Something important happened in Uyuni

Uyuni salt flat is magical and this helped me to ask a question.

I’m taking a break for the holidays, so this newsletter and the next two will feature replays of past editions. With the community growing significantly in 2024, I’m excited to share these older articles with a wider audience. As a holiday gift to my wonderful subscribers, I’m unlocking a paid subscriber-exclusive post for everyone to enjoy. Wishing you happy holidays, and I’ll see you again soon!

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In La Paz, Fernanda and I booked a 3-day tour to Uyuni to visit the salt flat, and the area around it. To reach the city of Uyuni we did a night bus ride, on a super comfortable bus (bus cama). When we arrived at 6 am it was -8°C (18°F), and we had to wait for a ride to a coffee place because our tour would have started only at 10 am, but nobody appeared. As compensation for this inconvenience, the agency gave us a room in a hotel with breakfast where we had time to rest until the tour started.

The Uyuni salt flat has been on our list for a long time, as a photographer it is a magical place, a unique destination. Fernanda had already been to Bolivia but didn’t manage to visit it, so it was also an important destination for her. I thought of using this symbolic place to ask her an important question.

Uyuni is a small town in southwestern Bolivia that serves as the gateway to one of the most extraordinary natural wonders on Earth: the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat. This vast, otherworldly expanse of white salt crusts and mirror-like reflections covers 10,000 square kilometres (approximately 4,000 square miles).

At 10 am, a 4x4 vehicle came to pick us up at the hotel and our tour started. In the car we met a family from Brazil and a solo traveller from the same country, and we shared our trip with them.

Our first stop, just outside the small town of Uyuni, was the Train Cemetery. This open-air graveyard of rusting locomotives and railcars is a stark reminder of a bygone era.

The origins of the Train Cemetery date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when Bolivia's mining industry was thriving. Uyuni, strategically located at the edge of the salt flats, became a crucial hub in the country's railway network. The railways were initially built to transport minerals like silver, tin, and copper from the rich mines in the Andes to ports on the Pacific coast for export.

However, the fortunes of Uyuni and its railway network began to decline in the mid-20th century. The depletion of mineral resources, coupled with the rise of more modern transportation methods, led to the gradual abandonment of the railway lines. By the 1940s, many of the trains were decommissioned and left to rust in the desert.

From the train cemetery, we took the direction to the Salar, but before we stopped in Colchani, located on the edge of the salt flat. It is the main entrance to the salt desert and a place where you can observe the artisanal salt extraction process. In addition, the people of Colchani also engage in craftsmanship using salt.

From there we finally reached the salt flat, it was the dry season, so everything was white all around, and it was amazing. It was like being in a big white sea, an incredible feeling.

The Salar de Uyuni was formed due to the transformation of several prehistoric lakes. Around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, the area was covered by a massive lake called Lake Minchin. Over time, this lake dried up, leaving behind a series of smaller lakes, which eventually evaporated to form the salt flats. What remains today is a thick crust of salt, rich in minerals like lithium, which is found in significant quantities beneath the surface.

The salt flats are composed of a crust up to several meters thick in some places. During the dry season, the surface is a vast, white, cracked expanse, resembling a natural mosaic of hexagonal salt tiles. In the rainy season (typically from December to April), a thin layer of water covers the flats, transforming them into a giant mirror that perfectly reflects the sky, creating a mesmerizing and dreamlike effect.

Inside the salt flat there are some attractions, one is the place where we had lunch: Playa Blanca, the first salt hotel, which is located in the heart of the Salar, it is built with salt blocks both on the exterior and interior, including its walls, floors, beds, tables, and chairs. A few years ago, it stopped functioning as a hotel, but today it can be visited as a museum.

Near the hotel, there is the Plaza of Flags, a tourist attraction characterized by many flags from different countries around the world, as a symbol of cultural diversity and friendship between nations. This is where I decided to propose to Fernanda, I wanted to create something unforgettable for us, and I thought this was the perfect place.

I thought about this moment for months, I talked with my friends and her friends about the idea, about the size and the type of the ring, about what I should have done. You can imagine that I was super nervous, what you were planning was happening after a long time, but it worked, and she said yes!

After lunch, (we didn’t eat much) we went to the inner part of the salt flat to take some funny pictures and videos.

Another attraction of the Salar de Uyuni is Isla Incahuasi. This rocky outcrop, covered in towering cacti and surrounded by a seemingly endless sea of white salt, offers a unique and unforgettable experience in one of the most remote and otherworldly landscapes on Earth.

Isla Incahuasi is a remnant of an ancient volcanic island that once stood in the middle of a prehistoric lake. When the lake dried up thousands of years ago, the island was left isolated in the middle of the Salar de Uyuni. Today, it rises steeply from the salt flats, creating a striking contrast against the flat, white surroundings.

The most iconic feature of Isla Incahuasi is its forest of giant cacti, some of which reach heights of over 10 meters (33 feet) and are estimated to be more than a thousand years old.

One of the main draws of Isla Incahuasi is the panoramic view from its summit. We hiked to the top where we were rewarded with breathtaking 360-degree views of the surrounding salt flats. From this vantage point, the endless white expanse of the Salar de Uyuni stretches out in all directions, creating a stunning visual effect that makes it seem as if the island is floating on a sea of salt.

After visiting this island we went again deep into the Salar to take pictures at sunset, during this time, the changing light creates a play of colours on the salt and the sky, making for a truly magical experience. It was very cold and we didn’t resist much, just after it, we left to reach our accommodation. We spent the night in a salt house, it was fascinating but extremely cold, the coldest night ever!

In addition to the salt flats, the region surrounding Uyuni offers a wealth of unique attractions, for example, Laguna Colorada and Laguna Verde, colourful high-altitude lakes, home to flocks of pink flamingos and other wildlife. The Sol de Mañana geysers and hot springs are another highlight, with steaming fumaroles and bubbling mud pots creating a surreal, almost Martian landscape.

On the other two days, we visited these places and others you can read about in my next blogs.

See you soon,

Flavio