Salar de Uyuni

Normally, in its Travel section, SeaWayBLOG brings you in those places of our planet that water has made incredible someway. In this case we go to Bolivia to visit the "Salar de Uyuni", the world's largest salt flat and a place become unbelievable thanks to the disappearance of water. In the place of the salt flat infact, some 40,000 years ago, there was the Lake Minchin, a giant prehistoric lake. When the lake dried, it left behind two modern lakes, PoopĆ³ Lake and Uru Uru Lake, and two major salt deserts, Salar de Coipasa and the larger Uyuni. Uyuni is roughly 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the United States and it's so huge that can be easily spotted looking South America from the space as you can see in this satellite image:

Salar de Uyuni

The disappearance of water I was talking about earlier, it's not total and sometimes, during the rainy season, the salt flat is covered by several centimeters of waters. In these moments a miracle happens and the Salar de Uyuni becomes a more than 5000 square mile mirror:

Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni

The water it's not a problem and you can visit the salt flat with a jeep, having the incredible sensation of driving in the (reflected) sky!:

Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni

Every November, Salar de Uyuni is also the breeding grounds for three species of South American flamingos: the Chilean, James's and Andean flamingos:

Salar de Uyuni

Salar de Uyuni is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt, of which less than 25,000 tons is extracted annually. All miners working in the Salar belong to Colchani's cooperative:

Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni

The picture of this post have been chosen from these two galleries where you can find many others:
Link
Link

Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni

Comments

0 Response to 'The mirror of the sky: Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat'