Day 224: Miss Pancakes? (09/09/2011)

We arrived in Uyuni in the late afternoon where Dave had booked us into the Hotel Tonito.

Chris the proprietor, was a mild mannered Bostonian who had come to town with his Bolivian wife to be nearer to her parents. He had turned what some would see as an insuperable cultural obstacle into a lucrative business opportunity and had opened and then expanded the best traveller’s hotel this side of the Andes.

The rooms were clean and comfortable and the breakfasts deserved Michellin stars. Light fluffy pancakes with maple syrup, sausage patties shipped in by a friend from La Paz, fresh eggs with yolks the colour of turmeric and a never ending flow of excellent organic Bolivian coffee kept us loitering around the cafeteria door long before and after he had stopped serving.

Carolyn caused ructions when she was the only one to book onto a mine tour in Potosi. It would not have mattered but for the fact that the tour time, eight hours drive away, meant that we had to start out early the next morning to get her there...

... AND MISS PANCAKES!

It wasn't going to happen.

Carolyn died mysteriously in the night.

The pancakes were lovely.

We had been playing a game of catch up with the truck kitty since Buenos Aires and after finally finding a Casas De Cambio and an ATM that both offered dollars and was willing to dispense them, we paid up in full and for the first time in 4,000km left Ivan able to balance the kitty accounts with the final instalment of nearly $12,000 that would house, feed and water us over the 21 days on the road.

Chris’s breakfasts were not the limit of his stomach pleasing culinary prowess.

Pizzas the size of tractor tyres rolled out of the tiny Bolivian production line at the back of the kitchen with reassuring regularity and after sharing seven hectares of spicy chicken with Bert and Vanessa, we prevailed upon our travelling companions to construct a robust wagon to haul our distended forms around the corner to Extreme Fun Bar where Dave had promised an interesting drinking experience.

The wagon construction proved unnecessary as Chris had recently hosted 105 actors and crew who had been filming the new movie ‘Blackthorn’ on the salt flats nearby. Sam Sheppard headed a cast telling a different tale of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The wagon that they used in the movie, plus a number of other props found their way into Chris’s establishment and he was happy to put it at our disposal providing we brought it back.

It is only a matter of time before he opens a new hotel in San Pedro and gives the small town the western movie treatment that it is so badly waiting for.

Extreme Fun Bar was little more than an opportunity to get recklessly drunk at high altitude. Dave played both sides of the fence when he brought a lethal cocktail of spirits to the table with the warning that anyone who consumed more than 3 units at this height would probably die.

He promptly imbibed deeply and at length as an warning or an encouragement - I am not sure which.

He did indeed die instantly, the moment the third unit passed his lips but we resolved to strap him to the bumper and take him with us in the hope that some miracle would ressurect him. Thankfully his corpse heard this and he perked up sufficiently to drink some more and drive for eight hours the next day.

What a guy!

What followed was a bawdy series of mystery drinks served in a collection of drinking vessels, in a more or less anatomically accurate representation of male and female genitalia. There are a series of career ending photographs just waiting to be uploaded to Facebook.

I know.

I took them.