  We produce cold and dense clouds of atomic ions (Ca$^+$, Dy$^+$) by laser
ablation of metal targets and cryogenic buffer gas cooling of the resulting
plasma. We measure the temperature and density of the ion clouds using laser
absorption spectroscopy. We find that large ion densities can be obtained at
temperatures as low as 6 K. Our method opens up new ways to study cold neutral
plasmas, and to perform survey spectroscopy of ions that cannot be laser-cooled
easily.
