Salt wonders

Have you ever been excited about salt?

Did you ever want your picture taken with salt?

If you answered "no," then you haven’t been to "El Salar" ( the salt flat) in Bolivia. 12,000 square kilometres at 3700m of salt flat. Note flat, not flats. It's one area as far as the eye can see, surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes and mountains that are 5800m high. On a good day, like today, visibility is 100km.

The most unusual effect of this flat occurs when there is a little rain, and yesterday it rained. So we had the pleasure of seeing the double sky. The thin layer of water acts like a mirror. Cars, people appear to float. The mountains and sky are mirrored.

As always with nature, photos and films are nowhere like the real thing, but the special lighting aĺlows for rather unique photos. I have a few, Flo and Nira took 100s more.

We all found it magnificent and lots of fun, quite unexpectedly, for a flat white surface.

If you have the chance, visit Uyuni, but make sure you go between January and March.

Strange endnote. Althought Bolivia has endless salt resources, it exports very little, its not entirely clear why, might be that its only 95% pure, might be the very labour intensive preparation that we saw is not cost competitive.Read more