Sunday 27 December 2009
Highlights: Geysers, thermal baths, Laguna Colorada (red lagoon), Laguna Verde (blue/green lake)

Today we got up at 4.15 am, I was so asleep I managed to scalp myself going to the toilet, Bolivians are not very tall and a lot of the infrastructure reflects this with low ceilings and door frames, definitely no ruckman or basketball players to be found in Bolivia!

We headed off at 5 am and shortly afterwards we enjoyed a spectacular sunrise (well at least those awake in our transportation rides). We went and visited some geysers which had boiling mud pools. Karen almost lost her feet to frostbite but otherwise I think we all enjoyed the geysers.

We then headed to the thermal baths which were very enjoyable given we hadn’t had a shower in 2 days. The water was very nice and refreshing, although I only got in after an emergency trip to the bano (toilet) which like a lot of non-English places you have to pay for.

After our thermal bath we enjoyed a nice breakfast which included pancakes and alcohol. Andrew made the comment that it was only 9 am and we had already done a full days worth of activities, shows you what you can do when you get up at 4.15 am but have a drink!!

Later in the day we visited Laguna Colorada (4278 m above sea level) which is a large red lagoon and Laguna Verde (5000 m), a lake that is very a blue-green colour. We even saw the Licancabu volcano (5960 m) and got within 250 metres of being in Chile. We again saw a lot of flamingos which reminded me of yesterday’s great lunch 🙂

Our group said goodbye to Cindy, Nick and Marianna who headed off to Chile. We had lunch around 2 pm which luckily was inside as it started to rain. We gave tips to our 4 drivers and 2 cooks of 100 BS each (so 1,800 BS overall). Now Gareth wasn’t feeling very well (but Emma was better) which meant he drank a lot of water which also means lots of toilet stops, not good when it is raining.

Emma played a practical joke on Gareth and Andrew who had both gone outside for a toilet break, unfortunately when our driver took off he didn’t understand we wanted to just tease them. A wet Andrew and Gareth got picked up by the next 4×4 and luckily saw the funny side when we meant later that day.

We had 1.5 hours at our hotel from a few days ago back in Uyuni, and some of our group paid to have a shower before our 12 hour overnight flight. I backed up Karen’s photos and then copied all of them to Martin. Titch did a pizza run and just got back to the bus in time both Andrew and myself had a slice each. Unfortunately for me the bus seat for the overnight trip was broken; it should be an interesting night.