Road to the Salt Flats: Day 2

Geysers were an impressive start to the day (or geezers as Ben and I jokingly refer to them, thanks to someone we met who repeatedly called them that).  They were all the more impressive being set in the lunar landscape of the desert.

Ah, health and safety strikes again

A short distance down the road Mario kindly let us out for our first sight of flamingos!

Flamingo patrol, not quite synchronised

Five minutes later we stopped at the hot springs.  A welcome stop as there were no hot showers until the third night of our trip and we were well covered in dust by this stage.

Where else in the world can you have a soak and watch flamingos and nearly 4,000m above sea level?

The hot water exiting the pool allowed interesting plant life to grow

Onwards, through the Dali Desert

Laguna Blanca
If we'd kept going in this direction we would have ended up in Chile

Vicuñas, related to llamas

Flamingos!  Flying!
We did ask ourselves why we'd been so excited to see four in the distance in the Galapagos . . .

. . . when here they were everywhere.  Three different species!

Laguna Colorada: famous for the incredible red colour and obviously, the flamingos

The different colours in the land and lagunas is caused by different chemicals; particularly borox, copper and some others I forgot to write down.  All explanations given by our driver, Mario, were in Spanish, so sometimes we were a little baffled by what we were seeing.  But, to be perfectly honest, it didn't really matter.

We arrived back at the hostel just before 5pm, glad to have some time to relax out of the car.  The four of us were peacefully reading in our room when Mario rushed in, telling us something urgent.  Turns out the kitchen was on fire . . .

Luckily everywhere here is built out of mud bricks, so there's not that much to burn.  Everywhere was filled with acrid smelling smoke but the fire was quickly put out.  Much to our surprise dinner was still on time and one of the better meals we had :-)