Salar de Uyuni—the famous salt flats of Bolivia—is one of those places that everyone says is incredible, so you’re a bit nervous that it may not live up to the hype.

But it really does.

Coming to the salt flats transports you to another world, an alien world. It’s impossible to tell where the horizon lies, and jeeps and earth “islands” in the distance appear to be huge floating rocks. You feel like you’re just suspended in space with little sense of which way is up and down, back and forth.

The salt flats are basically just huge and expansive deposits of salt in the Bolivian Altiplano, situated at around 12,000 feet above sea level. According to our guide, this natural wonder of the world resulted from ancient lakes that eventually dried up and simply left behind tons (actually, billions of tons) of salt, covering over 4,000 square miles.

Salar de Uyuni is not only the biggest salt flat in the world, but it’s also one of the purest—many others have much more dirt mixed in with the salt.

This time of year is Bolivia’s rainy season, so most of the salt flats are flooded with about half an inch of water, creating the surreal imagery. We were also lucky to find part of the flats that weren’t flooded, so we could see what the dry areas looked like, too. These parts were ideal for some cool perspective pictures!

However, I did prefer the awesome views that the flooded areas provided, especially as the sun set.

We visited the salt flats as the first part of a three-day tour that took us through southwestern Bolivia. On the second and their days, we explored saw coral rock formations, volcanoes, llamas, geysers, hot springs, and the empty expanse of the Dali desert.

(Check out more of our photos from days two and three!)

But still, the salt flats were definitely the highlight of the tour, and a spectacular experience not to be missed in Bolivia.

Travel Notes

• Take some time to adjust to the altitude! On our first day in Uyuni, we both had terrible headaches, felt nauseous, and could barely eat. We ended up taking a full two days to adjust, and then we felt fine when we left for our tour on the third day. If you’re coming to Uyuni from somewhere else in Bolivia, you’ll probably be fine to start sooner since you would have already adjusted. (And there’s really not much to do in the town of Uyuni itself.)
• We did the three-day tour of southwest Bolivia, which included the salt flats on day one followed by a journey into the desert on days two and three. We went with Quechua Connections and were very happy with them. We had heard some horror stories about tour companies that had drunk drivers, etc., but we felt very safe and secure with our tour group.
• Either plan on not showering on the tour, or expect to be very cold! (Even if the showers may be somewhat warm, the rooms are so cold that it is very unpleasant to get out of the showers.)