Posts Tagged ‘lake’

Everything we’d heard about Slovenia told us that we should not just stick to Ljubljana – we needed to get out to the countryside. So, on the recommendation of a fellow hosteler, we set our sights on the small country town of Bohinj, a 2 hour bus ride from the capital.  The direction we headed (NNW for the crossword puzzle geeks out there) took us into the Julian Alps section of Slovenia, a mountainous paradise with lakes and hiking and everything you could want!

Bled Lake and Castle

In fact, on the way to Bohinj we passed another retreat town well-known to Slovenians called Bled.  There is a rather large lake with a super castle perched on a rocky overlook on the lake.  Unfortunately we had to pick one or the other but we will leave Bled to another trip.  It appeared much more built-up and touristy than our final destination: Bohinj!

The View from our Hotel

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Today we set off on a 11 hour tour of the area south of San Pedro de Atacama. We went with CosmoAndino Expeditions because we heard they had a good reputation. There are so many tours available in this town, it can be a bit overwhelming trying to pick, but we can definitely recommend these guys.

This post is going to have a lot of photos because it was an incredibly scenic day! And there are more in the gallery! Lots more!!!

They picked us up from our hostel at 7 am and after a bit of a drive around town to pick up the other passengers we set off for the Laguna de Chaxa (Chaxa Lake). The lake is in a reserve area and is part of the Salar de Atacama – the third largest salt flat in the world. Our guide, Alex, was full of information and we learned a lot about the birds, minerals, and mining in the area. But the best part was that it was chock full of flamingos and the morning light was awesome on the water!

Flamingo!

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Check out Part 1 here!

After a good sleep in the tent we had a yummy breakfast prepared by Boris and then set off for our second day of riding. This day we took about a 3 hour ride around the Laguna Amarga which is a large, green, saltwater lake.

Flamingos on Laguna Amarga

The weather was overcast and really windy at times, but we still got wonderful views of the lake. These horses were so steady and we had an awesome time riding over all of the different terrains. A really amazing confidence builder for me since I had a really nasty crash off a horse a few years ago and haven´t ridden much since. The horses were so well behaved and took all of the wildlife and crazy terrain completely in stride. Justin was incredible even though he hasn’t ridden that much and even managed a long trot on one of the beaches on top of about nine hours in the saddle in two days!