Look For The Droid

Amid the grand expanse of Bolivia’s salt plain, a pampered traveller discovers the perfect way to experience one of the world’s most remote and strikingly beautiful destinations.

- Karen Tee

On a remote high plateau in Bolivia, I discover that staying in a luxury Airstream camper van is well worth the splurge to appreciate the dramatic beauty of the world’s largest salt flat.

A waist-high replica of BB8, the rolling Star Wars droid, stands guard at the entrance of the stainless steel Airstream camper van. Gleaming in the sun, the vehicle looks like a fish miraculously plonked atop the vast salt plain that is Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni. It will house us tonight, after our bone-rattling two-hour drive across the Altiplano. It is a familiar island amid the strange, otherworldly scene of the Bolivian Plateau.

Perched at 3,600m above sea level on a plateau in the Andes, Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat, is a blinding white expanse resembling an endless field of snow. But snow doesn’t fall here, despite the frigid temperature. What it is, is a solid salt crust that some believe reaches a depth of over 100m. The crystals form a polygonal pattern on the ground but, every so often, holes – or eyes, as the locals call it – appear. You can peer into the clear, briny water for a glimpse of massive salt caverns below, or dip a hand into the icy pool to extract a fist-sized crystal just for the fun of it.

The 10,500 sq km landscape is so salty that it is devoid of botanical life, except for the occasional island of petrified coral – the remnant of a dried lake bed – where 10m tall cacti grow in wild abundance. Once in a while, a fuzzy llama or two trots by at a leisurely pace, adding to the dreamlike atmosphere. In areas where the surface is wet, the sky is reflected like a massive mirror – affording an incredible photo opportunity that has propelled Uyuni onto multiple articles about bucket-list destinations.