A day of driving through extraordinary desert landscapes in our crammed 4x4 over very bumpy tracks (pic). En route we had a tasty picnic lunch involving the inevitable chicken, and also cheese. Except it had started out as milk.
The purpose of it all was to see some amazingly coloured lakes (thanks to mineral deposits that wash down off the mountain), many of them full of flamingoes. This one was deep blue and orange (pic), plus the white stretches of salt, which set off the pink of the flamingoes nicely. Not often you get to visit colour-matched landscapes.
At one lake, there were vicuña wandering the flats as well (pic). It was hard not to think of them as reindeer on snow waiting for a sleigh to pull. Except for the fact that it was blisteringly desert-hot.
This lake had normal colours, apart from a mysterious streak of yellow, and no wildlife, apart from regular 4x4s of fellow tourist stopping to take selfies. Still quite scenic though.
The final lake was the most astounding: a riot of red, blue, green, yellow and white. If the desert had been like Mars, this was like looking at a very terrestrial paint catalogue in B&Q.
Here I am standing in front of some mountains with a flamingo: pink, on the lookout for food, and standing on one leg. So is the flamingo.
There was excitement on the way to our lodging for the night when our 4x4's starter motor conked out and it wouldn't go (pic). Luckily this didn't happen at one of our many stops in the middle of the desert, but at a lakeside toll booth where there were lots of other vehicles – one of which towed us to our evening lodgings. We noticed that the 4x4 towing us had a 'for sale' sign. We did think about having a whip-round to buy it, turf out the occupants, and use it to transport us instead.
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