Wow! what a great day
we had.
Still driving north on white roads. I planned a route towards
the border and past a national park and a huge salt lake area.
First we drove on
tracks that were more like rivers. Some that had been flooded were
the smoothest roads we had. Others were very slow going.
We detoured 30k to a
main road to get fuel as we are unsure of where we are heading. When
we started our next track after fuel it weaved between two disused
mines and derelict
buildings.
At the second one I had to walk ahead
and clear the track of nails and wire. The track then became very
rough, the rivers had flowed down it. As we gradually climbed less
and less rivers joined the road, till we were back to road rather than river
bed. We kept climbing gradually.
The colors of the
hills and desert are just indescribable - see the photos. Some of the
desert has no vegetation at all.
Saw a few Vacuna a type of Llama’s . Then we saw a
burnt out car then another.
At about 2750m altitude we
met snow. Saw another 5 dumped cars. We wondered why they were here.
Luckily for us a loader had been through and done a bit of clearing.
Sometimes in the road other times beside the road. We topped out at
3620m alt, when the front end loader had turned around. :-( We had a
good route planned out but it did take us just over 4000m alt.
Any way, drove back a
short distance and out onto a ridge top. 3650m alt. What a fantastic 360°
view. Took some more photos and watched the sun set. 6°C
Had a headache at
dinner time and John felt a little dizzy. Ran the heater on very low
over night. It worked very well.