Easy start to the day, up late with beautiful sunshine but a cool breeze blowing as we are still at 2700 metres. Leisurely breakfast and then 4 hours to relax on the outdoor veranda while I caught up the blog and V read. Have loved the trip and the landscapes but it was nice just to chill for a brief moment...

Long, long day. Packed up and off early for our drive which will be 350k but will take at least 8 hours since there are no paved roads. The first couple of hours were through enormously wide expanses and fields of basalt froth which were blown out of the multiple volcanoes that dot the landscape as far as the eye can see off in the distance. Our track passes along the edges of waves of this material whose height reaches about 2 or 3 metres and which appears to be a black rocky foam filled with air bubbles. It would be impossible to make a road over or through it so we skirt the edge of the basalt lava flow which is so hard that edges are still razor sharp after a million years....