Lagoons, salt and bubbling geysers — Uyuni, Bolivia
We were all warm and cosy at night, although Rob wasn't feeling great because of a **** night's sleep and perhaps a bit of altitude sickness. We dosed him up on cocoa leaves, ginger tablets and everything else herbal we had. Filo had cooked the ostrich egg for us and we all tried some. The egg yolk was delicious, although a bit on the sweet side almost, but the egg white looked highly unappetising, so we all gave that a miss!! Then it was time to hit the road and see some more sights. The first stop was a small patch of land with hundreds of llamas and a lovely mountain in the background. One of the llamas was particularly cuddly and let everyone stroke and hug it. Then we were off to a beautiful lagoon,the best thing about the different lagoons is that they all have different colours, due to the different mineral compositions. It was quite cold in the morning, so we were happy to get back into the van quickly. Ponchito stopped at a small salt flat and started digging for us, it turns out that when you combine earth/dirt and salt you get borax - a tough mineral, which is great for making glass. It is a bright white colour and solid; it forms from about two inches underground to two metres deep. Ponchito is very knowledgeable and it was great learning so much from him! After this, we went to another small salt flat, where there is some mining activity, in the sense that they put together big bags of salt and ship it off to Bolivia and abroad. Filo grabbed a plastic bag and filled it up with table salt, so that she can use it for cooking. Different forms and types of salt are used for different things, for example flat discs are best for using in cooking. A bit later we drove past the Dali desert, this place has many strange and unusual rock formations in the middle of the desert. High winds, sometimes up to 400km/h (not sure if that is entirely true, but Ponchito said so) have formed these rocks into their current state and when you look at them you really do feel as if you are in a Salvador Dali painting! Very wonderful place. The car ran out of fuel and we had to use the reserve tanks. However Ponchito couldn't find the syphon hose, so the boys had to cut up some plastic bottles and manually fill up the car with about 80-100l of fuel by pouring it from the canister to the fuel tank. It took a while, but I think they actually enjoyed this type of adventure. Shortly after we were meant to stop at some hot springs, but it was pretty busy in this small thermal pool, so Ponchito decided to check out another, less crowded spot. On the way there we also went to the white and green lagoons. These can be found side by side and again it's the different minerals that give them their colour. Although we were told, that in high winds the green lagoon loses some of its intense colour and to be honest the white one looked more blue/turquoise to us than the green one. But it was still a fantastic sight and we feel very lucky to have visited these places. Then it was time to have a quick dip in the thermal baths, that Ponchito found for us, and we unwillingly got into our bikinis and boardies and jumped in the water. The temperature outside would have been about 10C with windchill factor. At least this place wasn't busy and the water would have been between 25-30C, just don't stick your shoulders out, otherwise you will get cold!!! Birdy hates the cold and so she was cursing us when it came to getting out, saying that we had forced her into the baths. We got our gear back on and as I was walking around the pool, I steppe on what I thought was hard ground, which ended up being a swampy type of water and my shoe came off and got soaked. So annoying!!! We stuck it outside in the sun while we had lunch in the car. Filo did another amazing job and we had potatoes, rice, strips of chicken in herbs and lots of salad - we were so full after! Then we were off to the geysers, smoking and bubbling volcano pits, which were full of sulphur and full of stink. But honestly, this place was unbelievable - if you have ever tried to picture the planet Mars, I think this is what it would look like! There was smoke coming out of gaps in the earth and these grumbled too, it was so loud. In other spots you would look down a small gap, almost like a tiny volcano crater and there would be different colours and types of mud bubbling. When I asked Ponchito about their temperature, he said that they get as hot as 120C, although some are obviously a bit cooler at 60C! Incredible. We got some fun shots and Ponchito pretended that the smoke from the geysers was coming out of his bum, like a giant, never-ending ****! Ha ha, he is like a little kid. The last stop of the day was the red lagoon and this was phenomenal! I was blown away by the colours and textures, as this one contains a lot of borax - the white "islands" you can see in the pictures. We got some fun shots, all of us jumping up (although Rob and Birdy were out of sync, so we kept laughing and trying again). It was incredibly windy on the day and you could almost get blown away by being out of the car, again refer to photos :) We headed to our hostel for the night and there were a lot of other groups staying there, in particular one group of 7 Irish girls and two guys travelling with them, from Oz and America - you can imagine the level of drinking that went down on that table!! Filo served us tea and biscuits and we had time to relax and then for dinner she made us home-made burgers with mash, yum!!! She is such a fantastic cook and such a lovely lady. Then we headed for bed in our cosy, four-dorm room to be ready for another early start.