Day 12: Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 (These Eyes – The Guess Who)

7:42am – We got up around 6:30, had egg sandwiches and coffee and are now loading up the car. Day three of our Salar tour. I’m still healthy with solid bowel movements.

A lot of the morning was spent driving. We saw other tour groups jeeps again. A lot of the tours do a circle, but some go one way and others go the reverse way. We saw a lot of European tourists and a lot of Israeli tourists. We left the actual salt flats at this point, and it was now just dirt that we were driving on. We were south of the salt flats.

11:40am – We have been driving around to different volcanoes and lagoons this morning. There are tons of mountains and volcanoes to see. The lagoons have borax in them.

We’ve stopped now for lunch near a volcano. I’ve been riding in the backseat with Ranz. The ride is pretty dusty and the bumps make me have to pee a lot. It’s so peaceful and quiet wherever we stop.

In the afternoon we stopped at these rock formations that were supposed to look like trees, so they called it a petrified forest. We climbed up the rocks, which was probably a little unsafe, especially because when we got to the top it was really windy. No one got hurt, though.

The whole time we were on our tour our guide had this headwarmer thing over his face. We didn’t know why he did it, if it was just to keep the dust out of his face, or if it was a class thing. In the city, the shoe shiners wear these types of cloths over their faces because they don’t want to show their face, almost like they are embarrassed by their work.

We drove to the entrance to this national park, where a worker had to open a gate for us (and of course we had to pay a toll). Inside the national park, there are a bunch of lagoons, many of which are homes to flamingos.

The first lagoon we stopped at was red. Apparently this was because of the microorganisms that live in the water. We had to walk down a pretty steep hill to get right up to the edge of the lake.
Ranz and I raced back up the hill to our jeep. This was one of many times we thought it would be fun to race. At the high altitudes, you get out of breath quickly. I won, but Ranz was always wearing sandals when we raced, so I don’t think it was completely fair.

We got to our hostel for that night pretty early in the afternoon. It was more like a big complex of hostels.

3:37pm – We did a lot more driving and saw a “petrified” rock forest, red lagoon and are in a national park. We’re at our hostel now and are chilling on our beds.

We were all in one room for this hostel. The room was a long room with 7 beds. Back in Uyuni when the company owner was describing the trip, he told us where we would stay and how many blankets were provided each night. I thought this was interesting, but tonight was a 3-blanket hostel, and they would prove necessary.

With nothing else to do, all of us except Ranz decided to take a little walk around the complex. We were in the middle of nowhere, really, and there wasn’t much to walk to or see except mountains in the distance. It was really windy and bitterly cold, so we pretty much just circled the complex and called it quits. While we were walking I chewed some coca leaves, which made me spit green and numbed my tongue.

In our exploration, we did find a small supply shop which sold alcohol. We bought some beer and wine for later that night.

When we got back to our room, Ranz was out in the common area smoking a pipe. We all sat down at the table and he passed the pipe around. We played the movie game, and went to some unexplored territory of actors/movies with which Ranz and I had little familiarity. It was a good time.

I asked the group to tell me about their Peace Corp experiences and they told some good stories. I then started asking for specific times, such as “Tell me a story at your Peace Corps site that involves an animal.” Sydney told about a dog she had and how the people in her village could remember the dog’s name easier than hers, so she became (and I’m using Spike because I can’t remember the real name) “Spike’s Mama”.

Kilo told a story about his horse running away from some bees.

Naya told a story about how her kids showed her the trash they were throwing away (because she had taught them with puppets about how it is important to throw trash away).

We eventually moved into our room and continued talking there. Ranz and I told a bunch of funny stories of pranks from college. Other people told their stories, too. We passed a lot of time talking.

After 8pm we finally got served our dinner, which wasn’t all that spectacular, so we didn’t know what the wait had been, but we were just happy to get food. We drank some wine but turned in pretty early. We had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day.