Other travel blogs seem to go on about meals and beds and travel tips and stuff...

Well, yesterday I ate several meals when I was hungry, and went to bed when I was tired.

I also took a tour jeep up into the Bolivian Altiplano, weird and wonderful high desert up to the north east of San Pedro.

Top geogga

Planet Earth´s crust is thin hereabouts, and mucho geothermal activity is evident...bubbling mud, hot springs, geysers, and hot air vents.

I´ve always wanted to see bubbling mud since I was a kid. They did´t have any on when I went to Yellowstone, and I wanted my money back. Plus, around here there is none of that ´Stay on the duckboard at all times´ deal, because there is no duckboard, or one-way tarmac road, or Visitor Centre or lard-ass Ranger acting like he owns the place and not you. You are free to tread dangerously close to any vent you like (even to throw yourself into one to rescue your hat, should you so wish).



That map again...

You're driving along dusty desert pistes at anything from 4000 to 4800m, higher than the Alps. Laguna Verde, Laguna Blanca, and at Laguna Colorada, gazillions of flamingoes, which are surprisingly good at flying although their legs look rubbish sticking out backwards. Carotene in the lake crustaceans makes them pink, and also gives us the wonderful pink-eared alpaca. Higher up the hillsides, weird hyrax type-things called vizcahca could be seen hopping about in the rocks here and there.

Also Les Rocas de Salvador Dali, a landscape of the paranoiac-critical incarnate.

Am well acclimatised, unlike my i-pod which graunched to a halt at 4300m. Erk alors! On retreating to a lower altitude it sprang back to life. Bueno.