Salt Flats Day 2: Spooning the random Argo

When a tour agency says "basic", they mean basic. And that´s precisely what led to having to spoon with the random Argentinian guy in my Jeep for the second night of my tour. It was that cold.

Having left the salt flatty area of the salt flats, we woke early to drive to the pretty lagoons famed for their pink flamingos (although most of these flamingos had flown to warmer waters in Chile), and enjoyed the changing scenery of the desert, its snow-capped mountains and natural rock formations. It really is breathtaking the desert out there, but it was getting increasingly colder as the day wore on.

We had grabbed a few bottles of wine in anticipation of the coldness to come at night, wanting anything to warm us (and basically we are drunks, at the end of it all) and not particularly looking forward to anything involving 6 blankets and/or a sleeping bag (the latter which I do not travel with).

With the wind whipping wildly around us, and the temperature dropping with every rising breath, we pulled into the "basic" hotel. Thin walls. Cracked window in the bedroom. Stinky bathroom. Definitely no hot water. In fact, hardly any water at all in the taps. But thankfully a small furnace in the main eating area (the corridor). Oh, how I crave the simple things in life now.

We polished off the 5 bottles of wine we had with dinner without blinking, and by this stage it was an open invitation to I, the Argo, to join blankets and beds for the evening. The rest of the group thought it was pretty funny, but for me it was a matter of survival. And hey, if I can borrow a cute Buenos Aires boy (how rare they are) for the evening, I most certainly will.

He was a good cucharita (spoon). However, as good as he was, I was still tossing n turning all night... various things getting in my way, such as another girl in my tour group vomiting from what I assume was altitude sickness (the food seemed fine) and me running around trying to help while also freezing to death. I wonder how much sleep the Argo got next to me. What a shit bed partner I am.