Our first tour is booked for 7AM pickup today. Water is not drinkable from the taps, the restaurant is not open, stores are not open, we are on a 12 hour tour that we are supposed to bring our own water! Luckily for us the same "nervous" security guard is still on from last night and he takes us into the restaurant and we fill up all water bottles that we have from the water cooler in the restaurant.
The tour today is 12 hours heading south for 100 kms.
The town is bustling with vans already driving around picking up people. Not many people rent cars, it is pretty much a tour van town. We had prebooked all of our tours, it was hard to find English tours, plus we have limited time so wouldn't have time to shop around in town. Our first day was a long day, but if all tours are going to be like this we are in for a great few days here.
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| Typical landscape as we are driving. We could be on another planet! |
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| Breakfast is included on the tour. They pull the van over and make meals for you. Felt like on safari again. |
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| Salt flats, 3rd largest in the world after Bolivia and the USA we were told. We will see a lot more of these this week |
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| Abandoned little town |
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| Guanaco, as you can see you have to drive carefully, like watching for deer at home |
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| Our first walk of the day. You had to stay on the paths. Walk very very slowly, we are at altitude here. The town is at 2400 meters altitude, lakes were at 4300 meters altitude |
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| Wendy took her jacket for a walk |
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| Nandu, kind of like an ostrich. These are not so common, our guide was taking pictures. We had no idea we would see wildlife today, a nice surprise! |
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| Our guide, he was wonderful! We skipped on one of the walk, the altitude and sleepiness was getting to both of us. The guide came and got us after that portion and told us we had to walk to get used to the altitude, so off we go again slow slow slow. |
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| Fights over the females, fun to watch |
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| Lunch break in the van, chicken salad served in mason jars, it was really good! |
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| View at lunch break |
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| Again we were told not to go off the walking path, not sure how you would even stay standing off the path! |
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| Flamingos, another surprise for us |
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| Just outside Atacama we stopped at a little town called Toconao that had a local store where we were able to buy a case of water and some homemade ice cream. The guide must know the owners of this little store, he really pushed the ice cream. The guide came out with bags of something, we figured he must have needed to stop. |
Wendy had a pretty rough day today, altitude was not good to her. One of people on our tour had a prescription for altitude sickness, he was leaving the next day so he gave her 6 pills. She didn't ask too many questions, just took one with food. Hoping it will help tomorrow.
I'm sure they had to push hard to get André to eat ice cream
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