Salar de Uyuni

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November 16th 2022

Published: November 19th 2022

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sarahlilly

Sunset on the Salar

Today was the day that we finally made it to the Salar! The Salar de Uyuni is the largest and highest salt flat in the world, with an area of 4000 sq miles and over 500 ft deep. The Salar is one of the largest lithium reserves in the world and also has significant amounts of potassium, boron, and magnesium.

In the dry season the salt flat has a beautiful hexagonal shapes far as the eye can see. In the rainy season a mirror effect will happen. Not only is it beautiful, but GPS satellites will be calibrated by reflecting light off huge surface of the solar, much more effective than the ocean's surface which is the common alternative.

We had a lovely picnic lunch out of the back of the truck on our way to the salar. We stopped at our hotel made from salt before headed out on to the salar for sunset.

The next day we got up at 3:30am so we could drive out to an island in the salar. There is an island made of coral in the center of the salar covered in huge cactus. We hiked to the top of the

Fun at the Salar

island and then watched the sun come up over the salar, it was incredible! We then spent a few hours down on the flats exploring and taking fun photos that can be created due to the loss of depth perception for the shear scale of the flats.

The rest of the day got a bit more interesting. Adam and I were supposed to take a train to Oruro, but despite their website saying otherwise the train was not running that day. So instead we boarded a bus. We met some great people from Austria and settled in for the 4 hour ride. When we were 1.5 hours out from our destination our bus was stopped because of road blocks related to the protests. We watched for an hour and decided it was not going to get resolved so we hired a private taxi with the Austrian couple. The driver took us down dirt roads for about 45 mins to avoid the blockade. Multiple times Adam got out of the car to see if he thought we could pass the river covering the road, or make it over a steep bump. But eventually we made it to our final destination!