Daily life in the high altitude desert of southwestern Bolivia goes on pretty much like it has for thousands of years, a tough life.

But not without its rewards, celebrations and its incomparable landscapes.

Join us as we step back in time with the people of the highest desert in the world.

Major funding for The Desert       Speaks was provided by The Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Desert Program Partners.

And by Arizona State Parks.

music Traveling into the Bolivian altiplano is like a journey back in time.

Here in the rolling valleys and foothills of the world's highest desert, the indigenous people live pretty much as they have for the last few thousand years.

Their food, their culture and their traditions are superbly adapted to an arid environment.

Nobody knows these people better than my friend, Axel Nielsen, an Argentine anthropologist.

The map tells us that Bolivia is located in the tropics but much of it is Andean altiplano, high altitude cold desert valleys and rolling hills.

The farther west you travel, the higher the elevation.

And the higher the altitude, the more precarious the subsistence way of life becomes, just as it has been for thousands of years.

This archaeological site is called La Calla which in Quechan means, the town in ruins.

The first occupation of this site goes back to 1100 AD, some nine hundred years ago.

This seems like it's an alley or a street going through the village.

It's one of the main streets of the village because it leads to the central plaza or main public space in the town.

Because we know from 16th century historical documents that one of the main things they would do in these public gatherings was to bring the mummies and the bones out of their chullpas and share the food and the drink.

So in a way they were sharing, you know, in their daily lives with their forebears.

The subsistence of the people that lived here was based on dry farming, potatoes and quinoa, and also on llama herding.

So their economy was pretty much very similar to the people that live today in this area.

This bowl has a drill in it which they spin their llama wool for the textiles.

This site includes two different sections.

It has a low town, which has about two hundred and fifty dwellings so we know that the population here that lived in the low town was about one thousand people.

And then it has a hilltop fortress that has a very complex and well-thought defensive system.

It's really difficult finding your way into here, just getting over the boulders.

Yeah, these villages are very well engineered for defense.

You see it has two defensive walls protecting the accessible part of the village and each one of them have only three gates, which are hidden in bricks in the walls so the attackers wouldn't see them.

So you can't see that from below.

Oh, no.

You have to try under heavy arrow and sling fire try to find the gate.

Every once in awhile you see these weird holes in the wall.

Yeah.

Both walls have dozens of them through which the defendants could shoot on the attackers with their arrows and slings.

So when there are withering fire, you got to try to sneak through and it would be very difficult.

Exactly.

And once you pass the first wall, you have to pass the second wall.

And this is hidden.

Exactly.

Yeah and once you cross the second wall then you will find only the back wall of the houses.

All the houses have their opening facing inwards towards the street inside the town.

So in order to sieze the town, you have to take every single street inside the village.

These stone towers you see around here are call chullpas.

Chullpas?

Chullpas.

And all the villages from this period had sometimes hundreds of them that were used as burials, as storage rooms for potatoes and grain, as landmarks and as altars in ancestral worship rituals.

The original multi-purpose facility, huh?

You have to remember that these communities were based on Hallus which are groups of people that trace their origin to the same mythical ancestor.

So we can think of these buildings as monuments to those ancestors that were considered the owners, the original owners of the land and of all the resources.

So in a way, by having all these towers here, they were claiming, telling everyone that this is their land and they have the right to be here.

That's a pretty effective system.

Oh, yes.

In fact many people around the world that have this same kind of organization, this worship of the ancestors is legitimizing the right to the territory.

La Calla was abandoned around the 17th century.

This was three centuries ago.

Probably the Spanish moved their population out of here to what today is Santiago K, which was a pueblo de reducción, a town where the Spanish would gather the Indian population so they could control their labor for their own interests.

And we know the Santiago K was one of these pueblos de reducción.

In fact its old name was Chuqilla.

The great continuity in the traditions here.

When you look at daily life, their economy, their crops, their llama herding, their customs that they call their rituals and ceremonies, even in the way they dress, they are very similar even in the colors and the color combinations to the ones we find in the ancient tombs and burials and other archaeological contacts.

Though they were forced to live all together in one place, these patient, enduring souls didn't change their way of life very much.

Quinoa has been a basic grain here for at least two thousand years and the technique of winnowing is probably just as old.

The quinoa is brought to the homes in large sacks.

It's not quite ready to eat because it still needs to have the final winnowing.

The woman of the house, who is an expert in this art, takes it in a pan, drops it into the wind, and there's always wind here in the Andes, and the wind does the job of the final gleaning.

She does this several times.

How many times?

Only she knows.

Quinoa is the perfect grain crop for the desert, especially the high Andean desert.

It grows rapidly in the very short rainy season, it can tolerate the cold up here and it produces a high protein grain very quickly.

