Day two began with our tour guide getting annoyed at Mathieu because he was a little slow to get ready (turns out he had also struggled to get much sleep the night before) and for some reason we were on a strict timetable….I guess it was we had places to be, things to see. We were the first group on the road so we had the first few sites to ourselves, including the famous stone tree, first stop though was a laguna to look at some flamingos, the bird that is not the gay bar from Hobart.
Flamingos in the mist
Flamingos
The famous stone tree
Desert Highway
Flat numero uno
By the end of the day we would be sick of taking photos of flamingos as they were to be seen at nearly every stop during the day. I found taking photos of wildlife I’d get a bit of camera envy when I saw someone with a nice 300+mm lens…then I’d see them try and stuff it in their bag and be happy with my choice of an 18-105mm.
The crew from our CruiserFlat numero uno
Flamingos at lunch...or maybe it was Flamingos for lunch
Nothing comes for free in Bolivia, in some places you can’t even pee in the bush, instead you must pay a few Bolivianos to the hygienically clad lady manning the toilets at your lunch stop.
Bano (toilet) fee
Day two finished at a salt hotel, yes the hotel is mostly made of salt, salt bricks form the walls, beds, chairs and table legs, the floor is also covered in crushed salt..great for getting dry skin off your feet. It was here that we were promised a hot shower, we were told that although there was hot water there wasn’t heaps of it. As a group…we’ll more to the point a few of us blokes decided that each person should have their shower limited to three minutes, mainly because we were being chivalrous and letting the ladies go first and wanted some hot water left for our showers. Having a countdown feature on my watch I was appointed official timekeeper with ??? as backup to ensure that the water was cut off at the end of the allotted three minutes. As it turned out only a few of the ladies, Gen being one of them, had a hot shower with the rest of them and most of us blokes having to make do with a cold shower. The final insult was when Mathew let me jump the queue and have a shower before him as reward for my efforts with timekeeping only for the hotwater to come back during Mathew’s shower, the shower time that should have been mine.
We got caught in a spaghetti western
Salt hotel
The Russians
Stars