief, ordered it bombed during the coup d’etat he led against President Salvador Allende. I was surprised to find in a plaza beside the palace a large statue of Allende, a democratically elected socialist who allegedly committed suicide before being captured. The controversial project was unveiled in 2003 by the ruling center-left administration, 13 years after Pinochet relinquished the presidency.

Our speedy evening tour of Santiago ended in a sprint for another bus, which we caught just as it was pulling out of the station. We spent the night rolling further south in seats that reclined considerably and had ample foot rests. When we awoke about 10 hours later, just outside the city of Pucon in central Chile, it seemed like we crossed into a different biome, where lush vegetation replaced parched deserts. There was a bounty of trees, lots of birds and flowers, and Lago Villarica, one of a series of large, shimmering lakes in the region.

We walked from the bus station to the city center, a tranquil retreat of cozy restaurants, chocolate shops, and dozens of tour operators, all below the towering Volcan Villarica, an active, perfectly conical volcano that rises more than 9,000 feet above the lake. We admired the menacing mountain on the horizon, which last erupted in 1971, until it disappeared in the clouds. Then we did what most tourists do in Pucon and spent the next few days riding horses through the nearby hills, whitewater rafting on a swollen river, and soaking in hot springs, among other things.

It was the closest we came to relaxing on a trip in which speed was a priority, but after two nights beside the lake, we were on the move again. We decided to make a brief excursion to Argentina.

In a heavy downpour, we boarded another bus for a journey on a muddy road over the Andes. It twisted through cloud-shrouded mountains covered with monkey-puzzle trees, indigenous evergreens that have long trunks crowned by symmetrical branches with thick, spiky leaves. It was an all-day trip that required hours of waiting at border posts from both countries for bureaucrats to stamp the passports and search the luggage of everyone on our bus, reflecting a legacy of mistrust between the neighbors that made it feel as if we were passing through the Iron Curtain.

When we finally crossed the border, we stopped for a few hours in San Martín de los Andes, a lakeside city like Pucon that has the alpine whiff of Switzerland. The next bus took us on a curvy, dirt road past the so-called seven lakes, the last being the most majestic, Lago Nahuel Huapi. The 200-square-mile stretch of cobalt looks like a small sea beside the mountains that make up San Carlos de Bariloche, the continent's mecca for skiers, boaters, and climbers, including everyone from groups of Israeli tourists to high-ranking Nazis, some of whom lived here for decades after World War II.

We arrived at midnight, found a guest house, and after a brief sleep woke early to explore the city on foot and bicycle. We sampled chocolates and gobbled up the famed steak, even though Jessica is a vegan. We petted the puppies of St. Bernards used to lure tourists into overpriced photo shoots. And we peddled a hilly route that took us beside waterfalls and poppy-covered fields, to hidden beaches and aromatic welcoming breweries, and up 8,000 feet to the top of Cerro Catedral, one of South America's largest ski resorts, where the rushing wind purrs with a cool serenity.

After three days in Argentina, we made the long trip back over the Andes and through the slow motion of customs, until we reached another lakeside city called Puerto Varas. We arrived there just in time to join a large crowd by the Lago Llanquihue and watch an unexpectedly impressive fireworks show to celebrate New Year's Eve. Strangers shared champagne, offered up hugs, and helped us find a place for the night.

The next morning a minibus took us a half hour south to Puerto Montt, where we boarded the Navimag ferry for our three-day sail through the fjords of southern Chile. Guidebooks warned us to keep our expectations in check. We knew there could be rough seas and foul weather. But there was no preparing for the Golfo de Penas, and the way our stomachs responded.

Along with others on the old cargo ship that ferries food, livestock, and other goods between northern and southern Patagonia, we asked ourselves more than once why we chose to spend hundreds of dollars and precious time cooped up in such misery. The answer came when the clouds lifted and we passed back into the smooth waters of the protected canals: We stood on an outside deck as a breeze washed over us and the ship cruised through narrow, dolphin-filled channels with dramatic views of uninhabited islands, moss-covered mountains, and the wall of jagged ice called Pio XI, the largest glacier in South America.

The voyage ended when we arrived in Puerto Natales, a century-old port at the southern tip of Chile in a province called Última Esperanza, or Last Hope, where the sheep industry once reigned. It's now better known as the gateway for Torres del Paine, the nation's premier national park.

We piled into the back of a pickup truck owned by an older couple who persuaded us to stay at their bed and breakfast for about $20 a night. After dropping our bags there, we stocked up on food, consolidated our camping supplies, and took a two-hour bus ride to the national park.

