On Bolivia’s Uyuni Salt Flats you stand at the cusp of heaven and earth: blinding white and brilliant blue.
Hexagons tile the ground in the dry months (April to November) and the flats transform into the world’s largest mirror in the wet season (December to March).
I arrive in July. Dazzling salt crystals extend to each horizon for 11,000 square kilometres. For reference, Manhattan Island, New York covers just 60.
The whole world is two-toned and geometric. Yet, this simplicity is completely overwhelming.
No matter how far and fast you go, the horizon stands still.
“The ground was flat but I rode all day and nothing got closer. There was no way to measure progress,” my friend Lou had biked the flats.
Cycling Uyuni was easy pedalling but torture psychologically. Without landmarks or changes in the land, there’s no way to mark distance. You lose depth perception.
Sound also disappears. Uyuni is an echo-less expanse. There’s simply nothing for sound waves to bounce off of.
My mind searches for stimulation, then gives up. It’s meditative.
I sense how incredibly tiny my life is against the salt and sky, standing in an unbreakable silence.
It turns out, the salt flats are reflective in all seasons.
Sunrise over the abyss, Incahuasi Island
“Rise and shine,” Nelson, our tour guide calls. It’s dark and frigid but we have to leave early to greet the sun.
“Vamos,” let’s go.
I don’t know how one navigates Uyuni in the day. At night, if it weren’t for the rumble of wheels on salt, I wouldn’t know we had moved at all.
We arrive at Incahuasi “House of the Inca,” Island. The Inca used it as a rest stop as they traversed the plains, kind of like we are now.
But, they travelled without a 4×4 Jeep.
This lonely hill began its life as a volcano that was swallowed up by a giant lake. It’s cone became an island.
Today, it’s covered in cacti. Each one grows less than a centimetre per year.
Some are twice my height: They’re hundreds of years old.
They’ve watched sunrise over these flats long before the first World Wars.
As the sunrises, the island acts like a giant sundial.
Now lit, I can see that the island has a tidal ring. It’s likely caused by the constant transition between flooded and parched flats.
Frozen salt waves lap the shore in a seasonal tide.
We cuddle together for warmth. A golden pink haze hovers across the flats.
How did the Uyuni Salt Flats form?
We’re looking across what was once one of the world’s largest lakes, Lake Minchin.
At its peak, the water spanned 80,000 square kilometres. It was about the same size as current Great Lake Superior.
Lake Minchin reached depths of up to 140 metres in parts. Unlike Superior, this was a salt lake.
A dramatic change in climate and geography evaporated the mega lake.
Incahuasi was once an island in the middle of it. Now, it’s an island in the middle of the flats.
The gargantuan Lake Titicaca was once just part of Lake Minchin. During the wet season, Titicaca overflows and floods the salt flats once more
This hill becomes inaccessible due to the waters. It gets to be a true island once more.
Salar de Uyuni legends
The Flats’ official name Salar de Uyuni comes from both Spanish and Aymara, like much of the culture here.
Salar de Uyuni translates to “Salt flats of the animal pens.”
You could consider each oasis on the flats a natural pen for grazing livestock. There’s simply no food or water elsewhere.
Besides, you could watch a llama run away for days across the flats.
Local Aymara people prefer to call the flats the Salar de Tunupa, in honour of a volcano god that looms on one horizon.
Legend has it that once these mountains were once giant beings. Tunupa fell in love with another mountain, and they had a child.
One day as she was breastfeeding, she discovered that her love had forsaken her for another.
She cried in sorrow and rage, and her tears mixed with her milk and flooded the plains.
When they dried, all that remained were the barren, white salt flats.
A great change in the mountains upset the balance of the world here. Then, an expanse of water dried up and left behind the salts.
It’s interesting how often science and legend tell the same story.
Freedom on the flats
Our tour, too, disrupts the natural world during breakfast. Bigger groups have begun arriving at the island so we blast reggaeton to drown out the chatter (and warm up).
Yes, we are “those people.” Normally, I’m anti-music in natural places but the thermometer hasn’t risen much above zero and dancing helps.
You’ve gotta dance to survive!
The second the music stops, silence reclaims the space.
My group jumps into the Jeep and races other tours across the flats.
We drive and drive and drive and are still, visually, in the same place.
We stop. Despite the other tours, there’s so much space we can’t see another soul.
I lay flat on the saltscape.
My eyes squint. The geometric crystals shimmer in every colour at once.
It feels like heaven: A glittering light that goes on forever.
There’s no end to the field of jewels. But, even this is just the surface.
“It’s as deep as eight metres in parts,” Nelson explains.
One feels so very small under the open sky and horizon.
I run across the flat, exhausted in a quarter of normal time from altitude. I feel like I’ve made no distance.
But, when I look back the car is a speck.
I’m free. I throw my clothes to the ground. I’m naked, completely exposed and yet invisible in the grandness of everything.
How often do I walk through life this way? Feeling so self-conscious, not realising that no one can ever truly see us.
“Where were you?” A friend asks back at the Jeep.
“Taking some special photos,” I wink (fully clothed).
“What?! Great idea!”
You never know, most people probably feel the same way too.
Perspective bending photos at Uyuni
The fun house effect at Uyuni has become world famous for photos.
Because the flats are so, well, flat and unending you can make tiny toys appear giant and tall people look small.
You have to know what you’re doing. Getting the focus between up close and far is key.
Cellphone and camera screens aren’t bright enough to preview the pictures here. You’re shooting blind.
How to shoot a clear perspective shot:
- Stir up some salt and create a stand for your camera. Position it so that the image is half sky and half salt (you should be able to see this).
