Salar de Uyuni

Could you imagine 12000 km2 of salt? In Bolivia exists an incredible desert of salt and the Bolivians have known how to take profit of this. The name of this desert is Salar de Uyuni and it is specifically located in the Potosí department in the southwest of Bolivia. Uyuni is one of the biggest reservations of lithium in the world, and there are great quantities of magnesium, potassium and boron.

As you must imagine this is a big economic source as there are a lot of tones of salt with they can trade as well as with the lithium and the other components already said. But the economic source it is not finished with the traffic of salt there also exist the tourism attraction. A lot of people came every year to see the awesome view of a desert of salt because the desert is transparent and it’s seems like you are walking over a mirror.

But to gain more tourists they thought to build a hotel with blocks of salt in the middle of the desert. It’s a small hotel but soon became a very popular tourist destination. This is the second hotel that it is build in the desert, the first was smaller and it’s had 12 double rooms, a common bathroom, and no shower. In the current hotel they had included a dry sauna and a steam room, a saltwater pool and whirlpool baths.

Another very popular attraction is the train cemetery. This cemetery contains the old trains that distribute the salt of the desert to the Pacific Ocean ports. In the 40s the mineral industry collapsed for the mineral depletion so many of trains were abandoned and they became a train cemetery. Someone saw in this trains a tourism source and convert this in an attraction for the tourists.