Your driver's been drinking all day????

On day two of our tour we were up early for breakfast and back in the 4X4s to visit the lakes and rocks and flamingos it was an interesting day, made all the more so by the insight and information that Israel was able to share with us, he's a geologist and having him there to answer questions like; why does the salt form perfect cubes? Because of the crystalline structure known as infinite lattice and Why are the salt flats covered in hexagonal markings? Again, because of the 'infinite lattice' structure of salt.

It was hard for the second day to compete with the first, having never seen or experienced anything comparable to the Salt Flats I was blown away by them and whilst the lakes were interesting; The Red Lake (because it was) and the Stinky Lake (because it did) and the Flamingos (they really shouldn't thrive as well as they do in the altitude) - in my opinion the second day wasn't a patch on the first (just wait until you hear about the third!).

Red Lake

Stinky Lake (and flamingos)

A Rock....

We had been warned that our accommodation on the second night was going to be more basic, and it was. We were staying in a refuge with several other tour groups and we were sleeping in a dorm, something that Abs and I have been able to avoid up until now. But it was fine, it was only going to be a few hours in bed as we had a 4:30am start on Monday....

As an aside to my story, another group of four young girls arrived at the refuge just as we were sitting down for a drink, they were all very upset as their driver had been drinking throughout the day and was now drunk and they were scared to continue the tour with him the next day.

As a group we comforted them, shared our drinks with them and collectively came up with options for them for the following day. 

And when the girls were out of ear shot we smugly talked about how clever we all were for doing such thorough research, paying a bit more (because you get what you pay for, don't you?) and going with Red Planet, we laughed a lot about this later!

Friends, a word of warning - never be smug......

Raine x