Mama cookie's photo loco


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Published: July 9th 2009
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The border crossing from Argentina into Bolivia couldn't have been easier - we hopped off our bus from Tilcara and walked across to Villazon in Bolivia - no worries! And booked ourselves onto the first bus leaving to Tupiza - where we planned to take a trip through the salt flats up to Uyuni. We wasted a couple of hours in a friendly local pizzeria where Eric had his first Spanish conversation on politics as we watched the unfolding Honduras coup on television.

When our bus rocked up we were delighted- it was a total piece of metal trash, rusty, dirty and full of people transporting more than their own body weight in stuff - after two months of slick, uneventful bus journeys, involving champagne and reclining seats we were back in 'local travel mode' again. Immediately locals started shoving on as much stuff as possible (food, bags, machinery, family members etc but no farmyard animals this time). And we heard a voice from behind us - one of the Americans we had walked across the border with us asking why we hadn't booked onto the later more luxurious bus. The honest answer was that we hadn't realised there was one - however we were pretty happy to be traveling on fun buses again ie only non-Bolivians on the bus, within minutes of departing our backpack was covered in some unidentified liquid leaking across the floor and Eric's chair had detached itself from the floor and was juddering around. But fun it was although it was pretty hard core (more dust and boneshaking than anything we had before) and after 4 hours we were totally covered in dust. We were also semi- cursing Lonely Planet - the great bible had advised sitting on the left side for the best views - which did pay off in the end as it was beautiful - but it was also the sunny side so we broiled in the sun.

Tupiza is not a bad place at all, like all self respecting towns it has a nice little square and some ok restaurants. The street scene is defined by the abundance of Cholitas. These are women who wear the traditional outfit of a skirt, colorful tops/ blankets and to top it all: a bowlerhat! Apparently this outfit was dictated by Spain back in the days but the women wear it with a lot of pride now- it really makes them look quite unique and funky! People come here mostly for some walking, horse back riding or as a starting point for a trip to the biggest salt flats in the world: Salar de Uyuni. We booked onto 4 day trip at our hotel La Torre.
The next day we got to meet Jake and Kelly from the US as well as the crew: Helmutt and Margarita, the chef. We set off and it quickly became apparent that by virtue of the fact that we were under Margarita's wing for a few days she now saw herself as our surrogate mama. We had no issues with that and as she was a great chef she got dubbed Mama Cookie much to the amusement of her real son, driver Helmutt. We never found out why this Bolivian had a German name...he jokingly claimed to be German but as he didn't speak German let alone English this was stretching it a bit. The car smelt faintly narcotic - which we were to find out was because of Mama Cookies heavy coca leaf addiction. The leaves play a big part in Andean culture and have spiritual significance as well as being a stimulant, hunger suppressant and very good for altitude sickness - we all tried chewing them at points in the trip- with varying degrees of pleasure.

The trip itself started off with a day or so through part of the Andes with loads of lamas and their wild cousins vicuñas. There are also some small mines in this area, these folks have a hard life and we saw one chap- shopping bag in hand- on the way to Tupiza, this would take him a full day's walking (downhill). Hopefully he managed to get a lift going back up!

The rugged landscape was fun to drive through, the occasional stops for a flat tyre (3 in total) didn't bother us at all as you got to stretch your legs as well as seeing Helmutt and Mama Cookie doing a very credible impression of a formula 1 pit team. Helmutt would slip into an overall but by this time his mom would be nearly finished changing the wheel. We had a nice lunch in a mining ghost town, a little stream close by was frozen which was a surprise as it was pretty warm in the sun. This however was a sure omen of how cold it gets in the mountains once the sun drops. Just before setting off again we managed to spot a wolf, he looked at us nonplussed and continued his way to his next vicuña meal.

The first night was spent in a small town in a small building with no heating whatsoever. We were warned about it being basic and a bit cold but this was definitely tough going. The combination of the altitude, cold and thin air was difficult to get used to. At points you seem to run out of breath just lying in bed hoping to fall asleep quickly. Of course you're in the bed wearing a woolly hat, thermals, socks and are covered by multiple blankets and a sleeping bag but still you're cold.

