Today was a really, really long day. We left the village around 6am and after about an hour stopped at the abandoned village of San Antonio. It was established as a mining town nearly around 400 years ago and was inhabited up until the early 20th century. Oscar explored the church are said he found bone fragments laying all around, probably from the old graves. It was really, really cold (7am at nearly 5000 meters!), so Joylani and I tried to stay in the sun. That took us to the edge of town, where there were awesome views down into the valley and several chinchillas hopping about the nearby rocks.

San Antonio

Between San Antonio and our next scheduled stop, we made a couple of maintenance stops. Our jeep got a flat-tire once and then another jeep that we were kind of convoying with began having engine trouble. I didn’t mind the stops or waits though, since we were in a really scenic area. But then we stopped for about two hours, while our driver, Felix, tried to help fix the other jeep.

 maintenance stop 1

great scenery between breaking down

maintenance stop 2

our two-hour maintenance stop

Joylani dying in the desert

Eventually, we continued on, while the other jeep had to turn back. We ate lunch not much later at a small village where there also happened to be a National Park office.

 lunch time

After lunch, we did a lot of driving. A lot. But luckily, we broke it up with a rest/photo stop at Salar de Chalviri, a lake with blinding-white salt and flamingos on it.

 Salar de Chalviri

We also took about an hour break to relax in the most scenic (and for that matter, cleanest) hot-springs I’ve ever been to: Termas de Polques. There was no shower last night, which made the experience that much better.

 Ahhhhh….hot springs!

Afterwards, we headed to the Chilean border where we glimpsed Laguna Verde. Apparently, its gets its color from high concentrations of lead, sulfur, arsenic, and calcium carbonates; these chemicals also prevent the lake from ever freezing (unless temps get down to -70F).

 Laguna Verde

Lastly, we stopped at Sol de Manana, an area of boiling mud and geysers. I’d like to say I enjoyed seeing or even taking the below photo (Joylani too it), but I was busy relieving myself behind the closest rock I could find as my stomach was sick all afternoon. Before I ran off to find a rock, Joylani warned me to not inadvertently go near a geyser, because in her words, “That’d be some bidet!” Besides the unsanitary Bolivian food, I think the altitude was getting to me, as we’d spent much of the day between 4500-5000 meters. Between the many sights and maintenance delays, it was an over 13 hour day.

geysers