pretty sharp - the photo you see of me cross legged on them was actually quite a painful shot to pose for!! We then came across a man made salt hill, which we climbed to the top of and got the most amazing view of these bright turquoise lagoons in the salt. They really did look amazing, but there the good things about them ended. They were actually part of a lithium extraction plant. The salt in the Atacama is very rich in lithium, a metal very much in demand since the advent of lithium batteries. The problem comes in the way they extract it. Basically they make a very strong salt solution, and as the lithium is a metal, and therefore heavier, it sinks to the bottom. To do this they need water, and obviously there is none in the desert, so they pipe it from several oasis at the bottom of the Andes. This has caused several ancient villages to run out of water, and all the people have had to move on. Ecologists predict that in ten years two or three villages will have run dry and the people forcibly evicted.

It made us all pretty ashamed that every one of us was in position of several lithium based batteries, and hope that like the nitrate, an alternative can be found real soon!

Our lunch stop that day was at Reine, one of the oases which is under threat from the lithium mines, and a startling example of how bad the practice is. The place has an old dam which has been used for water collection for hundreds of years, and provided us a great place for a refreshing dip in the desert heat!! We all took to the water and then had a couple of hours to explore the ruined old indigenous village. After that there was another drive across the Salar to a couple of lakes which were home to a large population of flamingos. We had a fascinating walk around and saw the little pink shrimp like creatures which live in these incredibly salty waters, and provide food for the numerous flamingos, and are in fact the