The Uyuni Salt Flats, also called Salar de Uyuni in Spanish are located in southwest Bolivia. This white expanse at the feet of the Tunupa volcano is the world’s largest salt desert, around 11000 square kilometers.
The Uyuni salt flat is even larger than the Lake Titicaca, a vast stretch of water shared by Bolivia and neighbouring Peru.
The salt flats themselves are at 3600 meters above sea level in the Andes – making it seem almost possible to reach up and touch the clouds from the ground.
A few years ago interest started growing in extracting the 5.4m tons of lithium which is found just below the surface of the salt.
The salt is over 10 meters thick in the center. In the dry season, the salt plains are a completely flat expanse of dry salt, but in the wet season, the surface is covered with a thin sheet of water that reflects the sky like a giant mirror.
The Salar de Uyuni was formed by the disappearance of an inland ocean that covered most of the Altiplano and extended all the way to the Titicaca Lake. This body of water disappeared about 13000 years ago.
It is an extraordinary experience to cross this lake of salt by car, especially during the winter, because at that time the sky is completely clear and the bright blue color of the sky contrasts brilliantly with the salt. On a cloudy day there is a “white-out” effect: the horizon seems to blend in with the sky and you can hardly tell where the salt lake actually ends.
Amid this shiny white desert there are idle polyhedral figures that seem to emerge from the ground; these shapes have been formed by nature.
The islands in the middle of the salt desert are attractions that marvel all visitors.
