Trip to Salt Hotel

After the lunch stop the rest of the day seemed to be focused on traveling to the salt hotel where we would stay the night that night. We may not have made as many stops but we certainly continued to see a lot of beautiful things.

Here are the first salt flats that we drove across.



After emerging from the salt flats we found our way into a small town. It was a little eerie there weren't many people in the street, everything was quiet and you couldn't really tell what sustained this town. All of the buildings were, of course adobe.
I guess one tour's Land Cruiser broke down and was awaiting repairs in this town.
There appeared to be one little store in this town which is where we stopped and each payed to use the bathroom. Good thing we exchanged some pesos for some Bolivianos, even if we did get a criminal rate. Our whole crew is pictured here, except for me and the driver. We had all used the bathroom and made whatever small purchases we had wanted to at this point and we were just waiting on the driver to reappear. We look a little stranded don't we?
If you're a New Mexican, you can be half way around the world but you'll still recognize this tree. These are what we call "Chinese Elms". My first instinct was to come up to these things and violently rip apart this most hated species, but then I realize that they were actually trying to grow these things and I had to suppress my urges. See here in New Mexico, these trees are known for their ability to spread their seeds widely grow anywhere, grow quickly and deplete the water table. They are also nearly impossible to kill with almost everyone resorted to using chemicals to kill them. They spread their seeds in early spring and infect your garden just as you're trying to get everything else to start growing. But I suppose these are the only trees that can grow here, this is photo evidence that these trees can grow anywhere.