Smoke

I've been to cities that never close down — but I haven't yet found a town (anywhere in the world) without an Irish pub. Congratulations, Ireland: us Aussies only have ourselves everywhere on the planet; you guys have taken world conquest that one step further. Flannigans just goes to show that Kitzbühel (and the Austrian Alps) is no exception. Flannigans is loud, it's smoky, and it's packed every night of the week. This evening — after our enchiladas — Jake and Mitch continued their après-ski tour of the town, by bringing the gang over here. These two Aussie brothers are incredible: they walk into Flannigans, and half the pub is rushing up to talk to them — seems that they're best mates with everyone! Flannigans has a fairly large contingent of "regulars": and if you hang around, you soon get to know most of them. This really is a very gemütliche place, after all.

The second day of our salt flats tour, began very early this morning, with a wake-up at the Hotel de Sal at 5am, and a freezing-cold start to the day's 4x4 driving, at 6am. We drove for about two hours, hoping that our feet wouldn't completely freeze in our boots before the sun rose (which it did, thank G-d, during the drive); and then the first sight of the day was the famous Ollagüe volcano. Although you can't see that much of the volcano — since it sits on the Bolivia-Chile border, and since most of it is on the Chilean side — you can still see the smoke rising out of its active cone, from which lava apparently spews quite regularly.