After a quick breakfast (5am...) we all set off to see the variety of the area around the salt flats. We visited a number of lagoons such as the green lagoon (lithium) and the red lagoon (full of flamingos, normally...) All of these lagoons are amazing in their contrast to the surrounding desert. We now knew why they were all frozen having just defrosted ourselves. The ice on the lakes was really our of sync with the surrounding sand, volcanoes, blue skies and bright sun.

That evening we were staying at another basic place (read stone beds) but this one had a wood heater. Yes a heater, this unit was not quite big enough to put a small log in and would probably have sufficed to heat a cupboard not a whole hostel at 4,300m in the Bolivian winter (we learned the next day it had been -20c that night). We had a fun evening though with Mama Cookie once again getting a top score for her assado (bbq). By this time the group (there were 2 jeeps) was starting to gel quite well. However it was on this night that a few of us started to come down with altitude sickness - headaches and stomach upsets. We filled water bottles with hot water and crawled under out blankets. The next morning was a bit dire as we were all absolutely freezing cold, poor old Mama Cookie had a terrible headache and had been up in the early hours cooking us all pancakes which we were too cold or sick to do justice to. But after lots of coca tea and a lovely sun rise and we were back in the jeep warming up. The itinerary for the day was even more varied than the previous days: besides more lagoons, rocas locas (crazy rocks), the Salvador Dali desert, a thermal bath and geysers were on offer. We also passed the the highest point of our trip a whopping 5800 m above sea level. It would be great to show you a good picture of the occasion- we tried but only for the wind to freeze us all as well as whip Eric's bouffant out of shape- better luck next time. We also found a connector cord and spent the day playing music from our own players, after getting a little tired of some of Helmutt's music from the day before. Some of our choices clearly tested Helmutt's ears but heavy rock seemed to be perfect for Mama Cookie who slept like a baby through all sorts of heavy metal. Swing music was a unanimous favourite, Manu Chau and Rodrigo y Gabrielle were also popular - reggae went down well, country was appreciated, Jake - a talented saxophonist played some excellent music from his band, but Micheal Buble was definitely an all round thumbs down.

That afternoon we got our first glimpse of the main event - the salt flats. Our hostel for the third night was set right on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, with a beautiful view, and in keeping with its setting was made out of salt. This made for a nice change, it was also a lot lower and warmer than the other two and it had a hot shower- very civilized! The group decided to treat the crew on a beer which seemed to please Mama Cookie to no end- she confessed the next day to having had 10 glasses and dancing in the kitchen- probably in sheer relief of being lower and warmer again!

The salar itself is around 11,000 km2 is easy to spot from space and is about a third of Holland's landmass (32,000 km2 )- quite something to look forward to. Well rested we skipped breakfast to make sure we were on the flats for sunrise. You can tell from the pictures that this was well worth it. Next was a walk around one of the islands in the middle of the flats: great views as well as some very old cactus' (or cacti?) one of them made it to the grand old age of 1,100 years! The thing about the slat flats is that whatever time of year (wet/ dry) it provides a great backdrop for a “photo loco”. When it's wet the sky is reflected on the salt flat and when it's dry you can play about with perspectives. We gave it our best shot and were very pleased that Mama Cookie was willing to help out - she'd even dressed her plaits up with little beaded tassels on the end!

The salt flats were of course the main reason for the trip and they didn't disappoint, a surreal landscape to drive or walk through. Helmutt had kept back one special cd for his grand finale and listening to “Eye of the Tiger” we raced towards Uyuni. Our (cold) adventure ended here. Before boarding our night bus to La Paz we went to the best bar in town The Extreme Fun Pub (could be not-so-bad-pub as well) to kill some time with the rest of the group. We had booked ourselves onto the cheaper night bus and were a bit worried after hearing stories of freezing trips and breakdowns. Just to make sure we would not be cold that night we checked with the ticket office if there was heating on the bus. The lady assured us there was and it was only when we saw a lot of people carrying heavy blankets on board that we started to get a sinking feeling...and it was just freezing on the bus all night - there was ice on the inside of the windows and we shivered our way through 14 hours. So after yet another freezing night we splashed the cash and got to check into a room with heater in La Paz, needless to say this got cranked up to the max and the hot shower was appreciated! Time to take it easy we think!




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One of many flat tyres along the tripOne of many flat tyres along the trip
One of many flat tyres along the trip

Cookie not afraid to help out!


12th July 2009

super foto's
Wat zijn de foto's ontzettend cool!

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