5 lagoons

We woke up at 6:30am so that we could eat breakfast and be out the door by 7:30am. I had slept pretty well despite the cold temperatures and did not want to get out if my warm bed. Sadly, breakfast consisted of only hard bread and tea but we had anticipated this and brought apples to supplement the meal. We began our day by crossing through the remainder of the Salar.

After crossing the salar, we stopped to take a look at the Ollague volcano, which is split between Chile and Bolivia.

 

We then began our tour of the five lagoons of the area. They are heavily populated with flamingos which Alyssa and I were excited about since we hadn't seen a ton of them in the Galápagos. The lakes were all salt water and you could see the salt caked on the shore. The water also had sulfur and borax in it which we were a little surprised to hear considering so many birds were feeding in them.

Next we passed through the Siloli desert which had really beautiful colors throughout the mountain. As we climbed in elevation, we began to notice snow on the mountains and it was definitely getting colder.

We stopped to see the stone tree, which is actually a lava formation. There is tons of lava in the area which seemed to dry in very strange ways.

Our last stop was Laguna Colorada, which is red due to the plankton that are in high concentration. It was very cold and windy here, but the lake was breathtaking.

The place we stayed was right next to the lake. It was a very basic place that had no heat or running water. The six of us shared one room with beds that had no mattresses, just foam pads.

We hung out in the main room for most of the evening, chatting and playing cards and continually asking for more hot water so that we could drink tea to keep us warm. The dinner here was pasta which was much better than the night before and they even gave us a bottle of wine which we were excited about (even though we had one bottle for the six of us). When we finally settled in for the night, all of us were wearing at least three layers of clothing, plus a sleeping bag and four down blankets. This place was absolutely freezing! I stayed up reading until after 10:00pm even though everyone else had gone to sleep at around 8:30pm. We needed to be up at 4:00am the next morning it I still can never go to sleep that early, regardless of when I need to be awake.

 

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