Sunday 26th October – San Pedro to nowhere
In the morning the Germans had obviously headed out for the day, presumably to the hot springs as you had to leave at some unearthly hour in the morning to get to the geysers in time to watch them erupt at sunrise. This meant that we were greeted by a very bleary eyed Louis whose sleep had twice been interrupted, once by the Germans half-way through the night and once by us in the morning.
We headed down one of the smaller roads out of town towards the salt flats. The salt flats in Chile are vast and apparently two thirds of the World´s lithium is derived from the area. At one of the reserves we went for a walk over the salt flats where there was abundant birdlife. Amongst the avocets and various other interesting birds were flocks of flamingos. It was truly beautiful to see all the flamingos amongst the saltflats with the mountains in the distance.
From the reserve we headed out across mile upon mile of salt flats. For such a barren landscape it´s amazing to think how much wildlife actually manages to live there. After the most amazing drive we decided to stop and camp in the desert overnight. We found a spot relatively close to the road but with small sand, cliff structures affording some shade and shelter. We parked up and got out of the van and Dad discovered some cat footprints which had evidently been left behind the last time there was water in the area. Having examined the footprints and consulted our wildlife guidebook, we decided that the only possible animal which could have left them was a puma.
It was slightly more difficult to set my tent up than at Louis´campsite due to the wind but it was fine. It was lovely to be out in the desert and the stars were amazing. The only thing we hadn´t really counted on was that, what we thought was a small road turned out to be a road used by copious numbers of lorries presumably transporting mining supplies!