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A steady hum of crushed salt is the only sound at 12,000 feet as I rip across the white and blue desert, my view is broken by the melting colors of magma from a deceased volcano—the only proof I am not in outer space. It’s high noon in the middle of the Bolivian Altiplano. Below me is a brine lake—a cocktail of sodium, magnesium and lithium chloride 70 feet deep, sealed under a crusty scab of salt and is so flat it’s used to calibrate satellites. During the wet season, radiant sunlight can cook eyeballs and skin in minutes. Even so, this is a breeding ground for pink flamingos and thousand year-old cacti on deserted islands. The salar has been flooding and evaporating for the past 40,000 years, harboring 70% of the world’s lithium deposits. Until trucks made economic sense, traders embarked on llama caravans laden with thousands of salt bricks on month-long journeys to the tropical valleys to barter for hot peppers, citrus fruits and herbs. Now, it’s just a lonely desert for dusty backpackers and nutty types who love to ride motorcycles across it at breakneck speeds.

At an elevation of 13,300 feet higher than Miami, the slum city of El Alto (and the airport) sits on the edge of the Altiplano and is home to a million people (mostly of Aymara Indian ancestry) who are impervious to the vice-grip effects of high altitude. To fight altitude sickness, I immediately drink a hot cup of mate de coca (the traditional Andean herbal tea considered the perfect panacea for new arrivals) and leave the airport racing to lose altitude quickly to clear my head and grab a power nap. But, my first stop is the canyon rim called La Ceja, where crumbling walls of hardened mud protect the capital city of La Paz and three quarters of a million people from the cold Altiplano wind machine. From rim-to-rim it’s a sea of random brick and tin-roofed shacks fighting gravity in a decaying amphitheatre, bustling with people and cars—akin to honeybees doing a frenetic high-altitude dance. On the eastern horizon, the Arctic crown of Mt. Illimani (over 21,000 feet) towers over downtown, like a junkyard dog protecting a bone.

Inside the canyon, pedestrians joust with taxis in narrow open-air markets, while dilapidated buses and 50s-era trucks fishtail on steep cobblestone streets amongst the colonial-era mansions that fight for the few warm rays of sunshine wedged between glass-covered high-rises. Walking in front of me are kids in white school uniforms next to “cholas” (the native Indian ladies) in their traditional bowler hats and swaying multi-layered skirts. Dropping from mesa to mesa into the canyon, the pungent smell of discarded trash, the incessant honking and political graffiti are familiar to me from high-school days as I ride to the warmth of the Valley of the Moon. The Oberland Hotel offers an escape from the “uptown” chaos with secure parking, Wi-Fi, excellent food and down comforters. Continuing the acclimatization, a steady flow of water and mate de coca is refreshing, and my appetite returns to normal with a hearty meal of quinoa soup, potatoes and llama steak, followed by a much needed night of sleep.

After sunrise I ride on abandoned dirt roads, gaining and loosing thousands of feet on 13,000-foot hills that connect isolated agricultural villages through the foothills of the Cordillera Real. The 650 enduro handles the dirt and rocky curves easily and I welcome the cold air on my face as I watch Aymara campesinos begin their winter harvest. Bent over, they cut wheat by hand with worn-out tools as they work in a habitual, steady pace. Their leathery faces covered in dirt and wheat chaff, sweat pooling in the furrows of their copper skin, and green, crooked teeth stained green from generations of chewing coca leaf. This scene will surely change as the Andes dry up and people head to the cities to eke out a living, which explains the growth of the city of El Alto—most are campesinos with nothing to grow. There is ample evidence the Andes are losing thousands of years of trapped moisture as milky glacier melt cuts permanently into a dried-up layered cake of brown and beige ridges, and I find myself backtracking where dirt roads once ran.