Flip-flopping on the issues

I slept OK and woke up about midday. I came out to get some laundry done, investigate that tour to Uyuni in Bolivia etc. It sounds slightly too hardcore for me but I am quite tempted.

I have booked up for a tour to El Tatio geyser and god knows how many other places tomorrow, they pick me up at the hostel at 4am and we get back at midday. There is a trip to some thermal baths but I think I will stand aside for that. There is a chance to do that on the Uyuni trip anyway, and more practically I don't want to leave my passport in the hostel tomorrow or leave it with my clothes while I go into the baths.

I think I'm backing out on the sandboarding. I actually still kind of want to do it, but (there was no one to ask at the hostel) of the two companies I found offering it, one has a problem with their vehicle (if I understood correctly) and can't do it til Wednesday, and the other does a trip at 4pm, no experience necessary, to sandboard where I saw it yesterday at Death Valley, followed by a visit to Valle de la Luna to see the sunset.

I really don't want to be getting back about 8 or 9pm without having had anything to eat tonight with a 4am start the next day. And similarly, if (as I probably will) I do the trip to Uyuni, I will have a 7:30am start the next day, which is perhaps quite a strenuous one, and will want to pack the night before, which makes doing it tomorrow a bad idea..

I also don't wany any minor injuries occuring right now. So I think I'm going to have to back out on sandboarding. I think it now has to go on the vague 'list of things to try' and if I get a chance anywhere else I will have to take it.

Oh, if I do do the Uyuni trip, I may have made precisely the same 'mistake' of handing in my laundry to be collected the night before the trip as the Australian couple. Fingers crossed. I need to collect it at 7pm, this is another argument against the sandboarding tomorrow as I wouldn't be back by then. I cannot believe I was so dumb as not to learn from their mistake.

PS The tour guy gave me and two Chileans a sort of briefing/outline of the trip. He speaks fluent English and helped me out with the odd word, but I was chuffed to understand most of it. Oh, and I asked about spiders, which raised a laugh, and apparently there are none. In fact there are no insects either most of the way - there are a lot of salt pans and that kind of thing. I can probably handle anything as long as no spiders are involved. :-)