Lagunas Day 1: Laguna Hedionda

**Here come the updates from the Lagunas route! Due to limited internet availability they'll be staggered over the next few days.**

Today marked the start of the Lagunas route endeavour. We started by doing the first two days of it in one.

We left our Hostal at 8.30am knowing we had 40km of non stop uphill ahead. The state road leaving Alota towards the Chilean border soon turned to gravel and sand, making cycling very slow.
But we managed to do some sections on road parts that were still under construction and got to the turn off on to the Lagunas tracks at around 12pm, after 28 km of bumpy riding.

From there it took us another 2h on unpaved roads to reach our initially intended camp spot at the Laguna Chulluncani 40km from Alota.

Since thunderstorms were predicted on our route starting tomorrow, we decided to carry on 20km more to Laguna Hedionda, the goal destination of day two, hoping to get ahead of the storms.

While I really enjoyed the gravel and off road ride in this untouched nature on my 50 mm tyres, poor Matt suffered visibly with his more road appropriate 38 mm version.

Nevertheless, the sceenery was stunning, passing through deserted valleys and between vulcano peaks.

The highlight of the day were the hundreds (or thousands?) of flamingos at Laguna Hedionda!
This lagune is also were we stayed for the night, in a designated cyclists room of the adjacent Hotel, shared with the drivers of the 4x4 tour vehicles, right next to the Laguna and out of the wind.

🚴‍♀️Distance cycled: 61 km
🛣 KM on paved roads: 5 km
🏁 Time to destination: 6.5 h (moving time)
⛰️ Highest point on route: 4528 m
🦩Flamingos spotted: 1000+
🚲 Weight of bike: 1 ton, minimum.Baca lagi