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Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

....do you know the feeling when you are up in the mountains and all you see around you is the white snow and the blue sky? .. well this is exactly the same feeling when you are in the middle of 12.000 square meters of salt.


The Uyuni Salar is the biggest salt flat in the world and is located at about 3,656 m above sea level in Potosi province, Bolivia.




What do you need to do to visit the salar? It is simple.


Jump into a plane from La Paz for example or get into a bus direction Uyuni*. There are several bus companies. Mainly used by locals so just make sure you have all your important stuff in your day pack and you keep an eye on it at all times. We came from Potosi and had a good journey; the road is brand new so had no issues. An airline is Amaszonas, we had a lot of problems until we managed to book the flight (left by plane towards Peru) as our VISA cards were not accepted, we managed in the end after Jose Luis approved one of our cards.


All the tours start somewhere between 10:00 - 11:00 maybe best to aim to arrive in the city late as there is not much to do. We stayed at Jumari Hotel in a 3 bed room (1 double bed + 1 single bed) with breakfast included for 220 Bolivianos per night per room.


Book the tour there as you have the chance to negotiate. The tour options are for one, two or three days. The more days the closer you get to the border with Chile.

We got there on Friday evening and we had Monday very early our flight to Arequipa, Peru. Sunday there were elections in Bolivia which meant no transportation, nobody was allowed to drive in order to make sure that people won't vote twice.


We wanted to go on a 2 day tour so that would have been Saturday & Sunday. With the travel interdiction we managed to get a special tour for 1200 Bolivianos per person.

  • including: private jeep + driver, lunch for the 2 days, dinner, accommodation at the Salt Hotel, breakfast

  • excluding: shower at the hostel (10 bolivianos) the entrance on the Inkawasi Island (30 bolivianos) and the entrance in the national park of La Laguan Colorada (150 bolivianos).

The first stop is exactly the same for any tour operator.

We left Uyuni at 10:30 stopped for pictures at Cementerio de Trenes then at Colchani Village (salt processing village) where you can buy a lot of salt made souvenirs and from there we drove till the entrance in the Salar.

The first stop into the Salar was at the Montones de Sal. This little salt mountains are man made during the first drying period, they are then transported to Cochani for processing.

From that point on there is only white everywhere you look around. We stopped at some point to take a couple of "fotos locas". As everything is (almost) flat and white there is no way to estimate distances so you can get the most awesome effects on pictures.

We did not manage to see the mirror effect as it did not rain the last couple of days before our visit.



In the middle of all this white dessert there is an Island called Incahuasi Island where you can find a lot of cactus treas. The view from the top is amazing. We stayed here for about 2h. We had enough time to eat, walk around and take pictures.


We continued our trip through the salt dessert till our hostel. The hotel is made of salt, the rooms had private bathroom, but shared showers. The food was included. Get a sleeping bag with you as it can be cold.


We arrived at the hostel at about 5:30 PM after a shower we had some drinks (TIP: buy drinks in Uyuni it's cheaper) then we had dinner and most of the people that were doing the tours went to sleep as next morning we had to leave 6ish.


On the way we met a lot of lamas, vicunas and saw a lot of Quinoa fields.

The second day, we went into the dessert where we stopped to see different Lagunas which were the temporary house for pink flamingos. Our aim was to reach Laguna Colorada, the color mix is due to the borax (white part) while the reddish parts are due to some red sediments and the pigmentation of some algae.



With so many awesome views we were ready to go back to Uyuni where we arrived back at around 8PM.


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* if in Chile you have a 4 day tour trip from Tupiza, but I won't cover it as I don't know much about it.


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