The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is as stunning as it is fascinating; this wide expanse of the white desert, the Uyuni salt flats enchant people from all over with its unique sights and attractions, stunning nearly unspoiled scenery, and one-of-a-kind experiences. Such a place has a history just as instigating, and there is much about the Salar de Uyuni that a lot of people still don’t know!
10 It’s The Biggest Salt Desert In The World
Amidst the Bolivian mountains, at over 10,500 km of extension, Uyuni is the largest salt desert in the world. It is estimated that it contains over 10 billion tonnes of salt in Uyuni, of which around 25 thousand tonnes are harvested per year by the Colchani Cooperative and 21 million tonnes of lithium reserves. Salar de Uyuni, together with the Atacama and Hombre Muerto salt flats in neighboring Chile and Argentina respectively, hold an estimated 85% of the lithium reserves on the planet.
9 It Was A Giant Prehistoric Lake Thousands Of Years Ago
Over 40,000 years ago, a great prehistoric lake, Lake Minchin, occupied the area of the Bolivian Altiplano where now the Salar de Uyuni, Salar de Coipasa, and Lake Poopó exist. Formed during periods of intense rain and humidity, but as the weather grew drier, the water slowly evaporated, forming the salt flats and modern salt lakes in the Altiplano of today.
8 It's The Largest Natural Mirror In The World
Uyuni is often described as the place where “the earth meets the sky”, and that is due to one of its most stunning geographical characteristics: on rainy days, the water that accumulates on the flat white ground makes the salt desert completely reflective. A seemingly endless mirror, with this phenomenon, it's truly difficult to pinpoint where the earth ends and the sky begins.
7 It Is Also Known As Salar de Tunupa
And that is because the salt desert is often associated by local populations with the Aymara god of thunder, lava, and rivers, Tunupa, whose biggest natural altar is the Tunupa Volcano, in the north of the Uyuni salt desert. There are a couple of different myths around the formation of the Salar, where Tunupa, then a giant, flooded the salar with milk to feed her child, or alternatively cried over her love Kusku who left her, and her tears eventually turned to salt.
6 It's Home To The First Salt Hotel
The Palacio de Sal is the world's first salt hotel, an ambitious architectural project by Don Juan Quesada Valda: a hotel, in the middle of the salt flat, made entirely of salt, from bricks to furniture. The hotel opened in the 90s but was shut down in 2002 due to the difficulties of running a fully-fledged lodging in the middle of the salar. Despite this, not only is the original building is still standing and is a must-stop on any Salar de Uyuni tour, a new, updated, and luxury-minded version of Palacio de Sal opened in 2004 on the shores of Uyuni's great salt sea and is one of the most popular and high rated hotels in the region.
5 Some Of Its Spots Could Give Insight To Life On Mars
One of Uyuni’s most breathtaking sights is Licancabur Volcano, which overlooks the twin lakes Laguna Blanca and Laguna Verde of striking white and emerald colors. The living conditions here are quite extreme; visitors won’t see many animals here, if at all. The low atmospheric pressure, elevated UV radiation exposure, arid weather, and low oxygen could give insight into what the atmosphere on Mars was like billions of years ago, and the location has been the site of research, to understand extreme conditions and possibly alien lifeforms, as well as possible training conditions for Mars missions on the upper area of the volcano.
4 It Is The Best Place On Earth To Calibrate Satellites
Speaking of astronauts... Salt flats and ice sheets are propitious to satellite altimeters’ calibration due to being expansive areas of relatively flat and considerably reflective surfaces. As the largest salt desert in the world, Salar de Uyuni is particularly useful for this and has been studied to calibrate NASA’s ICESat and the European Envisat, with a reported result five times better than calibration using the ocean.
3 It’s A Photography Lovers Paradise
Beyond the beautiful, otherworldly scenery and its status as the (occasional) the largest natural mirror in the world, even during the dry season the white and flat uninterrupted surface and horizon at the Uyuni salt flat allows visitors to play with perspective and create fun and surreal trick photography.
2 It Has An Open Air Train Cemetery
One of the eeriest sights in Uyuni is the Train Cemetery, a field where the remains of the old Antofagasta & Bolivia Railway deteriorate under the harsh conditions of the salar and the salty winds. Formerly a budding and promising railway, it went under as the mining business collapsed in the 1940s, leaving behind this open-air cemetery for trains.
1 Its Alien Scenery Was An Alien Planet In Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Fans of Star Wars might find the stunning red and white scenery at the end of the film Star Wars: The Last Jedi looks somewhat familiar… and they’d be right! The climactic battles of the fictional Crait were filmed at the Salar de Uyuni, under great secrecy. It’s easy to see why the otherworldly Salar de Uyuni was chosen to portray such a fascinating alien planet.