2017-11-06 Day 186 Mon

 -4.5°C. Did an unplanned clean while johns jeans were soaking in a tub of very hot water. John cleaned the outside windows and maps with hot water and I cleaned the inside of the canvas. One of my cleaning sprays seems to remove a lot of the black marks. Looks much better.

A drive up to the clump of trees with really interesting bark, seem to live within a very narrow altitude range at about 4420m. We then continued around the volcano on a rather rough road. Had a quick lunch sitting beside the road looking at the vulcan.
Exited the park and pumped our tyres back up to 65psi then onto a road heading East towards lake Poopo. We had traversed the south East corner of this area last time in Bolivia. Lake Poopo was the second largest in the country and although it was designated for conservation in 2002 it has since dried up with doubt that it will ever recover. This is partly due to climate change and partly due to the diversion of waters for irrigation and mining.

This area is very flat at around 3800m alt. and is not as interesting as we thought it might be. We decided to cut our trip into this area short and took a side road. We found a spot to camp just off the road in amongst the lumps of spiky grass.
A farmer on his bicycle came by for a chat and told us the 60 Llama around were his. Next a lady came to visit and have a chat. John took a photo of us together. Although we did not understand much of what she said there was lots of laughter on both sides.