March 16, 2000
Day 146: Day three Uyuni Tour toAlota
We are up and going at 5:30 am. It’s cold. The stars are still brilliant. Our first stop is Sol de Manana geysers. It’s just getting light. Walter, our driver & guide, walks us through the boiling mud pits. He tells us an Israeli who fell into one of the pits with polyester pants…ouch!
We see a surreal landscape of large boulders in sand. We arrive at the hot springs. It’s still very cold and our elevation is not much lower than 5000 meters. We quickly change into our swimming suits. Our feet are frozen from the cold ground. But into the hot springs, its wonderful. Everyone from our group goes in. When we get out, we have breakfast, an egg McMary, scrambled eggs on a bun and coffee.
Our next stop is Laguna Verde. Supposedly between 10 and 12 the lake turns green. We walk to a hill that has several stone stacked formations, and wait. The water is still with a perfect reflection of the mountains. The water is a turquoise blue in some places.
We drive on to the dropping off point of people taking a bus to Chile. Nicola, from our group is the only one. Mary insists, and makes a sandwich for her to eat on the bus.
We drive back to Laguna Colorado and find a spot for lunch, we are a little away from the Laguna and flamingos. Walter is under the Landcruiser, banging away. Later, Walter stops and catches quail like birds for us to see. Our destination for tonight is Alota. On the way we visit Valle de Rocas, an area with large rocks and people have named the different shapes like a lion and a parrot shaped rock.
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We get settled in an Alota, the same kind of accommodation with all of us in a room, a table and chairs, for dinner. The Danish couple and us go explore the village. We are challenged to a soccer game by some local kids. What started out as 4 to 4 soon became 11 kids against the 4 of us. The altitude makes running very difficult. Marie does score one. But the final score was 5 to 1. So off we go to the shop to buy the kids large bottles of coke. Outside the shop the kids scrambled in two groups in opposite directions each with one bottle of coke. Mary fixes us tea while we wait for dinner. We have dinner of fried egg, hot dog and rice.
We finish off the Whiskey.
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