Saturday we set off relatively early because we had a lot of driving to do. I think we drove for about five or six hours straight at one point. If the previous day's theme had been salt, this day it was all about lagoons. Well, to get to the lagoons we had to drive through deserts. Deserts, upon deserts, upon deserts. Laguna Colorada was the highlight of the day, possibly the highlight of the trip for me. This is what I was most looking forward to, and it exceeded all my expectations. It is this huge lagoon, with red water– there were also hues of purple. The lake is red from the algae and plankton– and it is also very shallow, only 20 inches deep at the greatest depth, I think this plays a huge role in the color.
Before reaching Laguna Colorada we went to three or four others– none of them quite as amazing but still beautiful. In the summer these lagoons are home to thousands of flamingos, but all but a few brave souls have migrate to Chile for the winter. We ate a very late lunch at one of the lagoons, and because it was around 2:00 there were no other tourists in sight so we had the whole lagoon and about a hundred flamingos to ourselves. But to be honest, it was so cold and windy that we all sat in the jeep and waited until lunch was ready.
We spent the second night in another small, unheated, salt hotel. Dinner that night was spaghetti with a bottle of wine to celebrate our last night together. Or I am assuming that is why Garcia gave us wine. Oh, I can't believe I didn't mention this in my last post: dinner the first night of the tour was llama! None of us knew what we were eating– we were all very confused about the chewy, white t-bone that we had been served. The next day I asked Garcia what it was, and he said llama. It was pretty good, just very tough meat!
0 comments:
Post a Comment