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Great White Way

Bolivia’s secluded Salar de Uyuni is a vast wonder where time stands still and nature is gleamingly perfect.

By Christina Hoag

Deserts of red grit and dazzling white salt, fiery crimson and turquoise lakes, wind-sculpted rocks and boiling steam geysers.
Stark and surreal, this desolate region of the Bolivian highlands, known as the Salar de Uyuni, must count among South America’s most unique landscapes. The region lies 12,000 to 16,000 feet above sea level, making Bolivia’s famed soroche, or altitude sickness, an inevitable part of the trip.
But the discomfort is worth it. The combination of rich mineral deposits, volcanic activity and millennia of undisturbed evolution has formed a natural sightseeing spectacle and a geologist’s dream in southwestern Bolivia, along the border with Chile.
With tire tracks serving as roads—and a lack of even that in some areas—the region is difficult to visit on one’s own.
The best way to venture into this remote, secluded land is with a three- to four-day tour by Toyota Landcruiser. The tours leave from the regional capital of Uyuni, a dusty, windswept town which offers only basic accommodation and services.
Uyuni’s claim to fame is the salar, or salt lake, which sprawls across 4,080 square miles and sits approximately 12,000 feet above sea level. The salt lake is the world’s largest, an immense brilliant white expanse that blinds the eye and numbs the sense of direction.
It’s an incredible panorama: glaring whiteness stretching as far as the eye can see, with the jagged peaks of the Andes appearing as tiny points on the horizon. Its flatness sparkles under the strong sun, and the sheer stillness is overwhelming. Arctic landscapes spring to mind.
Despite the maze of tracks that crosses the salt lake, it’s easy enough to get disoriented. Locals tell stories of being lost for days in the emptiness, where distances and landmarks become indeterminable.
The plain was formed from a prehistoric sea that filled the entire highlands plateau up to Lake Titicaca. Over the course of millions of years, the sea dried up into a salt-water lake, Lake Minchin, which covered most of southwestern Bolivia 40,000 years ago.
When that lake dried up, it left two smaller lakes, Poopo and Uru Uru, and two salt pans, that of Uyuni—the larger of the two—and the neighboring Salar de Coipasa. Uyuni is roughly 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the United States.
Estimated to contain some 10 billion tons of salt, the Uyuni pan has been the main source of income for generations in the handful of villages that sit around its edge.
Local men chop the salt into blocks with a pick and shovel and then crush it into crystals. The salt is then dried and taken to the villages to be cleaned and iodized before it is sold both domestically and to surrounding countries. Some 25,000 tons of salt are extracted annually, but there’s little danger of exhausting the supply. The layer of salt is estimated to measure 30 feet thick. Below the salt bed lie about 10 other layers that include reserves of lithium, boron, potassium and magnesium.
Besides the industrial work area, the salt desert features a couple interesting sights that break up the isolation.
Two are salt buildings—the Hotel Palacio de Sal and Hotel Playa Blanca, hotels and restaurants built entirely of salt bricks. You can sleep on a bed, sit on llama-pelt covered chairs and eat at tables all carved out of huge salt blocks. The hotels are decorated with various animal sculptures fashioned out of salt.
Farther along is the unlikely named Isla de Pescadores, or Fisherman’s Island, a dry, rocky piece of land and one of several small oases of land in the salt sea. The island, which is actually fossilized coral and named for its fish shape, is home to hundreds of 1,000-year-old cacti which grow at the rate of one centimeter a year. Some of the prickly plants tower 25 feet into the sky. They comprise almost the only vegetation in the thousands of square miles.
On the far edge of the salt lake lies the adobe-hut village of San Juan, which offers basic lodging to travelers.
The native women, with tiny, bowler-type hats perched on their heads and voluminous skirts sashaying on their hips, lead llama herds out to pasture in the mornings and bring them home for water in the evenings.
As in other desert climes, the temperature drops precipitously at night, down to -4 F degrees. Locals burn llareta, a rock-hard, moss-like shrub that’s broken apart and used for fuel. Coca-leaf tea helps keep both the cold and altitude sickness at bay. Life here, it would seem, hasn’t changed in centuries.
Farther south of San Juan, the landscape becomes increasingly barren and scrubby. The only signs of life are small herds of vicuna, sort of a cross between a deer and a llama that is highly prized for its baby-soft wool. They skitter away at the sight of vehicles.
The region is not hospitable to wildlife, but several other animals inhabit the plains including a cousin to the llama and vicuna, the guanaco, and viscachas, long-tailed rodents related to the chinchilla that somehow manage to exist in the desolation.
The road gradually disappears into the harsh grit of the desert and tracks from previous vehicles offer the only route. Much like the Isla de Pescadores, a host of bizarrely shaped boulders suddenly appear in the middle of nowhere in a Martian-like landscape. Known as the Ciudad de Piedra, or City of Stone, the formations were shaped over thousands of years by the intense wind. One of the more photogenic is the Arbol de Piedra, or the 24-foot high Stone Tree, a huge rock that balances on a thin stem like a trunk. Other shapes resemble dinosaurs and animals.
The road gradually returns and with it more surreal geographical features in the Eduardo Avaroa National Andean Fauna Reserve, where The Laguna Colorada, or Red Lagoon, flares into view.
The lagoon takes its fiery hue from the water’s mineral content, which serves as a breeding ground for an algae favored by the rare James species of flamingo. A huge flock of the beautifully pink-plumed birds feeds on the algae, forming a breathtaking view.
Farther south comes a region known for its geothermal activity—the Sol de Mañana (Morning Sun) geyser basin at 14,600 feet high. The geysers shoot streams of steam up to 50 feet into the air. The Bolivian government has studied the area with an eye to building an electricity generation station here.
Bubbling muds and heavy sulphur fumes mark this area, as well as a thermal springs pool, Termas de Polque, where visitors can warm up in steaming, 86-degree water while taking in the view of the volcanoes and mountains that form the border between Chile and Bolivia.
Streaks of green on the slopes signal substantial copper reserves and mining trucks are frequent sights, as well as the odd military transport to the frontier station on the Chilean border.
The best view is saved for last with the stunning Laguna Verde, or Green Lagoon, at the trip’s highest point of about 15,000 feet.
At first, “Laguna Verde” seems a disappointing misnomer. It’s a muddy brown pool. But catch the view at about 11 a.m. and you’ll see where the “verde” comes from. Wind gusts stir up the copper oxide on the lake bed, causing the water to gradually turn from earthy brown to a deep turquoise in about 10 minutes—a magic trick performed by nature. The Licancabur Volcano towers in the background —its summit, more than 19,000 feet high, is said to house an ancient Inca crypt.
On the route back to Uyuni, the track passes the train cemetery, where hulks of 19th century British locomotives lie rusting in the thin, dry air. Some of them are said to be the Union Pacific trains that were held up by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who spent their last days on the run in the Uyuni region.
It’s worth noting that the American outlaws passed through Uyuni and headed north. They died on November 6, 1908 in the mining town of San Vicente at the hands of a posse that set out from Uyuni to hunt them down.
The trek is without doubt for travelers blessed with a rugged spirit. Accommodations and food are basic, as is the bouncy transport. But that’s also part of the journey’s charm. It all forms part of the unforgettable wilderness adventure in Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni.