We headed out to the Valle de las Rocas. It is a bouldering heaven. Ryan was drooling by the time the jeep stopped to let us out, and I barely grabbed a pic of him before he was off climbing up and down all of the unique, craggy, seemingly infinite boulders. It really was a place unlike any other. Romer had to honk the horn to get everyone to put their cameras away, climb down off the rocks and get back in the car.
Next we headed over to some altiplanic lakes. First we had to either cross a stream or brave a mud pit. Romer chose the stream and the water was up to the bottom of Ryan's door when we got stuck. It was the first time we saw Romer smile. We were stuck a good five minutes before a conference with the other driver (who looked about 18), much lurching and shifting, and some rocking back and forth by the passengers got us loose.
The altiplanic lakes were some of the coolest things ever. I posted the photos in my previous post. Imagine a large snowy mountain, colorful lake, and pink flamingoes dunking their heads in and out. Beautiful! We had lunch near one of these lakes (while seagulls circled above us). Lunch was pounded chicken (possibly fried), rice, oranges, veggies, and coke. It was again really tasty!
We spend some time at nearby lakes. And headed over to Arbol de Piedra, a sort of balancing rock thats large at the top and small at the bottom and took a few pictures. We then headed to Laguna Colorada.
Laguna Colorada is a pinkish red lake with still more flamingos. It also had a lot of borax in it we learned. It was really neat to see the red water, which gets its color from algae.
We headed to our "shelter" after the lake. I say shelter because that is the word that the woman at the office chose to describe it. She said Its a basic shelter with no heat. (I dont think we've had heat at all on this trip.) This scared me and as the tour progressed I had the shelter in my mind as a tarp attached to a tin roof with cots inside and an outhouse a quarter mile away.
Happy to announce - not the case! The "shelter" was actually "quite nice" as the brits put it. We had a shared room of 6 beds, real beds, clean looking with 10 lbs of blankets on top. The bathrooms were acceptable, and we had a nice hot meal of soup and spaghetti in a dining area.
Ryan and I rented sleeping bags for this night because we'd heard it would be bitter cold. I actually think we probably could have done without them, as we were plenty warm.
We got up early again and Ryan got some excellent pictures of the stars above our dear shelter. Some of the coolest night sky pics I've seen (see previous post).
We had cold pancakes for breakfast made the night before with jams and spreads. Not bad. We were off to go back to the border which we'd originally crossed. The tour normally ends at a closer border but it was closed due to snow.
We froze our butts off from 5:30, when we left, until at least 9:30, well after the sun came up. We arrived to the border at 10, were we had some ham and cheese sandwiches. We said adios to Romer, and hopped on a mini bus back to San Pedro. We had to pay 15 Bolivianos to get out of Bolivia, strangely. The minibus stopped for a while after this and our driver got out and argued/stood around with a few other men for a good ten minutes before getting back in like nothing happened. The Chilean border checked our bags and we headed out on the 4 hour drive back to the hostel. Beautiful scenery the whole way.
We grabbed dinner in town, showered, and went straight to bed.
We didn't do much the next day. Slept in a little, roamed around town, had laundry done, changed money. I read in the square while Ryan ran for about 25 minutes.
By 8pm we were at the bus station ready to board our night bus for Arica. The bus ride was uneventful, we slept just ok in our "cama" seats, as there were no premium ones on this bus.
Ryan deadlifting in the train graveyard
rock valley
More flamingos!
red water in laguna colorada
trying to get warm in the "shelter"
an active volcano with white steam escaping
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