Salt, Altitude, and the Sacred Lake
Ten thousand square kilometres of salt flat at 3,660 metres, a fifth of the world's identified lithium underneath it, and a lake at 3,812 metres that Andean cosmology says the world began in.
The Salar de Uyuni is 10,500 square kilometres of salt crust at 3,660 metres, flat to within about a metre across its entire width, and in the wet season it holds a few centimetres of water that turn the whole thing into a mirror. It is the largest salt flat on earth and it is also, increasingly, the largest known lithium reserve.
Three hundred kilometres northwest, Lake Titicaca sits at 3,812 metres on the Peruvian border — the highest navigable lake in the world, and in Andean cosmology the place from which Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo emerged to found the Inca line. Between the two is the Bolivian altiplano, and the trip across it is the classic South American high-altitude journey.
The flat
Most people do it as a three-day 4×4 tour from Uyuni south to the Chilean border at Hito Cajón, and the standard itinerary is standard for good reason. Day one is the salar itself — the Incahuasi cactus island, the salt hotels, the perspective photographs everyone takes and nobody regrets. Day two crosses the Siloli desert past coloured lagoons, flamingos and the Árbol de Piedra. Day three starts at 4:30 for the Sol de Mañana geysers at 4,850 metres and the Laguna Verde beneath Licancabur.
The choice that matters is the operator. This route has a poor safety record — drunk driving, exhausted drivers on 500-kilometre days, vehicles without proper maintenance, and cold-weather accommodation that in the cheapest tours means an unheated room at 4,300 metres. Paying 40% more for a company that runs two drivers and confirms its vehicles is the single best decision available on this trip.
The lithium
Under the crust is brine, and in the brine is somewhere around 20% of the world's identified lithium. Bolivia nationalised it in 2008 and has spent the years since trying to develop it on its own terms rather than as a raw exporter — a pilot plant at Llipi, a state company, a series of agreements with Chinese and Russian consortia, and, so far, very little production.
The politics of this run deep. Bolivia has been exporting minerals since Potosí's silver funded the Spanish empire, and the country's formative political argument is about what that did and did not leave behind. Evo Morales's framing — that the lithium would be industrialised in Bolivia or not extracted at all — remains popular even as production targets slip. The 2019 crisis and the disputes in Potosí department over royalties are part of the same argument.
Bolivia has been exporting minerals since Potosí. The argument about the lithium is really an argument about whether this time is different.
Altitude, honestly
La Paz airport is at 4,061 metres and you arrive at it directly from sea level. That is higher than any Alpine peak and the standard advice — arrive, rest, do nothing for 24 hours, drink water, avoid alcohol — is not conservative. Coca tea helps with the headache and does not help with acclimatisation. Acetazolamide, prescribed in advance, does.
The Uyuni tour spends its last night above 4,000 metres, which is where most people feel it. If you are coming from the coast, spend two nights in La Paz or Sucre first. If you are coming from Peru via Titicaca you will have acclimatised on the way, which is the better direction to do the whole thing in.
The lake
Copacabana, on the Bolivian shore, is a pilgrimage town — the Virgin of Copacabana is the patron of the country and the basilica has a courtyard where vehicles are blessed with flower petals and beer. Isla del Sol, two hours out by boat, holds Inca terracing and the rock the creation myth attaches to, and can be walked end to end in a day.
The lake has its own crisis. Levels have fallen sharply in the drought years, the shoreline at Puno on the Peruvian side has retreated hundreds of metres in places, and the smaller southern basin has come close to drying entirely. The Uru people who live on the floating reed islands have had to move them repeatedly.
Doing it
May to October is dry season — hard blue skies, cold nights and a salar you can drive across in any direction. December to April brings the water that makes the mirror, and also the risk that parts of the flat become impassable and the tour is truncated. If the reflection is the reason you are going, come in February and accept the trade.
Take a proper sleeping bag rating, not the one the tour company suggests. Take cash in bolivianos, since Uyuni's ATMs fail regularly. And build in a rest day at the end, because three days at that altitude in a Land Cruiser leaves most people wrecked in a way they did not plan for.
Diego is a bogotano journalist who has covered his city’s reinvention for fifteen years — transit, food, altitude and all. He rides Ciclovía every Sunday and will defend ajiaco against all comers.