Uyuni

Uyuni - darkometer rating : 2 - A small town in the Altiplano of Bolivia , best known for the nearby huge salt flat of the same name. This Salar de Uyuni is in fact the largest salt lake/salt pan in the world, and simply mind-boggling to see. Throw in some scary mummies and a graveyard of rusting old steam trains, and it's a one-of-a-kind experience. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: The town of Uyuni would be no more than a desolate, remote little outpost if it wasn't for the Salar de Uyuni – the world's largest salt flat, a truly vast area of some 4000 square miles (11,000 square kilometers) of white. The salt layer is supposedly several metres thick, while the whole salt lake (including the brine below the salt crust) is up to 30 m deep. The salt is being mined, especially in the small village of Colchani, where it is enriched with iodine and packed and sold as cooking salt. While this traditional cooking salt production provides only a meagre income for the local populace, the more recent discovery of enormous lithium reserves in the Salar may have huge economic advantages for Bolivia as a whole in the future. Since lithium is a key component for making batteries, the importance of the stuff is expected to increase as more car traffic switches away from fossil-fuel-burning combustion engines to electric motors. As the Salar de Uyuni is said to contain some 50% of the world's lithium reserves, it may become more valuable for the country in the future than gold or silver have ever been in the past. Traditionally, however, it's indeed silver that has been the focus of mining in the Altiplano, and in the nearby mountains there are still active historic silver mines, e.g.