Red Lakes and Lanky Birds

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Day 37-12th October (Salar De Uyuni tour day two)

(Apologies for the delay R&F who paid for this excursion as a wedding prezzie for Liz and I, I already wrote this and the computer automatically shut down on me halfway through... thus losing the lot yesterday so I took a break to calm down and rewrite it!)

So after a good day climbing trains, looking at cacti and balancing on water bottles we had an early and salty night, mostly because we had an early start! “Hola, Buenos Dias Chica’s y Chico, Vamos” was the first thing we heard while it was still dark, Snr Don Phillipe was getting our breakfast ready on our salty table which consisted of Juice, tea, bread and Jam. We were all a bit bleary eyed and staggered around aimlessly getting ourselves ready and munching our breakfast for about 30mins before we started loading up the 4x4.

The first stop was to go to the shop, I bought six bottles of beer (these beers would come back to haunt me later), three packets of skittles, some cookies and a tube of yummy Jalapeno flavour Pringles. Then we went on an hour or so drive to see some wind-worn rocks out in the Desert, there was one in particular that looked like a big orange mushroom where the top was flat and the middle was stem like, pretty cool looking... well, cool for a rock! There was a middle aged European feller leaning on it for his friends to take a picture of him and once the picture was taken rather than moving on to the next rock he decided to stay there turn round and take in the scenery, a bunch of other camera junkies (myself included) huffed and puffed for a minute or so waiting for him to clear off so we could take pictures, it was quite funny when he finally realised that there were about 10 people waiting for him to move and he skulled off leaving all us other tourists thinking to ourselves *one more hour and I would definitely have said something* (Liz actually took a picture of the dude with his back to everyone happily standing there taking in the scenery, too funny)

Back in the 4x4 and on to the next stop, on the way we passed some volcano’s, there were lots of mountains around and Phillipe did not speak any English and Liz and I were sat right at the back of the very bumpy Car so unfortunately I couldn’t honestly tell you which was which but the scenery was breathtaking, so as we were bumping along we stopped again briefly at some more rocks, I found a green one covered in an algae type moss, the whole area still really has the feel of a river bed the ecological history really hasn’t been covered up yet, the rocks are coral like as are the grass’s and I was adamant to go and touch this fluffy looking green brain rock to see what it felt like so went for a bit of a climb and got a picture of it (for the record it was not fluffy like I expected but very rough like green stone) it was very windy and I had my sunglasses, hat, hood and Ninja Buff on all to keep the dust from out of my eyes, ears nose and mouth, Liz stayed in the Car so after five mins exploration I got back in the jeep and we headed on past more volcano’s towards a lake... only this lake had a little surprise!
As we approached the lake I overheard Phillipe say “Flamenco” to the girls, knowing that this was not a popular Spanish dancing spot I guessed that we were about to see some knobbly kneed lanky pink birds!... in the wild! Although I knew I honestly hadn’t put two and two together beforehand that Flamingos are of course native to South America and felt rather silly as this was a tour based upon geology and scenery rather than direct wildlife but yep, low and behold as we got closer to the lake there were Flamingos... Hundreds of them mostly James’s Flamingos who were thought to be extinct up till the 50’s but a remote colony was discovered and re-breading programs ensued now they are at a status of near threatened, a healthy enough number of Andean and Chilean flamingos were present too, bobbing their heads down to scoop a mouth full and up again filtering the water through their whale like bills to get the Algae, they are very beautiful birds and I was very pleased to be able to see such a thing with my own eyes. Animals like Flamingo’s are specialists in Nature and rely heavily on very specific conditions which makes them expert at what they do when the conditions are just right but so fragile and susceptible to extinction when things go wrong, the water in these lakes is shallow so mostly only goes up as far as their Heel (what looks like the knee joint) and it was like this all the way to the middle of the lake, as we pulled up the Peruvian girls were first out of the car and unfortunately without meaning any harm they were kind of noisy and waved their arms a bit in excitement as they approached and started to scare the birds off, I still only had one leg out of the car at this point but some of the enthusiasts plotted around the lake with their camera’s were obviously pretty annoyed by this and an English speaking guide told them that the birds are shy so they quietened down before all the birds had literally disappeared and I made a slow steady approach, there are these grass bushes all around the desert that look like Don King’s hair or tribbles from the famous 70’s star trek episode so I got behind one and got snapping away, unfortunately being on a tight schedule and having to take in mind the fact that not everyone in the car is quite as geeky about wildlife as I am meant that the stop was a short one so after ten or so minutes we were back in the 4x4 and back on the bumpy road.

