Salar de Uyuni

Salt mountain in a small village called Colchani on the edge of the salar.

After attempting to get to the Salar de Uyuni on foot and failing I went on a jeep excursion to the salt flat. The Salar They build with it as well as harvesting the salt. The salt is also far saltier than the stuff you get off the supermarket shelves, so like drug dealers they must be cutting the salt that we get in Scotland.

The Salar is the largest salt flat in the world and is in places over 130 metres deep and was formed by the drying out of a huge prehistoric lake. It is also the main breeding ground for 3 species of Flamingo.

It really is a spectacular and surreal place to visit, as it is perfectly level with a thin covering of water, making it very reflective making the sky look like it was in the ground as well as above. The salt forms into large heptagonal shapes as far as the eye can see, and it is astronomically huge!

Harvested salt in a drying heap

The people of Colchani harvest the top 5 inches of salt from the Salar and harvest in the region of 20,000 tons per year, there are also large deposits of Lithium within the area which I was told the Bolivian government is looking into exploiting.

The Salar is used as a transit route due to its flatness

There are several islands within the Salar which protrude above the salty surface and are the fossilised remnants of coral reefs, this one is called originally Isla de Cactus and has innumerable cacti growing on it.