MUNGO EATS Latin America

We took our $200.00 taxi ride today back to Uyuni.  We can’t complain too much actually, since it took the fellow about 9 hours to drive out to get us, and then back to Uyuni.  The “taxi driver” was the owner of the hotel that we stayed at yesterday.  His name is Aldo and he actually is doing a lot to help .  I am glad we stumbled on to him.  So he  drove all 5 of us back to town, and dropped  us off at the hotel we asked him to leave us at.  Actually, it was a hostel.  When we first were in Uyuni, we tried twice, unsuccessfully to enter this hostel.  They basically turned us away because they didn’t have a place for us to park the car.  Today, they told us that they had a room, but that we would have to wait for an hour, because the owner was eating his lunch.  After we waited the hour, they told us, they were full.  AARRGH!  So then I had to tromp all over town, looking for a place to stay, that would take the dog.  To make it all worse, it is Carnaval, so rooms are tough to get. 

Yesterday at the hotel, in the desert, we met a Chilean family.  He is a doctor, she is a therapist of some description, and they have two teenaged kids.  We talked to them about our engine problems and we went for a walk around the laguna with them.  They are very nice people.  The husband speaks English very well, so he helped translate, while Kevin and the hotel owner were discussing the problem with the van.  As luck would have it, they were travelling to Uyuni this morning as well, and actually followed our vehicle for most of the way.  While I was visiting hotel after hotel, they drove into town and asked what I was doing.  I explained to them that I was trying, unsuccessfully, to find a hotel and they got me to jump into their vehicle, and together, we went in search of a hotel.  What I didn’t realize, was that they were actually looking for a hotel for US to stay in, not themselves.  We found one place, that looked pretty nice, and they started asking if there was a room available for 4 people, and a dog?  Huh? They didn’t have a dog!  Initially, the hotel said they would not accept dogs, so then our nice little family started arguing in Mungo’s favour, telling the hotel staff that this was a wonderful dog, that had travelled all the way from Canada with us, and that he was well behaved and would not pee in the room.  They were so cute!!  In the end, the hotel staff decided to let us in.  In addition, the wife told the hotel staff, that they should give us a good rate, because we would be staying at least a week.  Wow!!  Maybe we should hire this family to travel the rest of the trip with us!! 

In the meantime, Aldo was finding us a mechanic and trying to figure out what we should do with the vehicle, how to get it back to town.  Once we had found a hotel, I called him on his cell phone and told him where we were staying.  He had actually already gone to look for us at the hotel he had dropped us off at, to tell us of the arrangements he had made, and found out that we were not staying there.  Once I told him where we were staying, he drove over right away to speak to me.  He had spoken with the mechanic, and the mechanic had confirmed Kevin’s diagnosis with what was most likely wrong with the engine.  Aldo spoke to a trucking company and decided that it was too expensive to bring the van back on a truck, saying it would cost $1000.00!  So instead, he offered to drive Kevin out tomorrow evening, spend the night at  the hotel, and the following day, he would tow the van back with his vehicle.  Awesome!! Sounds like a plan.  It’s nice to have a plan!!