On Friday morning it was an early start as I was picked up from the hostel at 7am and taken by minibus to the Chilean border. It was quite cold and the clouds were at the same level as us. It was around a 30 minute drive and I met some nice people on the bus including two girls from California- Ali and Lauren.

The passage through the Chilean border was pretty uneventful but there was a long wait at the Bolivian side to show out passports. We had an outdoor breakfast which was really nice but as it was so cold it was hard to hold the food without any gloves on. We then all had to transfer into 4×4 jeeps which took six people each. I was with a really nice group of girls – Sarah, Laura, Chloe and Ellie from England and Vicki from Canada. As we drove away from the border we saw a desert fox.

Shortly after the transfer we reached the entrance to the park and paid our fees. This park is in the far southwest of Bolivia. The parks is located at an altitude between 4,200m and 5,400m and extends over an area of 714,745 hectares.

We made our first stop at the white lagoon. And then we continued onto the green lagoon. You could easily see the different colours in the lakes. The green lake contains arsenic among a number of minerals such as copper and lead. It’s this unique chemical composition that keeps the water from freezing in the subzero temperatures.The volcano in the background is inactive and is called Licancabur. It has a crater at the top which also contains a green lake.

We continued on through the Dali desert. Salvador Dali never actually visited this area but it looks like one of his surrealist paintings.

The next stop were the thermal springs –Termas de Polques. Sarah, Laura and I decided to get in and I’m really glad I did. The fresh water was around 35 degrees and it felt lovely just to relax in them. The view was pretty amazing too. Although it was pretty cold outside it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be when we got out and got changed.

It was so interesting to see the changing landscape as we drove through the area, and there was more to come. This was a group photo of is in the desert, all trying to jump at the same time.

Our next stop was the morning sun geyser which is part of the 10 km squared Sol de Mañana geothermal field. You could walk all round the geysers, including the active ones, and through the steam they produced. The smell of sulphur was unsurprisingly pretty strong.

Following the geysers we drove to the hostel we were staying in for the night in Huayllajara and ate a late lunch.

It was then back on the road for a short drive to Laguna Colorada, known as the red lake. This is a shallow salt water lake and the red colour comes from red pigmentation and some algae. The white bits are islands of borax. Laguna Colorada is at an altitude of 4,278m and covers 60 square kms. It is named after the effect of wind and sun on the micro-organisms that live in it. The lake is very shallow, less than 1m deep, and supports some 40 bird species, providing pink algae to the flamingoes.

We walked around the lake – it was extremely windy and pretty cold too but gorgeous scenery which made it worthwhile.

The lake itself is home to three species of flamingos and the most common ones here are Jame’s flamingos which apparently are quite rare but there also some Andean and Chilean flamingos there too. There were also quite a few llamas wandering around.

After the walk around the lake we headed back to the hostel for dinner and bed. I was a bit worried that it would be cold in the night but we all borrowed an extra blanket from a room that wasn’t fully occupied and it was lovely and cosy.

Our guide, who we all thought was called Alfon but later found out was called Rodolfo, was the best. He kept making sure we were all feeling ok and gave us plenty of coca leaves to help with the altitude as we went up to 4,900m, climbing 1,880m in one day. He didn’t speak much English but I was actually able to understand a lot of what he said. I was lucky too in that I had the front seat in the jeep. I did offer to swap but nobody else seemed to want it.

By the way some of these photos are from the other girls in the group, especially Laura who had a great camera.