Day 30: 30/7/12
Happy birthday Shell!! Hope you had a good time at the races!
This morning we had to be gone by 6 so was pretty cold! Our first stop was some geysers and we got there before the sun came up fully so that we could see he light of the sun coming up through the steam from the geysers. You could see all the mud boiling away in the ground. It was absolutely freezing- I thought I'd lost my fingers and toes!! Took a long time to recover!
Next stop was at a hot spring. It was near a big lake and they had a tiny corner cut out that you could get into. There were lots of groups around. There must have been close to 100 people but only 20 or 30 in the springs. Everyone else watching. It was far too cold and there were no changing rooms- very one just changing beside the springs. So most of our group didn't go in- only 2 guys braved it!
We ha breakfast there. We got pancakes and fruit and yoghurt which was a lovely change from eggs!
Then we were supposed to visit the green lagoon but it was frozen over wit ice so it wasn't going to look green. So instead we wet back to the red lagoon and saw it from a different angle. This time it looked completely red. The skies were really blue too so the colours looked lovely!
Then we had to drive back to Uyuni. This took about five hours, driving through desert. The jeep in front of us kept breaking down and our driver would have to get out. Twice they changed a tyre- one in each jeep. Then they were pumping something in the engine so don't know what was going on! Thankfully our jeep was working fine! We stopped for lunch halfway so that kind of broke it up.
At the red lagoon Anna gave me the second hunger games book that she had finished so I read that all day. I had only 30 pages left when we got to Uyuni so I got to finish it that evening- its a good book!!
When we got to Uyuni, we only had about an hour and a half to have a shower, change our clothes, repack our suitcases as we had only brought small bags with us to the salt flats and get something to eat for the bus.
A few of us went looking for the market but didn't find it in time so just had to buy some cookies and crackers in a shop.
Got the bus at 8. It was supposed to take about 11 hours. But there was a strike on in some town so we had to go a round-about way! We won't get to La Paz until about 9:30am. I slept a bit but only on and off. Every time I looked out the window we seemed to be in the middle of the desert where there was no road. At one stage we drove over ice- you could hear it cracking! I don't know where the hell he brought us but it was the bumpiest journey I've ever been on!! As Muireann would say- it was like a vibroplate session!!