Uyuni Flats
The Salar de Uyuni (spanish for Uyuni Flats) is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 km2 (4,085 square miles). It took a 7 hour train from Oruro (3 hours from La Paz) to reach the city of Uyuni, and another 2-hour drive to the flats. Located in the Potosà and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, it is 3,650 meters high. Some 40,000 years ago, the area was part of Lake Minchin, a giant prehistoric lake. When the lake dried, it left behind two modern lakes, Poopó 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. The Salar is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt, of which less than 25,000 tons is extracted annually.
