Vicunas, llamas, flamingos, and foxes! What more could you ask for?

Yesterday Jeff and I went on the Valley of the Moon tour (pictured below). It was a four hour tour where we saw the Valley of the Moon; so named because it is similar to the surface of the moon. It was pretty amazing. We also trekked through the Valley of Death where there were huge sand dunes people can go sandboarding on. We finished the tour by walking up a small mountain to watch the sun set. It was a lot of fun and my shoes were filled with sand by the time the tour ended.Today we went on an all day tour to the Salar de Atacama and the Lagunas Altiplanicas. The main purpose of this tour, for me anyway, was to see llamas, alpacas, guanapos, and/or vicunas. It was a success! Right after we left San Pedro we ran into a llama herd on the road and stopped to take pictures. The next stop of our tour was the Laguna Chaxa.Laguna Chaxa is a Los Flamencos Reserva Nacional. There are three different species of flamingos that live there. They live off the brine shrimp in the lagunas. The lagunas are surrounded by salt rocks and it looked like a valley of coral. Here's a picture of all the salt formations with active volcanoes in the background.
Our next stop was to Lagunas Miscanti and Meniques. The lagunas were located 4200m above sea level (around 13,780 ft)! It was breathtakingly beautiful, literally. We walked about 40 minutes to the lagoons. The altitude didn't bother me, but Jeff was feeling light headed and winded.
On the way to the lagunas we saw a few vicunas in the fields below the road. I was pretty excited, but it was nothing compared to what happened while we were leaving. There was a vicuna hanging out on the road only 20ft in front of us! It ran down the hill when we got closer but I was able to get a shot of it running. And if that wasn't cool enough we saw a zorro culpeo (fox) walking on the rocks next to the road right afterwards.We stopped and had lunch in a small town called Socaire then stopped in another small town called Toconao where we walked through the Jerez Canyon before going back to San Pedro. The tour pretty much took care of my one goal in San Pedro: to see lots of animals. We met some cool people too. There were 5 other people on the tour and they were all very friendly. There was a couple from Thailand who had lived in Washington before and the man actually went to Jeff's community college in Mount Vernon. It's weird what a small world it is.

Tomorrow Jeff and I are going to Bolivia for the day. There's lagunas and hot springs that are located shortly after you cross the border. We weren't planning on going to Bolivia at all since you're supposed to have a visa if you're American. But on our first day in town we ran into this guy from Flagstaff, AZ who works for NASA. The NASA people are testing their equipment in the caves near San Pedro because the climate is similar to that of Mars, which I thought was cool. Anyway, he told us to go to the travel agency they use to go to Bolivia because they can hook you up if you don't have a visa. The travel agency told us it wouldn't be a problem but we might have to pay us$25 each to get across. We'll find out if we have to pay them tomorrow. I'm hoping there will be alpacas there because there aren't any in San Pedro.