00:00 - I had quite a full day today. Pickup at 4am to go and see the geysers and the park around it (vulcanic area in the Andes). It was tiring...I felt a little sick from the altitude (we were up at 4500 metres), but geysers aside, the scenery was again spectacular. I think I might be starting to get boring :-). Today was the day I also officially baptised my treking shoes! We also visited a tiny village that lives on Llama wool and goats. 8-10 houses at most and a cute little church. Me and Alison had a blonde moment. There was a man in the village selling skewers of what would normally be Llama meat. We had been warned that this was not always available. So off we went to the man and decided to share a skewer. We thought it was really nice and not dissimilar to normal meat but maybe a little spicier. As we remarked this between the two of us, Sally heard and said: you have eaten beef!!! :-)...funny... Two idiots!!! We attempted to patch it up by buying a goat cheese empanada from a giggling local woman. Very nice also. A really splendid way to spend the morning. I am not sure my pictures do it justice but take a look and you'll at least get the idea. We came back at 1pm and had some free tome before being picked up again at 4pm for the visit to the moon valley. I thought I would get some rest but decided to go hunting for stamps and bought a couple of postcards. Had an ice cream and came back to download the pictures from the morning trip. We then met up to go to the moon valley. Again a spectacular trip. I think it's probably the immenseness of the scenery as well as the beauty that make it so special. We watched the sun go down on top of a high plane and Sally had also kindly arranged, as a surprise, a local tipple: mango pisco sour. We had a couple of rounds and that seemed to make the return trip a lot more giovial then normal. As we giggled back we got our instructions for the next morning: we are leaving at 7.45 for Bolivia. We are finally going towards the salt planes of Uyuni. I can't wait!!! We will be offline for a couple of days due to the fact that there will be no electricity/phone reception or wifi.
We were all knackered...we went straight to dinner and as I sit here writing the last few lines of my blog, 5 of my companions have gone off to a strage french man's garden to stargaze with his telescopes and won't get to bed until 2.30...