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¿POR
QUE? |
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Standing on the deserted streets of
Uyuni, a dusty, windswept pueblo in remotest Bolivia, it's hard to
imagine that a little under 15km away lies one of the world's most
incredible natural phenomenons. A short, bumpy jeep ride to the west is
the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, a vast expanse of salt flats that covers
over 10,000 square kilometers of the country's southwestern corner like
a giant coat of whitewash.
Bolivia lays claim to some of South America's finest natural attractions
- the Amazon, the Pantanal and Lake Titikaka all lie within its borders
- but for sheer stop-you-in-your-tracks surrealism, the Salar de Uyuni
is in a class of its own. The clarity of the altiplano sky is startling,
the juxtaposition between blazing blue and sparkling white remarkable,
and it feels like you're in an expensive car advert as you roll silently
across the crystals, with only the Isla del Pescado, a cacti-studded
island in a sea of salt, breaking the bleached horizon.
The salar's origins vary depending on who you ask: geologists will tell
you it was formed either by the drying up of an enormous lake into which
salt had been washed from surrounding land, deposited when what is now
Bolivia was under the ocean; locals will have you believe it came into
being when Yana Pollera, the mountain goddess, flooded the southwestern
plains with her milk so that her child, Kaliktan, could feed - the milk
eventually turning into salt. It's hard not to wonder if the locals
aren't onto something, such is the bizarreness of it all. Stepping from
the jeep, the ground crunching underfoot as if it were hard-packed snow,
it's just salt, salt and more salt as far as the eye can see, like a
million diamonds twinkling in the southern sun.
Need to know
The only way to visit the Salar de Uyuni is on an organized tour from
Uyuni, a twelve-hour bus ride from La Paz. Tours are by 4WD and last
three or four days, taking in the salt flats, as well as the Reserva de
Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, a wildlife reserve of glacial green and red
lakes on the border with Chile. |
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