Even though it was late in the afternoon, we were so far south that we had hours of light to hike, enough that we kept going until 10 p.m. We climbed for six hours over glacier-fed lakes up thousands of feet to the base of the three granite towers that give the park its name. We camped through a freezing night but warmed up the next morning by sweating up the steep, boulder-covered ascent to the massive spires, which rise from a bed of snow like skyscrapers and overlook an emerald lagoon in a bowl-shaped space that feels like a holy temple.

Over the next days, we kept moving. We hitchhiked to different parts of the park. We took a short cruise beside the famous Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina. We took another bus further south to Punto Arenas, the country's most southern city, and then we hopped on a flight back to Santiago.

A day later, we were on another flight headed home, where for the first time in weeks, we finally got some sleep, exhaled from the visual intensity, and yearned for a vacation from our vacation.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Crossing the Bolivian Desert

Click here for more pictures of Bolivia

By David Abel
Globe Staff
3/7/2010

SALAR DE UYUNI, Bolivia -- Seven of us squeezed into the decade-old Land Cruiser with 229,000 miles on its odometer and a roof rack loaded with a hefty gas reserve, hundreds of pounds of backpacks, and enough dulce de leche-smeared pancakes and other snacks to last three days.

The mud-splashed Toyota with half its dashboard gauges inoperative would have to make it across 600 miles of some of the planet’s most forbidding land, from a vast desert of windswept salt flats through rocky, moonlike plains splotched with arsenic-filled lakes to a geyser field in the freezing peaks that crown the Andes.

It was only an hour into the trip when, after a brief stop, our driver, Raul Quispe, ordered everyone out of the SUV. He fished through a tool kit and spent a few minutes turning the key and pumping the gas, without effect. He decided on a low-tech solution to what appeared to be a dead battery.

“Everyone needs to push,’’ he commanded us, a group of sandal-clad tourists from Europe and the States.

On a journey without roads, even unpaved ones, it was the first glimpse of the risks and occasional improvisation involved in driving across Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world, and through a surrounding desert that rises more than 15,000 feet above sea level. We would pass emerald-colored lagoons filled with flamingos, and herds of llamas and guanacos moseying through the mountains. But there were no gas stations, no cellphone signals, no help other than Quispe and other Bolivian guides, who had to be as knowledgeable about their vehicles as about the daunting landscape.

“I know every part of this car,’’ Quispe boasted, after we shoved the SUV a few feet and the muffler chuffed to life.

Our trip late last year began in La Paz, the capital, where Jessica and I had booked the three-day tour through a local travel agency for $110 per person. They advised us to keep our expectations low, particularly for accommodations, meals, and transportation.

The agency’s website was surprisingly blunt, even noting that tourists had died on previous trips. “Due to the harshness of the terrain, vehicle breakdowns are common,’’ it warned. “We would like to make it clear that things are not as reliable, comfortable, and professional as we would like. . . . If things go wrong you are faced with the reality of travel in a remote area of a developing country.’’

After a day wheezing through the high-altitude streets of La Paz, where markets crowd nearly every corner and vendors sell everything from large sacks of nuts to bottles of imitation Viagra, we boarded an overnight bus to Uyuni, a bygone railroad junction about 12 hours south.

We had been told the trip into the high desert plains known as the altiplano would be rough and sleepless, but the bus’s ample seats reclined considerably, the crew served us hot food as if we were on an airplane, and the bumpy roads weren’t a match for our fatigue. We passed out and awoke an hour before the squat buildings of the isolated town of 10,000 people appeared on the horizon.

With a hot morning sun slanting over a dusty, pockmarked street in the center of Uyuni, we stepped outside and found a young woman from the travel agency who escorted us to a small office. Before leaving, we stocked up on water and visited the local customs office to have our passports stamped, which was required because there were no consular officials where we would be exiting the country.

When the driver arrived, we heaved our bags on the roof and he wrapped them in an old tarp, securing it with a thick rope. We crowded into the SUV, drove past stray dogs traipsing through town, and rolled onto the closest approximation of a road we would encounter over the next three days.

The first stop, a few miles out of town, was the so-called train cemetery, a wasteland of rusting locomotives left to rot in the desert after the local mining industry collapsed in the 1940s. The century-old trains are slowly decomposing over the barren plains, their steel wheels burrowing into the dry earth, a testament to when foreign companies ferried minerals to the Pacific ports that Bolivia lost in a 19th-century war with Chile.

