Salar de Uyuni, Lagunas, deserto, geyser etc

December 21, 2013

Salar de Uyuni, Lagunas, deserto, geyser etc

I will always remember that first time I discussed with someone in Hebrew and I think I will always remember my first fight in Spanish too.

I booked a tour in the Salar de Uyuni with the company Valle Hermoso and I immediately required vegetarian food for the 4 days trip. They told that there was absolutely no problem and that I could even get kosher food if I wanted. The morning of the trip I also talked with our "cocinera" Lourdes and she assured me that she would cook special good vegetarian food for me. So we left Tupiza in the morning and we started our trip. At midday we stopped in a little village for lunch. After few minutes Lourdes came with the food: lentils with potato, served in two different plates: one vegetarian for me and one with meat for the rest of the group. I started eating, but after 2-3 spoons I realised that in my plate there was a little piece of meat. For the first time in months I got really upset. I got up and I went to talk with Lourdes. I shouted at her and I shouted even more when she started to lie to me, telling me that she didn't prepare the food and she didn't know there was meat in my plate. Surely she prepared the food (she's our "chef"), she cooked all together and then she took out the meat from my plate forgetting some pieces.

I thought that after this discussion she understood I don't eat meat, but... The day after, she prepared salchipapas for all of us: chips, eggs and salsiccia meat. I complained again with her and she told that I could eat it because she cooked everything separately. For her a meal of vegetables and meat cooked separately and then mixed together is vegetarian. Besides this she prepared for me a plate with onions. Yes, onions, only onions . We laughed so much about it that I couldn't even get upset.

But it didn't finish here. She still believed that I could eat chicken, so she told me" tomorrow I'll prepare chicken, do you eat chicken right? ". I explained her again for the 5th time that I'm vegetarian, that I don't eat meat, chicken or fish. And she answered me " I had vegetarian that ate chicken and salsiccia ". She had no idea what means being vegetarian, even if I'm sure I'm not the first vegetarian that travelled with her. The agency also asked me if I wanted kosher food... How could she cooked kosher, if she doesn't even know what vegetarian food is? After the trip, I wrote a very long mail to agency, about this and many other problems we had during the trip. But even if the cocinera was quite stupid and the guide wasn't very good, we really enjoyed the trip.

We were a group of 5, 2 Italians and 3 Frenches. The funny thing is that the only common language was Spanish, even if no one of us really knows Spanish, but we still managed to communicate and having fun and fighting with the cocinera. We started our trip from Tupiza, arriving 4 days later to Uyuni.

The most impressive thing of this trip is the diversity of the landscape within the park. Not only this, but also the uniqueness of some of the places visited: Laguna verde, Laguna colorata, deserto de Dali, geyser Sol de Manana, Salar de Uyuni, Laguna Hedimondio...

The Sillar