Journey through the world's largest salt desert

• of the world's largest salt desert Travel

Salar de Uyuni - a dried-up salt lake in the south of the desert plains of the Altiplano in Bolivia, at an altitude of 3650 m above sea level. The area of this unusual place of 10582 square meters. km and it is the largest salt marsh in the world.

Major minerals - halite and gypsum. The inner part is covered with a layer of salt 2-8 m thick. In the rainy season saline covered with a thin layer of water and converted into the largest mirror surface in the world.

Journey through the world's largest salt desert

About 40 thousand years ago, this area was part of Lake Minchin. After drying left two currently existing lakes Poopo and Uru Uru Lake, and two major salt marsh: the Salar de Uyuni and Koypasa. Uyuni area about 25 times larger than the area of the dry lake Bonneville in the US.

In the midst of endless space it seems like the mirror was on another planet, or come to an end.

Due to the large size, flat surface and high albedo in the presence of a thin layer of water, as well as the minimum deviation of height, Salar de Uyuni is the perfect tool for testing and calibration of remote sensing instruments on orbiting satellites. Clear skies and dry air allow Uyuni to calibrate satellites five times better than if you had used the surface of the ocean.

After a trip solonchak machine is completely covered with salt and is subject to a total wash.

Due to its flat surface Salar de Uyuni is the main transport route in the Altiplano. Next to the salt marsh is building an international airport capable of receiving long-haul aircraft. Its opening was in 2012.

In the center of the salt flats have salt hotel, and next here is a structure made of salt blocks, which come from all over the world tourists placed the flags of their countries. KAKS you can see, there is the Russian flag.

Salar Uyuni stock comprises about 10 billion tons of salt, of which the annual production of less than 25 thousand. T.

hotels here build of salts, more precisely, from salt blocks. Tables, chairs, beds and other pieces of furniture also made of salt. And on the walls with a polite request to the ad do not lick. Spend the night in a hotel you can for $ 20.

Salt restaurant. If suddenly the food will be salted insufficiently, and salt shaker is not there, you can lick the table.

Salt sculptures.

Despite the harsh conditions, this saltmarsh grow several species of cacti, as well as live and breed rare species of hummingbirds, three types of flamingos, ostriches and other animals.

Every year in November at the Salar de Uyuni arrive on breeding three species of South American flamingos - Chilean flamingo, Andean flamingo and James flamingos.

Instead of sheep in these parts alpacas. Alpaca wool makes warm and soft blankets, rugs and clothing and fur household items. Alpaca wool has all the properties of the sheep, but weight much easier.

Rope tied, apparently in order to be visible from afar.

One of the attractions of the marsh, which also visited by tourists is the cemetery locomotives located near the tracks Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia in 3 km from the town of Uyuni. On the "graveyard" rest locomotives called the railroad train of delayed from service in the 1950s. When the extraction of minerals in the surrounding mines plummeted. In 2006, the local government adopted a 15-year program of development of the region, one of the points which is the transformation of "cemetery" in the open-air museum.