“Pachamama,” said our guide, Orlando Condori. He tilted his glass, pouring some blush-colored wine onto the parched sand.

“Si, la Pachamama!” said everyone else, doing the same.

They looked at me.

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“Pachamama!” I said as I poured half my drink into the earth. I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it, but I did it.

It was a shame. I’d been enjoying the rosé. Then again, it wasn’t the worst idea — I was lightheaded. So lightheaded that I had to sit back down.

“That’s not the wine,” said Niki Barbery-Bleyleben, a conservation ambassador for Prometa, an environmental organization focused on sustainability and community resilience. “That’s the altitude.” We were at 3,66jogo500 meters, or about 11,000 feet.

ImageAndean flamingos fly over a lake in the Cordillera de Sama Biological Reserve in the southern part of Bolivia.

We were at a table set out on a plateau overlooking the Cordillera de Sama Biological Reserve in the southern part of Bolivia. We were in the high desert, the bright sun high overhead, with a view of — everything. From our perch we could see down the expanse of the Cordillera de Sama Mountain range. Between us and what appeared to be the ends of the earth: sparse, empty, dust-colored land, a glittering lagoon with its flamboyance of flamingos and so much sky I had to crane my neck to find its edges.

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The most common way that people are exposed is likely by eating contaminated food or water, according to the federal government.

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