8th day / Uyuni

After a long night ride covering 600kms, half of it on dirt road, we arrived 6 a.m. in Uyuni, the starting point of the most expected section of our trip.

 

 Uyuni is also giving home to the Dakar rally every year, eversince the organisers decided to leave Africa.

Uyuni primarily serves as a gateway for tourists visiting the world's largest salt flats, the nearby Uyuni salt flat. Each year the town receives approximately 60,000 visitors from around the globe. The city also acts as a gateway for commerce and traffic crossing into and out of Bolivia from and to Chile, and there is a customs and immigration post downtown.

 

We booked in advance a 3 day Jeep tour to the salar and the highland volcanos behind. Tourism is the main business of the village, there are more than 100 companies bringing tourists to the salt lake. I tried to make a carefull selection for the oncoming 1000km on roadless terrain.

 

 

You often read that deadly accidents happen because of drunken drivers, 4WD s in bad technical condition.   

 

Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers It is at an elevation of 3,656 meters above mean sea level.

The Salar was formed as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes. It is covered by a few meters of salt crust, which has an extraordinary flatness with the average altitude variations within one meter over the entire area of the Salar.

 

The crust serves as a source of salt and covers a pool of brine, which is exceptionally rich in lithium. It contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves, which is in the process of being extracted. The large area, clear skies, and the exceptional flatness of the surface make the Salar an ideal object for calibrating the altimeters of Earth observation satellites.

For more pics
https://picasaweb.google.com/109547197400653381375/PeruBolivia#