Laguna Cejar, Ojos del Salar and Laguna Tebinquinche

The third and final tour we did in Atacama was to Laguna Cejar, and as I mentioned in my last post, it really did turn out to be the highlight of the trip.

There are two lagoons in the Laguna Cejar park: Laguna Cejar and Laguna Piedra. Laguna Cejar is just for looking at and taking pictures.

However, Laguna Piedra is for swimming - or rather floating! The high concentration of salt in the water means that it's hard to swim normally and really easy to float. It was an incredible experience and so much fun. It was definitely one of the best moments of my life, and I often wish I was back there!

Afterwards we went to two more lagoons called Ojos del Salar (eyes of the salt flat). Here we had the opportunity to take some fun perspective photos!

Like Laguna Cejar and Laguna Piedra, one of the lagoons was just for taking photos.

But we could swim in the other one. It was very cold and muddy, but fun!

After that, we went to a lagoon on the salt flats. I didn't know the name of it at the time, but a bit of research tells me it was Laguna Tebinquinche. It was quite similar to Laguna Chaxa, and I did spot a few more flamingos in the distance!

At Laguna Tebinquinche, we watched the sunset and had Pisco Sours! It was the perfect end to an amazing day.

I'm really glad that we went to the Atacama desert. We were deciding between Atacama and Torres del Paine, but as I'd been to the south of Chile during my Year Abroad, I wanted to go to the north this time. 

I'd actually reserved my place on two tours to the north of Chile, one to Atacama and one to La Serena, when I was living in Santiago. However, the travel company was extremely inefficient, and I was never able to finish booking those trips. There was also another occasion when I was going to go to La Serena which ended up not happening. So it was great to finally see northern Chile! As a side note on the subject of tour companies, I went to the Maule region and Mendoza, Argentina with Chile Extreme and to Huilo Huilo with Emotion Tour Chile, and I would highly recommend both.

Atacama was like a different country to Santiago, both in terms of scenery and culture. It felt much more like "typical" South America than the other places I'd been to in Chile and Argentina. My boyfriend said that even the language there is very different, and much more similar to Bolivian Spanish than to the Spanish spoken in Santiago.

It was an incredible week and a half in Chile, and it was great to visit so many fantastic places, see amazing wildlife, and of course spend time with my boyfriend. Atacama was the first time either of us had been on a "couple's holiday" and we really enjoyed it. We want to go away together again when possible, perhaps to Torres del Paine or maybe in Europe! We both quite like the idea of doing a road trip all the way down through Chile from Santiago, or taking the Eurostar from London to Paris...

For now, we have to complete our degrees! There are no real opportunities for taking big trips away at the moment, but I've decided to see some more of the area around Nottingham while I'm still living here. Yesterday I visited Wollaton Hall for the first time, which was really nice. There'll be a blog post about it coming soon!