Day 62 - 05 Feb.2012 - San Pedro de Atacama

Today in the morning we drove to see Salar de Atacama and flamingos. They say that flamingos stay over there only in the morning. We got to Salar the Atacama at the back of eleven and were worried that we might have lost our chance to see flamingos. Luckily some of the flamingos are not ‘early birds’ at all and were still ‘fishing’ for their breakfast when we got to the lake. What a beautiful sight it was. Just imagine this endless white, salty landscape stretching many, many kilometres ahead of you with a flat, waveless surface of the Laguna, which appears like a giant mirror. Flamingos bring a touch of pink to the whole scene a look somewhat surreal. You can always see a perfect reflection of each bird in the surface of the lake, as if they were card figures. We managed to get some really nice photos and filming over there.
On our way back to the camp we stopped to give a lift to a young woman who was standing by the road trying to hitchhike back to San Pedro. It is always interesting to listen to other people’s stories and their travel. Our passenger’s name was Eveline. Eveline’s travel story turned out to be a life story. She started her journey some seven years ago when she set off from her home in Lithuania and travelled through Europe. Then she went to Asia on a bicycle! Now came turn for South America. What will be next? She does not know yet but she might stay in Rio for some time and then….then time will show. Eveline called herself a ‘vagabunda’. She learnt many languages on her way, including Turkish, Georgian, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, English etc…quite impressive really. We thought our three months of holiday was quite generous and then you meet people travelling for years. But they are not on holiday anymore, travel becomes their life and goal in itself, they have no home, no address, no commitments nor plans…they are not tourists, they are travellers (in the good sense of the word).
Later in the afternoon we went to a smaller lagoon called Ceja to have a super salty bath. The salt concentration is so high that you can literally float on the surface without moving your finger. It can look quite clumsy if you try to swim though! Couple of minutes after the bath you end up being like a salty stick, all covered by salt. There was a water hose near the ticket office, which we used to desalt ourselves a bit and then drove back to the campsite to have a proper shower.
Today was ‘home’ cooking and we had some delicious pasta with tuna and tomatoes.