July 3rd: Salar Day 2

Sun = life
Human life revolves around the sun, something that is accentuated throughout our travels in Bolivia. And even more when traveling through desert-like plains at high altitude. Nights are freezing cold (yesterday lows were around -5), yet Bolivian don't complain about this, or the lack of heating in their houses. Days are relatively hot. All life wakes up when the sun decides, and when she retires, Bolivians do as well. Very different from the city life we lead in Europe.

The earliest of morning light peers through our curtainless bedroom windows and tickles my eyelids. Time to rise from our concrete beds and heat our hands around a mug of coca infusion, piping hot water poured over fresh coca leaves. We'll have coca tea for breafast lunch and dinner here, it's an integral part of life. I decide to live on the wild side and be different from the rest of the group: I'm having instant coffee with instant milk powder instead. And a thick stack of fresh pancakes that Wilma has cooked up for us.

Flippin' Dale
It's early, but Dale is in top shape already, piercing the day-break silence with enthusiastic Canadian blabber about his life, not sparing his audience any personal details. "Do you know I have bladder problems? I had to wake up several times this night to relieve myself. It wasn't too cold last night, was it? etc, etc." Yesterday morning Dale took the initiative to introduce himself and got conversations started, in the afternoon everybody knew most everything about his life, yesterday night the novelty had started wearing off. This morning, when I hear some of his stories for the second time around, I consider that his talking is a disease, he NEEDS to tell everybody around him whatever comes up right away. Everything is still "amazing" and "exciting", silence is not an option.  For the record, I'm not alone in thinking this, the others have stopped stopped asking him questions as well, but that doesn't stop him.

Volcanoes and lakes in all colours of the rainbow
By 8 we've got all our stuff on top of the jeep again, and are ready to start bumping around again. I intend to take a seat in the back and fold my legs behind my ears. Then Christian saves the day and says there's no way I'll fit, so I get to stay on the front bench, together with Dale and Blanca. Yes, baby, sometimes it pays to be really tall!

Today we'll stay above 4000 meters and drive South, roughly parallel with the Chilean border, on the other side of the cordillera to our right. The first stop is at the base of the Ollague volcanoe, then we'll see a variety of differently coloured lakes and have lunch (grilled chicken and local tubers). In the afternoon we pass by the "Arbol de Piedra" and finish at the "Laguna Colorada", right before the sun sets. We spend most of the day inside the car, listening to IPOD music as the landscapes change dramatically around us. Here and there we jump out of the jeep to take pictures in the sometimes blazingly cold wind, then huddle up inside the warm vehicle again while our trip through this geaography atlas continues. When he's not taking pictures from inside the vehicle, Dale keeps yapping away to nobody in particular, afraid to have more than 10 minutes of silence.

Last night a BJ (bottle job) saved my life
We arrive at our refuge for the night, and have a hot soup to warm us up. Dale has purchased a bottle of wine to celebrate our last together with the rest of the group. We'll be dropped of by the Chilean border tomorrow, the rest of the group will return to Uyuni. Local kids sing us songs while we eat "Pique a lo macho",  a thick layer of french fries, mixed with beef, sausage/hot dogs, onions, hard-boiled egg and pretty much anything else you want, cooked in a gravy-like sauce. Loads of calories to keep us warm in the coldest night of the trip, it will be around -10 tonight.

The sleeping bags are put on top of our dorm-style single beds (a concrete bottom, with a mattress on top). I won't be able to warm up Blandine, the fleece blanket we bought in Sucre will come in very handy. As I brush my teeth, Christian pulls me in the kitchen: he's prepared hot-water bottles for all of us, he's our saviour!