Salt Flats and Flamingos, Atacama Desert Chile - April 1, 2018

Our afternoon excursion was to the Atacama salt flats with Mary as our guide (half Belgian, half Chilean), with a brief stop at Toconau, a small village.  The salt flats are the lowest point in the region at about 2300 meters high.  All of the precipitation that falls on the surrounding mountains , drains into this flat where it evaporates and creates the highly mineralized salt flats.  We took in the sunset with a snack and beverage (we are well fed here).  Hard to get close to the flamingos, but got some ok photos with the telephoto.  There are three species of Flamingo that live here..predominantly we saw the Andean flamingo.  On the way here, I took a photo of the work buildings for the large telescopes that are farther up in the mountains at around 5000 meters.