After another bumpy hour or two of more volcano’s, more mountains and more desert we came to an eco lodge, and guess what... it was a flamingo eco lodge! Sweet I thought. We went in, had a toilet break and had some food, I wolfed mine down in about 30” flat and asked to be excused from the table while I went down to the lake to try and get some better shots. I stopped at the top of the hill before going down all guns blazing and picked a spot, I saw a Don King bush that went out a little bit further into the lake and all the other tourists were about 100yrds to my left so I felt it was probably a good spot, I went slowly down the bank and kept low, the Flamingo’s sensed my presence and retreated by about 5 or 10 yards so I stopped just short of my Don King, waited for about a minute and made it the rest of the way, brought up the camera with the 45x200 lens and got snapping, it took about 5mins for the flamingos to come closer again, mostly the James’s as they like to feed on Algea called Diatoms which live near the edge of lakes, there was a large juvenile still pure white walking and feeding with its matriarch which really stood out amongst the bright pink of the adults which I was very glad to photograph, after about 15mins I heard muddy footsteps nearby and noticed the Birds retreat a little, unfortunately for me the other tourists I had noticed earlier off to my left had seen that I had a good spot and obviously wanted in on the action, an American lady said hello and then seconds later a German feller said hi and crouched down next to me, he said that the light was not to great so I irritably told him to raise the ISO and lower his shutter speed to about 1/6 to 1/4 and concentrate on the birds that weren’t moving so much (it made me sound like I knew what I was doing which helps when you’re going to be snooty with people who invade your bush and I only knew this because I had recently borrowed a book on digital photography from someone for a similar problem when I was photographing monkeys in a thick wooded area in Brazil) I had by now taken quite a few nice pictures “I think” and I saw Liz waiting for me at the top of the hilly bank so I slowly crept away from my invaded Don King bush back up to my darling and patient wife. There were not just flamingo’s on this lake but also the most nimble Blackheaded Gulls which hovered like birds of prey very low... very loud and very skilfully, also there were these sparrow or finch looking little birds that prefer to run... really fast! right by you. And nearby the lodge were a couple of Llama’s I took some snaps of these comical characters running, squawking or chomping away and we got back in the 4x4 when the weather proceeded to snow!

After a couple more hours in the jeep and a little snooze the snow eased and we got to the edge of a National Park called “Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa” quite a mouthful eh? Loosely translated it simply means “Reserve of Andean Fauna” We had to pay to get into this part which we were not expecting but yep it was there in the small print so we sucked it up and forked out, from the entrance gate we could see the main attraction at a distance the famous “Laguna Colorada” or “Red Lagoon” I really should pay more attention to the itinerary’s when we do tours as had I had done so I would have realised we were going to see Flamingo’s on this trip, working for discovery channel and being an absolute speng for animals I have seen this place in documentaries it is a vast red shallow lake, when I say red I don’t mean a hint of red but a vibrant thick milky vermillion red, it is this colour because of a high concentration of the reddish local volcanic sediment and the Diatom Algae that the flamingo’s like so much, there are also massive islands of Borax that look like icebergs and of course many flamingo’s feeding in the water, pictures can only give you an idea of the spectacle its very odd to see but very beautiful and not the sort of thing you expect on this planet.


Again we did not stop for long due to the vast distances between sites, we headed toward our residence for the night briefly stopping to photograph some Alpaca and some Flamingo’s at a freshwater lake but that was the last major thing we saw that day.
When we got to our Hostel it was freezing, we were shown to our dorm which had some pretty funky jaguar print bedsheets. We all chose our beds and Phillipe started getting the cooking gear down from the 4x4 and began to clean his car. One of the workers at the hostel lit a fire in a burner just outside our room where the dinner tables were so we all went out there and huddled, I brought a couple of beers for Liz and I and started to drink them to warm up then realised that it was sunset!! Back to the room grabbed the camera and went outside, wow it was like the sky was on fire! Mind you it didn’t feel like that it was absolutely blinklin’ frozen so I only spent about 5mins photographing the sunset, the fire kept going out and after a while all the groups were huddled together on a couple of tables trying to relight the fire and waiting for our food. When ours arrived it was a kind of onion fry thing with chips, Liz had sausage in hers too but she didn’t eat much as it was heavy on the onions I finished my beer and went to get another two, with one in hand I put the other in my pocket and when I turned round to shut the dorm door it dropped from my pocket and exploded! Right in front of everyone, I’m sure they all thought I was pissed but after one light beer nope... just clumsy. I drank the beer I had and Liz and I went to bed as again we had another early start.

Love Ellz

xxxx

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