Near Lake Titicaca is the Uyuni solonchak. The salt surface, stretching for tens of kilometers, is staggering. Altiplano is an alpine plateau in the Central Andes, it is located 3.3-3.8 thousand meters above sea level. In the south, the plateau is a semi-desert and desert with all the relevant attributes in the form of cacti and deserts; in the north, the desert begins to resemble the steppe.
It was in these not very hospitable places that the huge Uyuni salt flats spread. From afar, it resembles a huge lake, in fact, once this place it was. Its area is about 10 thousand km2. For complete resemblance to a pond among salt open spaces, there are sometimes plots of land and stones that locals call islands. Huge cacti grow on the islands; other plants cannot cope with the peculiarities of local soil. The surface of the snow-white plain is very similar to ice. Especially in places where Aborigines mine salt. Extraction is carried out in a very simple way: the salt on the surface is simply raked into huge heaps, and then shovels are thrown into a truck that has arrived. After such scraping, the surface becomes smooth, smooth and shiny. It would be possible to extract salt from the depths - the thickness of the salt cover in these places varies from 2 to 8 meters, but why make an effort if the top is full of good.
Salt in these places goes not only for food and souvenirs for curious tourists. They even build houses out of it, and inside the rooms you can even find furniture made of salt - bed-beds, tables. Groups coming here overnight get a chance to spend the night in a unique salt hotel. But the most interesting time to visit the salt marsh is the rainy season. Yes, the weather will be so-so. But you can see a hundred-kilometer mirror, which turns into a salt marsh covered with a layer of water.