The sandy road from town quickly gave way to an evaporated sea that stretches more than 4,000 square miles, or 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. From a distance, the blinding white expanse of Salar de Uyuni looks as flat as the Kansas plains, but there are countless bumps along the salty horizon, most in the shape of crusty polygons. The cracks in the earth have formed over millennia as a briny liquid rises from the remains of the prehistoric sea below and crystallizes in geometric patterns on the surface.

Quispe took us to an area where we watched as the brine bubbled into large puddles. When those evaporate, locals shovel the heaps of salt into neat piles, which they collect to sell as table salt. Afterward, we visited an old hotel made of salt - salt brick walls, salt tables and chairs, even salt bed frames. (The government ordered the hotel closed a decade ago - because of its effect on the pristine surroundings - but it remains very much in operation.)

Later, we traveled to the Isla Incahuasi, a seemingly improbable island of towering, thousand-year-old cacti, fossilized coral, and volcanic rock that looms over the desolate land like an oasis without water. After a hike up a craggy trail to the top, we ate lunch beside wandering ostriches and other camera-toting tourists, many of whom played with the optical illusions created by the unbounded horizon to take loopy pictures.

From there, we drove for hours across the empty desert, beneath dark clouds and ribbons of lightning, until we arrived at a gate and the first buildings of a project that could transform Bolivia. The government is building a pilot project to mine lithium - Salar de Uyuni has more reserves of the increasingly important mineral than anywhere on the globe - and it eventually hopes to supply the world with the ingredients needed to power everything from cellphones to electric cars.

We spent the night in an old mining town outside the Salar. If having to push our SUV hadn’t made us understand the budget nature of our trip, the lodging did. We stayed in a drafty building made of cement blocks and slept in small rooms on lumpy beds. There were showers, but hot water was extra.

The next day we crossed from broad, volcano-ringed valleys where llamas roam to a series of mineral-rich lagoons that vary in hue from jade to lime, each home to hundreds of pink-necked flamingos. We passed the so-called “rock tree,’’ one of a series of volcanic boulders that tower over the otherwise featureless desert like petrified trees sculpted by centuries of wind-borne sand.

Quispe drove mainly uphill, and by the end of the day we arrived at the blood-colored Laguna Colorado, where the arid air had turned frigid and we felt the altitude. We stopped for the night at a hovel even more spare than the previous night’s. As we watched the sun splinter into strands of red, orange, and violet light, Quispe described how he makes the three-day trip twice a week and spends his only day at home repairing the battered Land Cruiser.

“The worst part of the job is the routine,’’ he said. “But I’ve been lucky. I’ve never had an accident.’’

After a night shivering under sleeping bags in a room our group shared, we woke up before dawn and Quispe navigated the rocky path through snow-capped mountains more than 15,000 feet above sea level. He drove at speeds as if we were on a highway. At sunrise, we saw a curtain of fog rising in the distance, and as we approached, we saw a field of bubbling geysers. There were no fences, and we walked a slippery path through clouds of steam beside hot cauldrons, where a tourist fell in and died several years ago.

Afterward, Quispe raced the other drivers down the mountains to a pool of hot springs, where we soaked our cold limbs, drank hot chocolate, and learned of the camaraderie among the drivers. Another SUV had blown a tire, and we watched as they repaired it together - inflating a tube with one vehicle’s engine compressor, using various tools to install the tube beneath the rubber, and locking it on the rim with the help of another driver, who drove over it methodically with his SUV.

“We have to help each other,’’ Quispe said. “That’s the only way to survive out here.’’

We left on a gravel path that curved through rolling hills of loose sand and jagged rock formations that Quispe said inspired the goopy landscapes of Salvador Dalí’s paintings. After seven years of making the same trip, Quispe didn’t need a map. He made his own road as we drove over dunes and below steep peaks.

The final stop of our three-day tour of the Bolivian desert seemed like the finale of a fireworks show: Laguna Verde, an arsenic-filled lake that reflects a towering volcano in its placid, emerald waters. There were no flamingos clustered on those shores.

We climbed out of the SUV and walked to the edge of a sandy bluff, where we gazed in silence as gulls rode the cool winds raking the lake. We stood there as long as we could, listening to the whistling of the wind, sucking in the dry, salty air, wishing to take a swim.

It was like the landscape of an imaginary planet - stark, poisonous, but eerily inviting, with colors that seemed too bright to be real.

And then we had to go.

We had a bus to catch out of the desert for the next leg of our journey, which would take us across the Chilean border and to the bottom of the continent.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.