At dinner last night (a huge meal of soup followed by llama schnitzel, potatoes and salad), Archie our guide broke the news that not only was it likely to be minus 10 overnight, we had to get up at 5am. Thrilled by this news we went straight to bed – and all lay there awake. In the middle of the night, Amy made a midnight dash to the toilet. Anna followed with warm jackets etc and she was ok. We think it was an altitude related issue.
We had a bit of a delayed start due to the alarm not going off, but dressed quickly due to the cold. After breakfast we jumped in the truck (knee blankets in hand) and headed off. First stop was the ruins of a Spanish settlement founded in 16th century. It was absolutely freezing!!!! But really interesting, it was founded there to mine silver and the ruins were great. In them we saw these cute creatures. Related to the chinchilla, they look like big rabbits with long tails.
As soon as we could we got back in the truck. I was so cold my fingers were incredibly painful.
Next up was the white lagoon, the first of a series of lagoons, the stinky lagoon, the soap lagoon and the green lagoon. They are all named after the properties they get from the various minerals in the lake. In summer this is where the flamingos come, but of course being winter there are none around. What there are is vicunas they are like small llamas and have incredibly soft wool, but they are protected here in the national parks.
We were heading towards lunch and most of us were nodding off when we came to a screaming stop. Anna heard something and though we had blown a tire but when we got out we discovered the front axel had broken! We were incredibly lucky that they driver (Marty – we love him) could stop us safely, it must have been so close to flipping and given none of us were wearing seatbelts, I was in the middle and there wasn’t even a seatbelt to be had, we would have been in big trouble.
Luckily the tours travel in a kind of convoy and we were in the middle so it wasn’t long till another truck came by. Our guide jumped in their truck and headed to the next town to get help. We helped Marty jack up the truck by carting big rocks over in the driving wind.
Archie was soon back with another truck which we loaded with our stuff. Marty has jerry rigged the truck and is getting it fixed at a borax refinery tonight and will pick us up tomorrow.
We headed to lunch which was at a hot spring. Matt, Nida and Amy got into swimmers and dived in but Anna and I couldn’t face getting changed in the freezing cold so we just dangled our legs. Anna unfortunately also managed to dangle her track pants so needed a change of pants as well!
After lunch we continued on to the various lagoons, saw the Dali desert which resembles the rocks in his paintings Melting Clocks and The Metamorphosis of Narcissus then saw some boiling mud. As most of us have been to Rotorua it wasn’t too impressive.
Finally we arrived at our accommodation for the night. It is a big domintary type building, although our group has its own room. Tonight we have been told it could get to minus 25 – mmmm, looking forward to that. Luckily Archie can make empty 2L water bottles into hot water bottles so we should be ok, but I’m already blowing steam as I type this in the room.
We have a later start tomorrow as Marty is coming back for us in the repaired truck so at least we will be spared getting up super early. Still having a brilliant time though.
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