Last night I discovered something else which I had never really given any thought (after yesterdays cacti epiphany). Static electricity produces clearly visible sparks! Almost everything in the salt hotel was made of salt, which meant the salt bed had a sheet of plastic between the salt bed frame and the mattress. Salt carries an electrical current quite well and the combination of this and the plastic sheeting meant we generated a tonne of static electricity in bed. After the lights went out you could clearly see the electricity sparking all through your bed! I thought I was dreaming at first. Also when I started rubbing the sheets together the static electricity was so intense that it made a nearby lightbulb flicker! After that I tried to remain as still as possible for fear of being electrocuted.
A few hours after this static electricity discovery we woke for an early start to the day. Today we drove about 8 hours into the Bolivian desert stopping every hour or so to see different sights including volcanoes, lava fields, several lagoons, hundreds of flamingoes, chinchillas, llamas, vicunas and finished the day at some awesomely powerful geysers near our accommodation on the edge of a huge lagoon.
We had chosen our tour company because on this night we stay beside the lagoon which has a natural hot spring. All of the other companies stay two hours away from the spring, so during the night we have the entire hot spring to ourselves. The moon was full but there were still tonnes of stars in the sky so we drank and smoked cigars in the hot spring under the moonlight for a few hours before bed.
