We left late next morning in our 1985 Toyosa Land Cruiser with us 4, two British guys, our driver slash guide- Manuel and our cook. We bumped through the desert for a few minutes before reaching the train cemetary, where all the trains from the 1800s went to die. We then continued to the salt flats, first visiting a salt making factorty. The process is surprisingly simple.
1. Scrape salt off ground
2. Heat salt to dry it
3. Crush salt & add iodine
4. Package salt
The salt flats are 12 meters of solid salt resting upon a huge lake, which, in the rainy season becomes completely saturated with water resulting in 5cm of it covering the whole flats. After much ooohing and aahing at the salt, its flatness and infinity we visited a salt hotel and an island covered in thousands of cacti. We then drove off the salt flats and to our own salt hotel where everything from the beds to the tables and chairs were made of salt. And yet the food never had enough. Weird.
After playing an exhausting game of soccer with the village's children we sat on the bball court to admire the stars, with no electricity in the village nor a moon we got a great view of the sky- milky way and all. 5 am wake up call the next day and we drove off through variyng degrees of desert and towering peaks, stopping to take a look at a smoking volcano (from afar) then visiting at a series of lagoons filled with flamingos and surrounded by brown barren peaks. This whole place was completely devoid of life except for the occasional vicuña herd (like llamas) and the flocks of flamongos. or flamingos.
We bounced through some more bleak moonscapes of rolling sand hills and multicolored mountains till we reached a bunch of surreal looking sand-worn rock formations in the middle of vast valleys of sand. Then we stopped at a blood-red lagoon dotted with even more flamingos and llamas. And apparently the redness is due to some unpronounciable mineral found in there.
Next stop was a cold hotel in the middle of nowhere where we played cards, dirt rugby and gazed at yet more stars. We settled in our beds wearing every possible clothing item in our bags (I think I got up to 6 layers and it was waaay under freezing) and slept until the ungodly hour of 4am where we rolled out of bed and into the frosted dirt landscape to the geyser fields where we jumped out of the car, ran around and took photos until we coudn't feel our fingers anymore- then ran back into the car and started a swearing marathon at the cold. We did this 3 or 4 times until we reached the hot springs at around 6, where we decided it would be smart to take a dip.
Well it was great. The smouldering lake surrounded us with hot springs gnawing away at the night ice around them, all covered in the glow of the early morning sun. We sat in these boiling pools (37ºC) for a while until breakfast was ready and then got out and had some cold pancakes (at least we were warm from the springs). Getting back into the car we realized that it was still under freezing because our swimsuits were frozen solid onto the side of the jeep.
The last stop was the green lagoon- an emerald green pool with a perfectly conical volcano pearched just behind it made for an amazing view and lots of great photos before the hoards of tourists disembarked from their own land cruisers.
We then crossed the border into Chile going from this surreal bleak landscape to perfectly manicured roads and modern cars.
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