You may have heard about temporary snow hotels built in winter in some mountain resorts. But what about a ... salt hotel!? A snow hotel requires temperatures below zero; a salt hotel requires the (almost total) lack of rainfall.
This weird and remote accommodation, built just from salt blocks, is located on the white plains on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni in southwestern
Bolivia. The Salt Hotel has most of the furniture made of blocks of salt, starting with the chairs, up to tables and beds, with more salt sprinkled over the floor. The hotel once offered 12 guest rooms, but it has been closed for several years.
Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt desert: 4,085 square-miles (10,580 square-kilometers), a desert with no sand or dunes. It is the largest salt flat in the world, about 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Its name comes from Uyuni, the dusty town closest to the desert, while "salar" simply means "salt field" in Spanish.
40,000 years ago, there was a large salt lake, Lake Minchin. Currently, it is a hot spot for adventure tourism. As far as you can see, there are just blindingly white flats, dotted by a few raised salt mounds, in a moon-like landscape. Recently, tourists have discovered this natural wonder. This harsh area was inhabited just by salt miners, who exploit yearly 25,000 tons of salt from the 10 billion tons deposit.
Even if the place looks barren, it is the home of cacti and rare hummingbirds, and three species of flamingos breed here, feeding in nearby salty lagoons. The nearby zones are dominated by bizarre rock formations, geysers with boiling volcanic mud and multicolored salty lagoons. Even inside the desert there are some "oases" with rocks, cacti and shrubs.
In Salar de Uyuni, temperatures can vary from 70° C in the afternoon to below zero at night. You can drive an off roader in Salar de Uyuni, but you must know there are no roads in the wilderness.
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