LlamaHat: Overland to Uyuni II

Day two of our tour took us from our refuge at Laguna Colorado to a salt hotel just a few km from the edge of the Salar, passing through some spectacular desert scenery and past yet more oddly-coloured lagunas. It's a little hard to remember, after seeing your thousandth flamingo, that these creatures don't ever crop up at home, and not to start taking them for granted; but still they seemed a lot less photogenic on Day 2 than they had on Day 1. (Ironically, however, Day 2 granted us the opportunity to get a lot closer than Day 1, and resulted in my best shot of one all tour, below. Possible moral: shoot first, get jaded later?)

The highlight of Day 2, though, wasn't the scenery, as spectacular as it was. Rather, it was our driver rescuing what was in danger of becoming a bit of a tedious ride, with altitude-induced headaches and stomache-aches rampant, laguna fatigue setting in, and radio silence hitherto ruling the day, by queueing up, when we got back into the jeep after some photo stop or other, the most awesome collection of mp3s from his phone to the jeep stereo. It began with a song in spanish by ABBA, the sheer incongruity of which gave everyone a jolt of exuberant energy, and continued with a selection of English 80s pop classics followed by their very liberally translated spanish cover versions that ratcheted up our collective energy level such that we were in high spirits by the time we reached our salt hotel. The sing-along hits included two classics by Roxette, Don't Stop Believing, Dust in the Wind, Lady in Red, and a bunch of others I sadly can't remember now but thought awesome at the time. Seriously, it was touch and go there for a while, but Pedro pulled us through in style.