The color of the quinoa grain can vary from a bright red to a yellow to a brown and all the intermediate shades.

Just about everything we use grain for they use quinoa for.

They'll add it to breads, to pastries, to soups, for cereals and they'll also eat it on its own right.

It won't grow in other places.

It needs the high cold dampness of the summer in the Andes.

The village of Santiago in southwest Bolivia is at twelve thousand five hundred feet above sea level.

It's cold and it's the perfect place for raising the grain quinoa.

Traditionally the inhabitants here got goods from the outside world through exchange through llama trains.

Nowadays the trains have been replaced by big trucks.

But bartering is still the basis of the economy, although some money is used, and the basis for the bartering is that important grain quinoa which is the basis of the diet of the high Andes.

The whole barter system depends on which products you have.

For instance, quinoa, eighty-five bolivianos.

That means, hey, what about the flour?

A hundred and twenty five.

So the exchange would be twenty-five percent more quinoa than flour.

Quinoa is cheaper now.

There's a lot of quinoa available so it's cheaper.

How often the truck comes out here varies.

Sometimes every fifteen days, sometime once a month.

Money is not used to buy things, only to make up the difference of an exchange or a barter.

The outsiders bring all kinds of pastas, fruits, vegetables but today he's got all that.

You know those kinds of things.

We only have one crop to barter with, that's quinoa.

It's the only thing we can produce up here in the high plains.

Each family here has about three, four hectors of land that yields eight sacks of quinoa.

It's not a lot but it's enough.

I'm going to buy some bananas now.

Quinoa and potatoes are grown in different parts of the landscape.

Quinoa is grown in the bottom of the basins, in flat terrain.

The soils there are very sandy so it's grown without irrigation.

The seeds will grow just with the moisture that is kept in the sandy soils from the previous rainy season.

The potatoes on the other hand are grown on the hillsides, sometimes on very steep slopes, more than forty-five degree steepness and up to forty-three hundred meters, which is a record really because there is no agriculture at that altitude anywhere else in the world.

And potato fields usually are fenced with stone walls because the llamas graze also on the mountainside so they have to keep the herds away from the fields so they don't eat the crop before they harvest.

The potato originated in the Andes more than three thousand years ago.

We were born with potatoes.

These potatoes are from our ancestors.

They're centuries and centuries old.

I've known about potatoes since I was a little girl.

I know all the different varieties of potatoes.

There are so, so many.

There are more than four hundred fifty varieties, each with its own texture and flavor.

This one's for soup.

There are other varieties for different purposes but these are all best in soup.

Nutritionally they're also very, very important because combined with quinoa they form an excellent diet.

The Andes are also important from a world standpoint because the genetic basis of the potato is still here.

We grow potatoes up here without irrigation, only from the rains that might fall.

In September and October we plant.

Three or four months later they're big enough to harvest.

And when the Pachamama blesses us with rain, they get really big and if the plants get big, the potatoes get big.

Potatoes are grown way up high in the hills.

We bring them down on burros.

Without the Andean potatoes the entire potato supply of the world would be in jeopardy.

We can thank the people of the Andes who continue to produce their marvelous assortment of potatoes.

(singing) We have a custom here to bless the crops that we harvest, the quinoa and potatoes.

So when we harvest the potatoes, it's carnival.

The flags are a call to the clouds to bring more rain.

The yells and whistles are also an appeal for rain.

It seems to me that the more we celebrate carnival, the more rain we get.

We celebrate every year.

There is a different spiritual leader each time.

He has his own platoon of assistants and sergeants.

The polar bear is to animate the party.

He clowns around entertains people.

The platoon dances around with their yarn whips inciting the spectators to get involved, to get up and dance.

The coca leaves are to invoke the goddess Pachamama.

We have a tradition of going house to house and receiving coca leaf offerings and cigars all in honor of the Pachamama.

The faces are decorated with baby powder for adornment.

We also put paper streamers around our necks.

It's just another way of celebrating carnival.

All of the celebration is in honor and commemoration of the ancient ones so they won't do us any harm, we will have an abundant harvest and to bless the Pachamama.

Flour is used as a blessing as well as white corn powder and also powdered quinoa.

The designated spiritual leader performs other rituals for carnival from the beginning through to the end.

He knows how to bless the participants and keep Pachamama happy.

This is our legacy so everyone has fun.

We will have a good harvest if the weather treats us right.

These rituals and customs began many years ago.

I have no idea when they started but every year we continue with these traditions.

People have found their niche in this high desert the same way plants and animals have.

The classification of Bolivian Andean deserts is different from that used for North American deserts.

