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.

Hot Springs

The next stop we made were at some hot springs. I was beginning to get the sense that I was under dressed in the shorts and T-shirt when we got out at this stop and it was cold and windy. But Sita and I were about to be less dressed as we entered the hot springs. This site was just so beautiful, peaceful and enjoyable.

The stream that flows out of the pool.

Sita enjoying the pool.
The surrounding incredible landscape with a flamenco in the middle.

This facility was much nicer than the Bolivian border facility it even had a couple of photovoltaic (solar) panels for electricity. You can see we met up with a lot of other groups at this point.
I think future construction was planned here as evidenced by this truck and the adobe bricks. I guess without much likelihood of rain they don't worry about covering these bricks.
After being surprised to see the truck pictured above, we saw this semi barreling down the road. It was odd to realize that this same road that brings you to so much beauty on your tour could also be a commute or transit route for others.

Having already got many blog posts up while we were in South America I anticipated being able to continue to get more up, so I took this picture with one caption in mind. Which I will share with you anyway. "Wish you were here..."

Dali Desert

This area is called the Dali desert after Salvador Dali, I guess the landscape reminded someone of his artwork.
The colors present in these mountains were amazing.



I thought it would be cool if Sita took a picture of me alone in the middle of the desert. I jogged out only a hundred yards or so but I was out of breath by the time I got there because of the altitude.

Zoomed in.
This was a big surprise for us to see. Just when you think you're in the middle of no where, the only traffic you encounter is doing road maintenance. For some reason we were behind this guy for like ten minutes moving very slow before the road finally widened enough for our driver to feel safe passing. In many of the other places people just make their own lanes driving anywhere they want, but I suppose one of the reasons the road is maintained here, is perhaps it's too sandy to go off the road.