The magical salt flat of Salar de Uyuni Bolivia

Once a part of a prehistoric salt lake, Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat.

It’s situated in the south-west of Bolivia and covers 12 000 square kilometres.

A place that shouldn’t be missed when travelling in South America. 

Salar de Uyuni is an absolutely stunning spot and visiting it was an unforgettable experience.

The magical salt flat of Salar de Uyuni Bolivia

Although we normally don’t take tours, in this case it wasn’t possible to explore Salar de Uyuni on our own. Travellers coming to this astonishing snowy white desert can explore it by taking a tour for one or three days. The tour can be arranged with one of numerous local travel agencies based in a town Uyuni. We decided for the one day trip because of illness and lack of time. Otherwise, we’d recommend anyone going to Uyuni to take the three day trip. 

In one day trip, you can see the salt lake and visit a hotel made of salt on the way. Some travellers spend a night in it (the cost is about USD 100). Everything is the same as in any other hotel just made of salt! 

When taking a two or three day trip, you can see not only the salt lake but also Red and Green lagoons with pink flamingos, hot springs and breath-taking landscapes along the way.

It wasn’t easy to choose a good travel agency, as almost all of them had very bad reviews on Tripadvisor. Fortunately, we managed to find a good one and were very happy with the guide. He was very nice and his wife cooked lovely meal that we took with us. Their son was gorgeous!

There were four other people in the group, two Japanese and two Italians. The ride in a 4×4 car across the vast white land was just unbelievable. The sun was shining and we almost couldn’t see anything! We stopped by the hotel made of salt which was truly beautiful. The Japanese checked in there and we continued to the “island” covered by cactuses. These cactuses were much taller than those we saw in Mexico.  

After exploring the cactus islands, we found a nice spot and had lunch. In the afternoon we stopped at a few places on the salt flat to take photos and enjoy the incredibly white vastness. We spend the whole day on Salar de Uyuni and returned to the town just before the sunset.

Salar de Uyuni was the best place we went to in Bolivia. It is also one of our top places in the world.

TIPS

• July – October  are the best months to see Salar;  it can snow or rain during the rest of the year.
• You can get to the base, the town Uyuni, by local buses, and find a wide range of accommodation and tour operators there.
• The entrance fee to Salar is about 20 USD, the cost of a tour varies from 750 to 900 USD for a 3 day trip.
• Take Diamox with you if you have problems dealing with altitude.
• Don’t forget warm clothes for the nights; warm underwear, a winter jacket and a cap. There is no heating in the accommodation and it freezes in the nights.  You can rent a sleeping bag or bring your own. Even in Uyuni it gets close to 0-5 degrees.
• Bring a sunscreen and glasses; the reflection of the lake is very strong.
• Choose the travel agency carefully, read reviews on TripAdvisor. Some of them don’t have  the licence to operate and their cars are not safe. (We went just for the 1 day trip, spoke to several operators and then chose one and managed to agree on paying just a half of the price and the rest when we finished the trip.)

Have you been to South America?

What’s your favourite country or a place in that part of the world?