Geological marvel or one vast optical illusion? Whichever, the unique landscape of the world’s largest salt flats in the southwest corner of Bolivia is a photographer’s dream.
The flatness, the colours and the down-right oddness seem to do strange things to your brain here – all sense of perspective can be lost; distance becomes impossible to measure.
All that seems to exist is you, the sky and an endless crunch of blinding white. It is one of the planet’s most surreal landscapes and a travel experience you’ll never forget.
The Salar de Uyuni is the leftovers of a scatter of prehistoric lakes, perched up at around 3,650m above sea level. It is breathtaking in all senses of the word.
In the dry season this vast expanse appears as a patchwork of interlocking hexagons, white as the Antarctic; in the rainy season (December to April), when the briny crust may be covered in a shallow puddle of water, the area becomes a 9,000 sq km mirror, giving the sensation of travelling across the sky.
Where workers have harvested the salt, small pyramids of the precious grains pock the flats like mini mountains.
There is no right or wrong time to visit Salar de Uyuni. Rainy or dry, each season has their own unique benefits.