We awoke to the smell of baking early in the morning, it was only 5:30am but our breakfast was being served at 6am. Despite the delicious smell in the air, we were still a bit unsure what Martha was going to bring to the table. We certainly didn't expect a freshly baked cake but that's what it was.

We were also surprised to find out that all, bar one group, had already left. The last remaining group were leaving at the same time as us and we were surprised to see them pile into the same sized jeep as ours. They were 6 tourists (including two who were extra large), which meant their driver was both guide and cook. We were pretty happy we are just four with space to spread out.

As we drove south, we passed a couple of small villages which had guinoa plantations and lots of llamas. In this area, llamas are farmed for their meat as opposed to the wool. A fleece is worth Bs.20 whereas only one kilo meat will fetch the same.

We stopped at San Juan to pick up a few supplies and for toilet stop, toilet facilities are few and far between in this corner of Bolivia.

We continued to drive south to Chiguana, a salitre, which was like a brownish salt flat but only contained a very small percentage of salt.

Continuing south we crossed the main railroad which connected Bolivia to Chile. It's normal for railroads to be built straight and flat but in this area, the rails just continue straight as a die and disappear into the distance.

Later on we were stopped for random passport control by the military close the Chilean border. It seemed that every jeep touring the Salar was stopped at the same point even though we hadn't seen any cars driving ahead of us. The military guys were all smiles though and it was a painless process for all the jeeps to get through and continue off road in convoy.

Juan Carlos seemed to be one of the best off road drivers and appeared to be slowed down by the drivers ahead. As soon as we crested the hill on the single track path, he swerved off the left and took one of the many pre-driven routes across the wide plain ahead of us. Without being bounced around in the car, we soon passed the jeeps that were ahead of us earlier.

We stopped at a view point for Volcan Ollague, a semi active volcano with a smoking crater on its side. The viewpoint also had some impressive rock formations around it. There were quite a few more jeeps compared to what we had seen before, this was obviously a very popular spot for the tours going in both directions.

Our next stop was at the first lagoon of four we would see today. Laguna Cañapa was a deep blue color with a white band of salt surrounding it, which made it more striking. There were a few flamingos, some pink and others not so evenly coloured with white bodies and red butts.

Next one was Laguna Hedionda, it is the largest one of the four and looked amazing from the high road looking down onto the greeny blue water speckled with heaps of pink flamingos. We had the opportunity to walk along the shore of the lake amongst the throng of other tourists.

A little bit further down the road was Laguna Charcota which is of a brownish colour. We didn't stop at this one, we just slowly drove past.

We stopped for a bit of walk and lunch at Laguna Hondas, of a milky turquoise colour. It was the deepest of the lagoons and again had some flamingos. There was nice surrounding landscape around although there was cold wind blowing through. We found a sheltered spot for Martha to serve up lunch, three different type of potatoes with chicken, carrots, rice. There were some oranges, for dessert, that were full of pips. David found it entertaining spitting the pips for miles with help of the wind.

After lunch our drive took us through Desierto de Siloli with multicoloured mountains on the left and the right. We stopped at Arbol de Piedra, in the middle of the desert to take photos of the rock formations.

We continued south to a view point on the northern side of Laguna Colorada. The water was an incredible reddish colour due to the algae growing in the water. There were loads of flamingos, white bands of salt and white Borox which looked like glaciers. The Borox is used to make porcelain.

After taking some photos, we drove round the lake's edge to enter Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, which cost Bs.150 each. The park stretches down to the Chilean border so we had no option but to pay to go through it. We continued round the Laguna Colorada to the south side, where we were able to walk down to the water edge. There were llamas and flamingos in the shallow water which had red, white, green, yellow colours intermingling.

We drove on to Huaylla Jara where we were staying for the night. It seemed quite a busy little place, most of the tours that ended in San Pedro spent their third night here because it was closest to the geysers.

We had room with 4 beds, very close to each other. The bases were even made of stone so it was impossible to move them to make a bit more space to walk between them. We all took out our sleeping bags because we had an expectation it was going to get cold later in the night.

Despite the cold, the weather was looking promising for our hike up Volcan Uturuncu tomorrow so we rearranged our bags to have all of our warmest clothes at hand - we had been warned that at 6,000m above sea level it would be freezing whether the sun was shining or not.

After our afternoon tea and biscuits, Martha brought out our dinner. Today, it was a typical Bolivian dish of potato fries, sausages, meat and eggs. Very tasty!!

Nobody else came to our hostel which was great, we wouldn't get woken up in the morning when the other tours would leave early for the geysers.