After knocking off the Salt Flats on the first day of our Salt Flats tour, what on earth could the remaining three days hold?!

Lots of crazy coloured lagoons, striking pink flamingoes, steaming geysers and desert style landscape. In short, a bizarre mix of incredible landscapes one after another.

We started at Laguna Negro (black lagoon).

To say I was excited to see flamingoes in the wild is an understatement. I was not disappointed, there were hundreds of the pink birds clustered in and around the lagoons.

Turns out they are some of the least graceful animals on the planet though; to take off they run, madly charging forward with their spindly legs across the water while flapping their giant wings. Needless to say it looks hilarious.

We moved onto a few other lagoons, the names of which I honestly can’t recall. It costs a lot more money to get an English speaking guide (and from what I’ve heard, barely anyone does it) but I think we did ok with Spanish. A lot of what we heard was just the names of places and the elevation, things that are easy to understand.

Pretty sure this was the ‘stinky lagoon’

Andrew and I

Our dusty 4WD

Laguna Colorada

Laguna Colorada

Vicunas!

Geysers

The geyser field was incredible. It was completely unlike the geysers we saw at Yellowstone National Park, which were cordoned off with safety fences and warning signs. Here we could jump over the steaming holes if we wanted (and were dumb enough to).

A geyser spewing mud

Our dinosaur toy looking very at home

This photo is taken from a hot spring pool we swam in, can you see the vicuna?

Laguna Verde (green lagoon)

Despite our driver trying to talk us out of our final night of the tour (presumably so he could go home early) and the horrendous food, it was a fantastic trip. The range of things we saw was incredible and it’s already fun to look back at these photos a month on.

At the end of our tour we crossed into Chile at San Pedro de Atacama.