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Tasha's Travels
We were woken bright and early and after a quick breakfast headed off towards the Volcanoe which is still active. We arrived at some strange place where there were lots of strange rocks and craters and these weird space bushes that were bright green dome type things very bizarre! After clambering over various rocks and caves to take some pics we were off to visit the lagoons . We passed so many, al of which were in totally different landscapes and different colours. We drove past an amazing white one surrounded by mountains and then stopped for lunch at where there were meant to be lots of flamingoes ( sadly we had two strange small white birds that were just slipping about on the frozen lagoon) But we were assured that flamingoes would be at lots of the other lagoons.
After lunch we made our way to Colerado Lagoon which was a deep purple from the distance and then became more of a red pink as we got nearer to it, the algae and micro organisisms colour it this way, and there were lots of flamingoes there as well- i was actually really surprised to see them because it was absolutely freezing!! For some reason i thought flamingoes were in warm climates, not mountains!
After passing many more stunning lagoons ( see pics) we stopped at our accomodation for the night. This time we were first there, so we were pretty smug about getting first picks and pinched all the decent pillows- unfortunately we then watched every other 4x4 drive past our room to the neighbouring block- we literally were the only group shoved in some random building on our own and every other group were all sat together!! So we decided to go and gate crash and scrounge some crackers and tea as our driver had just ditched us and driven off! It was so much colder- i think someone said it was around -15 , but it turned out to be a realy fun night as we had some wine and played lots of card games with the guys ( i lost every single time). Hardly slept at all ( my sleeping bag had somehow got wet on the roof of the car and at -15 it wasn't particularly cosy!!!
We woke at 5 the next day, and headed straight out before sunrise to get the geysers. We climbed to over 5000m ( hight than mont blanc) and thankfully the guys gave us the only blanket because Claire and i were nearly frozen solid! The geysers were just incredible, and just as we were taking pictures the sun began to rise behind the mountains which was really stunning! We then drove to Lagoon Verde which is the bright turquoise lagoon ( i'm afraid we were literally jumping out taking a pic and jumping bac k in the car because it was just too cold!!
Unfortunately our tour lady didn't tell us about the hot springs, so when we arrived at the next stop everyone whipped out their swim wear and lept in the steaming hot pools, although to be honest the thought of getting out wet in the freezing cold wouldn't have appealed to much anyway! But we had fun watching everyone play in the springs stood there in our 6 layers!!
After a scrambled egg butty we drove off to the frontier to adios Alex and Franck who were headed to Chile and we had the long drive back to Uyuni!
Unfortunately our 4x4 had a different idea and decided to break down everytime we hit a bump or incline ( great for mountain terrain) but our drive did provide bubble gum lollies all way to keep us hapy ( they did the job too). After Sander ( our dutch dude) had got out to have a moment ( there were several) and cry and then watch all of the sunset.......................... we finally got back to Uyuni at 6pm. Banks were shut and we faced a night there............not good, but luckily we struck a deal with a shop guy to get some cash and got the first bus out of there back to La Paz!!
We were determined not to spend any time in La Paz though, so we got a 26hour direct bus to Lima ( or so we were told). But over 30 hours later and stops in Copacabana, Puno, Arequipa, Ica and some strange cafe for an hour, we finally arrived in Lima!
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