South America

The Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia is probably the reason we're here. Melissa saw a photo in a book of the best 500 places to visit in the world and the next thing she knew she was searching for a tour package.

Spanning over 10,000 square kilometers (it's larger than Connecticut!), this prehistoric dried lake bed is the world’s largest salt flat, blanketed in a thick, white crust that forms geometric hexagons across the ground. For perspective if you've been to the Bonneville Salt Flats like Melissa did as a child, this is more than 100 times larger. We're visiting in the dry season, and the endless white horizon creates a unique lack of depth perception, and our tour guide enjoyed setting us up into perspective-bending photos.

Our first stop was the Train Cemetery, where locomotives and train cars were abandoned in the 1970s after decades of work and when truckers demanded an end to railways throughout South America. We then drove miles and miles into the flats, met with a Bolivian indigenous woman who showed us the burial ground of her "grandparents' grandparents" that included mummies over 800 years old. We also visited the cactus-covered Incahuasi Island in the center of the "salt sea." Our hotel is the Luna Salada, which means "Salty moon" and indeed our room is made of salt bricks! Even the mattress rests on a salt bed.Read more