Detour #78: Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Jacques Pique / Unsplash
Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni salt flats dwarf those at Bonneville in Utah. It’s not a place for speed freaks, but rather for adventure lovers seeking to find their place in this wide world.
Sitting at an elevation of almost 4,000 metres the height alone is enough to take your breath away and altitude sickness is a serious concern for visitors to this 10,000 square kilometres of desolation in the Potosí region.
It is a major transport route across the Bolivian Altiplano, a big tourist attraction and well-known movie location. Thank you Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
The town of Uyuni is the jumping off point for adventurers seeking to lose themselves (figuratively, not literally) in the vast emptiness of the Salar. Uyuni has an international airport and a thriving expedition industry. Clearly the region has always been rich in natural resources, but now it is the lithium found in the brine pool beneath its surface that is attracting investment in the area. The Salar is believed to have half of the world’s lithium at 5.5 million tonnes and the electric car industry is hungry for it.
For now, if you want to cross the Salar you’d best take a conventional 4x4. The surface may well be inherently solid, but it is subject to flash flooding, gets easily churned up by vehicles and it can be quite easy to get stuck. You would be well advised to hire a local guide or stick in a group for safety.
The Salar is like a giant amphitheatre between the mountains, but it is so enormous that at points all you can see is the shimmering salt to the horizon. Stray off the wheel tracks of your fellow explorers and you could easily become disorientated. And it’s not a place you’d want to spend the night with temperatures dropping well below freezing after the sun sets.
There are reminders of the Salar’s former life as a giant lake, with islands rising out of the salt, but distances are deceptive and those that seem close may be many miles away.
In a straight line from Uyuni to Llica the distance is just over 100 miles and, realistically that’s perhaps six hours behind the wheel without stopping for the obligatory photos.
It is a surreal experience driving through the emptiness of the world’s largest salt plateau. If ever there was place to make you feel very small indeed, the Salar de Uyuni is it.
Words Nik Berg Twitter | Instagram
Photography Loic Mermilliod / Julie Ricard / Liudmilla Shuvalova / Paz Arando / Unsplash