After a very fitful sleep which Jimmy and I put down to sharing the single bed, we were woken at about 5am by other your companies that were heading off then. Chatting to the others it sounded as though everyone had a pretty rough sleep so maybe it wasn't just trying to be squeezed onto a single bed made of concrete with a mattress on top? Our breakfast wasn't until 7 so we made the most of the blankets for as long as we could. Cold pankakes and dulce de leche (they LOVE that stuff here) and we were back on the road. Also you'll be pleased to know our driver was much more awake today which meant a far less nerve wracking drive for us.
First stop was to the tree rock and it's surrounding formations that had been blown there from a nearby volcano. It was once again bitterly cold so I wasn't keen to be out of the jeep for very long.
We did gain ourselves an extra jeep member at this point though, Dmitry the Russian/Canadian, whose tour group had left without him the previous day at the Bolvian border control. Our company had taken pity on him and put him in one of the other jeeps but they wanted to put him our jeep instead as ours had more room apparently. Fred knew him from earlier in their trips as they had both spent some time at one of the infamous Loki hostels so we knew he'd fit in with the wolf pack pretty well.
Day dos saw quite a bit if driving but we did stop off at some more lagoons, one in particular where we had lunch, had more flamingos. They were a lot closer to us this time so meant some more good photo ops. What we found fascinating though was the Laguna was 'toxic' to humans yet here were these crazy looking birds digging around in the shallows for food. They really must be tough.
Next off was a view point to see an active volcano (I forget the name sorry) which had obviously spewed out some crazy rock formations a long time ago. There were even a few that looked like surf barrels!
Last stop off for the day was some train tracks which provided Jimmy & Fred an opportunity to practice some capoeira on the tracks.
After a long drive we were happy to head to our salt hotel (yes, it's made of salt - the boys confirmed this by licking the walls). It was a bit if a step up from the last place we had stayed with power, hot water, matrimonial bedrooms for us couples and carpet floors. How luxurious!
We had been told we were having roast duck for dinner but after having a few mouthfuls we were all pretty sure it was just chicken which I was a but gutted about as was having to break my New Years resolution of not eating non free range chicken - but hey, who knows were it came from really! They had given us wine with dinner so we thought it'd be rude not to finish off the few bottles plus one of the Pisco bottles we had been lugging around since La Serena. Which pretty much goes against anyone's advice of what to do while at altitude as drinking isn't really advised due to the hangovers you get the next day.
Speaking of altitude sickness, I had found that I hadn't been affected much, apart from a bit of a dull headache. Which is a great sign as we will be at altitude for a while so that hopefully means I won't be suffering much. Jimmy hasn't been getting headaches but his nose is suffering pretty badly, often being bloody so his sinuses as clearly not liking the altitude. Here's hoping it'll acclimatize soon!
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