It was not very long until we arrived at the Chilean border post at Hito Cajon, alone on a plateau high in the hills at an elevation of 4480m amsl. The initial climb east out of San Pedro de Atacama was accomplished on a decent paved road, but a left turn soon saw us onto dirt tracks that we would continue upon for the next three days. The border crossing itself is both desolate and spectacular. The salt flat really does go on forever Up and over the border into BoliviaĪround 7am we emerged from our hostel to board a minibus to the border. (top tip: we have written this in roughly the order we did this in – skip the next few sections to get to the epic photos of the salt flat itself). Each day has different scenery and can broadly be described as day one: lakes, flamingos and geysers in the Eduardo Avaroa national park, day two: rocks, canyons and llamas between Villamar and Julaca and finally, day three visiting the Salar de Uyuni. The trip usually takes three days with two over night stops. The one-way journey is generally done as part of a tour, there are limited roads here, no buses and nowhere to fill up with petrol if you drive yourself, so you need to be pretty well prepared. Driving the overland route it is closer to 450km. That same lack of features and flatness also makes for unique photography opportunities which have seen the area become more famous through Instagram in recent years.Īs the crow flies the salt flat is 310km north east from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile ( where we approached from), and higher up in the Andes.
It is so vast and featureless that the curvature of the earth becomes obvious.
It covers more than 11,000 square kilometres, and is so flat that its altitude varies less than a metre across its entire surface these facts go a long way to explaining why it is so spectacular. The Bolivian salt flat (the Salar de Uyuni) is the largest salt flat in the world.
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