- Position your prop/toy/llama a metre or two from the camera.
- Tell your friends to run a distance away in the frame. If possible, turn off auto-focus and set your aperture wide (high f/ numbers, like f/12)
Take the shot. Have fun with it, try other methods. You can use a hoodie to shield the light and see the screen (your eyes may ache).
I rejoin the team and we prepare to face-off with Godzilla. This Japanese monster somehow escaped Asia and now calls Uyuni home.
What creates the Uyuni hexagons?
Flooding in the wet season and evaporation in the dry season turn Uyuni into a perpetual salt machine.
Rains soak into the earth, absorb the salts, and carry them to the surface.
Every year, the salt layer thickens. It’s fantastic for the saleros, the people who mine salt for a living.
The transition into dry season is where the hexagonal magic happens.
Ever boil water and notice the uniform bubbles creating a pattern on the bottom of the pot? The same phenomenon occurs on an epic scale at Uyuni.
Uyuni’s hexagons are remnants of convection. This fantastic phenomenon is pure physics.
The shallow waters in the wet season heat up from the sun. The salty water begins rising from single points, like the bubbles in your pot.
The heavier salt particles get pushed out to the edges of each “bubble” and form circles.
Where these “bubbles” bump up against one another, you get the hexagons’ edges.
How to deal with high altitude.
Uyuni Salt Flats sit at 3,500 metres of elevation.
We drove up, up, up to the Bolivian Altiplano. It felt like my senses dimmed. It took more energy to do normal things, even think.
It reminded me of diving into a pool as a child. But, without the weight of the water, just the pressure.
On day one, our tour family was laughing and singing our way from sight to sight. There’s so much more to see near Uyuni before the salt flats.
We went higher and higher. We stopped for lunch with little appetite until we started eating. Then, we devoured everything.
Afterwards, everyone passed out in the car. Nap time. We’d barely done anything but that was enough.
Altitude affects each person differently. Tall, skinny, strong, rotund, old, young: there’s no one factor that determines how you’ll be affected.
Good news: It’s not that bad! Better yet, there are tried and true ways to alleviate altitude sickness.
What are the symptoms? Typically, you feel lethargic and might have a bit of a headache. You may also feel tightness in your chest, have trouble breathing, feel disoriented or dizzy, and get a more intense headache.
As our tour neared some geysers, Nelson woke us up.
“Here, chew these,” he handed back a bag of dried coca leaves with a piedra rock.
“Take a few leaves and lightly chew them to make them wet,” he instructed. “Then stuff them in your cheek.”
“Now, break off a tiny piece of the rock. It contains charcoal which activates the leaves. Tuck it in beside the wad of coca.”
Coca leaves worked. I didn’t feel energetic but I felt slightly less heavy. I was able to walk around normally and lost the tension headache I’d had.
Coca leaves are not cocaine
OK, now I’ve said coca and rock in the same sentence. Coca is not cocaine.
Cocaine is a concentrated and synthesised extract of just one of many beneficial compounds derived from coca leaves.
You will not become addicted.
Another way to look at it is that coca leaves have a similar stimulant effect to coffee. No more, no less.
If you’re really nervous, just bring your own caffeine or altitude pills instead.
Coca leaves are harmless and very useful. Locals have been using them since before the Inca to thrive at altitude.
Coca Leaf: Myths and Reality is a thorough, academic read for further exploration.
Arrival back to reality: Uyuni town
Our arrival at the first town is disorientating. Suddenly, there are shapes and sounds all around.
My group grabs quinoa beer and sits at a playground scorched by the climate.
Train tracks roll out of the half empty town. It was once a mining hub before a British company abandoned it.
Even still, being walled in by a few buildings is new. My eyes need to re-adapt to depth. The beer helps.
Tip: Alcohol has a bigger impact at altitude, be aware.
Before time in the Salt Flat’s simplicity, I didn’t know how much I tuned out while walking down the road.
People, voices, cars, doors opening and closing, perfume, trash, colourful slogans: our brains do a lot to filter down to what’s important.
Your brain literally sees what it’s been trained to focus on. It’s amazing to experience just how much of our world gets ignored.
In Uyuni, my group sits outside at a food stall. We chat with the señora and her daughter.
I try to focus in on her eyes, the crispy dough she’s frying, this moment. Little by little I regain control of my focus.
I try to consciously choose where it goes now.
Back in daily complexity, I reflect on the simple crystalline world of the Uyuni Salt Flats. They’ve become a vast, open space in my mind.
“Want some sugar?” The señora cuts into the dream.
“Yes, please. I’ve had enough salt for now,” we laugh.
I watch as she covers the flat dough in a layer of white, and I’m gone again.
What to bring:
-
- Sunglasses. The UV index is always maxed out here. Wet or dry season the surface of the flats is a giant reflector for the powerful sun.
- Hats, long sleeves and pants. More UV protection.
- Hiking boots. You can get by with running shoes but this is a rough world and you don’t want to fall on the crystals or volcanic stones. “Salt in the wound” is a saying for a reason.
- Coca leaves/coffee/altitude pills.
- Props for perspective shots. You can buy some in San Pedro or Uyuni depending where you start.
- Fleece sweaters, down jackets, sleeping bags. Tours provide some blankets but it is cold in Uyuni, especially at night. Sometimes the temperatures drop below -10.
Costs:
- Tour: $130-$200 for a three day, all inclusive tour. The best way to see all the sights (the salt flats are just seasoning in this amazing National Park).
- $22 park entry fee.
- Cash for arrival in Uyuni town or San Pedro de Atacama. Finding ATMs is difficult and everything is cash-only.