Here the main variable, the condition and distribution of plants and animals, is altitude and to a certain extent the composition of soil.

Although the entire region gets less than twelve inches of rainfall per year, depending on the altitude, you get different temperatures.

As you go high, it gets colder and as you go higher, you get less rain, less than those twelve inches.

The lower altitudes between sixty-six hundred and ten thousand feet approximately is called the Prepuna and includes the upper valleys on the eastern side of the Andes.

The vegetation here includes cacti, thorny shrubs.

The only trees that are found here are the algarrobo and the churki, which are close relatives of the mesquite.

If you go higher than this, the next step between ten thousand feet and thirteen thousand five hundred they call the puna.

This is the main pastoral ground.

Higher than this, which is the area we are here now, this is the Altapuna they call it or salty puna because the soils have high contents of salt and it is the area that is the coldest and has the least precipitation.

It's mainly bunch grasses or pajunales, that's the only vegetation you see.

In the lower in the Prepuna we call this Quechua and this is the main maize-producing zone which is where most of the settlements are located.

Then in the puna this is the agri-pastoral zone, the prime zone for llama herding and for tuber cultivation and quinoa.

And the upper zone where we are now it's only used on a seasonal basis for herding or hunting in the old times.

The Andes is a peculiar range because to the west in the Pacific is the Humboldt current which is a cold current.

It gives off no moisture.

There's no basis for any convection hence there's no rain to come from the Pacific.

By the time any air masses get here from the Atlantic all the rain has been sucked out by other mountains so there's very little left for the high altiplano of Bolivia.

Because the Andean environment is so diverse, according to the altitude you find yourself, people need to exchange the products they have they produce in their own area with the products that come from other areas.

And the llamas facilitated this long-distance exchange.

Axel should know.

He has lived, worked, traveled and shivered with the Andean people for over twenty years.

This is a llama hide.

Look.

A llama hide.

What do you use it for?

We pull the wool from it for weaving to make rope, for lots of things.

And why do you take the llamas into the valley?

Salt.

Llamas were used from the beginning as burden carriers.

They were used for their meat.

They were used for their wool.

In the Andes they have developed a very rich textile tradition.

They were also used for the dung.

For instance in these very high places where there are no trees, the dung of the llama can be the only fuel that people can use to cook or to heat themselves.

We are the domesticated descendents of Guanacos.

They were domesticated by the last hunters and gatherers that lived in this area.

(music) But it's only after three thousand years ago when the sedentary world type developed this region that llama trains and caravans and trading long distance and exchange of food, became very important.

This is a rope.

What's it made of?

Llama, of course.

And what do use it for?

It's to harness all the animals, the llamas, the burros.

We also make thread.

We weave it, cut the fabric and make pants.

You mean you weave?

Yeah, I weave.

My loom is over there.

Here it is.

Look.

This is what it looks like.

It's a bed loom.

And what do you call the fabric that you weave?

Corte.

This is the wool that we use to make the corte.

Look.

So we take this thread and then we make corte and we make our pants.

And bags, for lots of things.

There it is.

Every part of the llama is used.

The meat, the hide, the intestine, the bones, the hooves and very important the dung.

It's all part of the life of the llama herders.

This is llama lard.

What do you use it for?

For fry bread, tortillas.

And what about this meat?

It's llama jerky.

What's this grass over here used for?

This grass that is brought here from a long distance away is used for thatching and is put on very thickly.

There's nothing really underneath it other than the grass itself which is strong enough to hold itself up and gets very good insulation.

A roof made of this grass will last for about fifteen years which is about as good as my roof is going to last in Tucson, Arizona.

There are two kinds of firewood here.

One is a smaller kind that is good for kindling.

But the most important kind is the yareta.

It's actually an endangered plant that grows only above ten thousand feet.

But it burns very slowly, it's full of resins and it's considered to be the best fuel available here in the cold highlands.

I would guess this piece probably weighs between twenty five and thirty pounds.

So this piece will burn for about a half an hour.

So if you're doing a lot of cooking, it's going to take a lot of yareta plants.

The Bolivian altiplano is an inhospitable place to live.

It's nearly always cold and windy and the air is very thin.

Still the indigenous people with their herds of llamas manage to eke out a living as they have for thousands of years.

And increasing numbers of outsiders are coming to visit these unassuming people who live in a landscape of transparent beauty.

There's no shortage of amazing things to see in the Andes of southwestern Bolivia.

Flamingos, strange plants, mud pots, lagoons, biscachas, vicuñas and, of course my favorite giant cacti.

Join us next time on         The Desert Speaks as we trek across the highest desert in the world.

Major funding for The Desert       Speaks was provided by               music Major funding for The Desert       Speaks was provided by The Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Desert Program Partners.