Salt Flats Day Two

Friday November 5.

Up early and loaded into our 4x4. Again I was in the front seat with the guide, I guess my age gave me that seat, or else no one wanted to sit with him. He´s a nice enough guy, but he knows we don´t speak Spanish so he just talks louder to us!

Drove across the rest of the flats and then began climbing in altitude up the mountains. We stopped at several lagoons that had water and flamingos in them. Each lagoon seemed to have it´s own colour depending on the algae in it or the minerals in it, some blue, green, red, white or black. Really interesting to see in the middle of a desert. The scenery here was stark and beautiful.

I saw several different animals, including flamingos, lizards, lapaca, vicunas (another member of the llama family, with really fine rich hair), a fox and an animal that looks like a rabbit, but bigger with a long tail, called a vizacachas.

After lunch we arrived at the two parks called: National Reserve of Andean Fauna and Los Flamencos National Reserve. This has to be one of the most remote, hard to reach parks in the world. Here we saw the red lagoon, created by algae in the water, and lots of flamingos. From there we drove to our night´s accommodation. It was a group of buildings with rooms that accomodate six people each. We checked in and settled in to talk and play cards. The weather was getting very cold. After dinner, I decided to get into bed for warmth and because we were to get up really early the next morning.