One of the unofficial wonders of the world, the Bolivia Salt Flats (Salar de Uyuni) stretch nearly 11,000 sq km and was once a pre-historic lake. Neil Armstrong is rumored to have seen it from space and thought it was a shining glacier reflecting the sun, which earned it’s nickname the ‘mirror of the sky’. It’s a must do in South America and we recommend pairing your visit to the Salt Flats with a few days in the Atacama Desert in North Chile, which is the driest place on earth and offers spectacular day trips. The two locations are accessible by bus (often an organized tour).
Traveling Through The SAlt Flats
We took a 3 Day tour starting at the Salt Flats, down through the south of Bolivia (stopping at beautiful lagoons, rock formations and hot springs), and then crossing over the land border into Chile to visit the Atacama Desert for a few days. You can do the two locations separate – but if you are travelling throughout South America, it’s a perfect way to travel from Bolivia to Chile (or vice versa), avoid another costly flight, and truly get to experience the spectacular landscape.
Tours & Activities
Highlights In the Area:
Bolivia:
- Day 1: Uyuni Salt Flat, Train Cemetery, Incawasi Island
- Day 2: Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa: Laguna Colorada, Sioli Desert, Laguna Cañapa , Laguna Hedionda, Laguna Chiarcota and Laguna Honda
- Day 3: Geysers at Sol de Mañana, Laguna Chalviri Hot Springs, Salvador Dali Desert
Atacama:
- Day 1: Valle de la Luna, Reserva Nacional Los Flamencos, Go Stargazing
Bolivian Salt Flats & Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa
You pretty much have to take a tour to visit the salt flat as there are no real roads and it would be impossible to navigate if you were driving on your own. Tours are often 1-3 days and done in a 4×4. If you just want to see the Salt Flats you can do a 1 or 2 day tour, but we’d recommend spending 3 days so that you can see the Salt Flats and spend time exploring the beautiful lagoons (its lots of driving). This is also the only option if you want to get the transfer to cross over into Chile to spend a few days in San Pedro de Atacama.
For the Bolivia Salt Flats & National Parks, we booked a 3 day tour with Andes Salt Expeditions and had a great experience. Our tour guide was knowledgeable, a great driver and went out of his way to get amazing photos and videos for us. He also didn’t rush us if we needed more time at a certain place and on our first day we stayed out in the salt flats for hours longer than other tours, allowing us to see the sunset and get some incredible photos of the ‘mirror effect’.
San Pedro de Atacama
In San Pedro de Atacama, there are many companies that offer day trips to the desert highlights. We’d recommend Whipala Expedition for day trips and Atacama Star Gazing for star gazing tours. San Pedro is considered one of the best places in the world to see Southern Constellations and a real hub for astro enthusiasts. If you have lots of time in San Pedro, you could consider renting a car and doing some of the day trips yourself. The roads are well paved and pretty easy to navigate. We prefer tours as we like to hear the history and find we learn more with a guide, but I did hear of many tourists doing the day trips on their own.
- EZ Tip The salt flat tours often start and return to Uyuni (Bolivia), but many companies will often the alternative to start in Uyuni and end in San Pedro de Atacama (Chile) if you are doing a 3+ day tour. This costs an extra ~$20 USD and a second bus will meet you at the border to take you into Chile. Therefore, if you want to see both the Atacama and Bolivian Salt Flats, make sure your tour company offers this transfer service.
- EZ Tip If you don’t want to start the tour in Bolivia, there is the alternative option of starting in San Pedro de Atacama (Chile) and going North into Bolivia, ending in Uyuni. Tours run both ways, but we found many of the tours out of Chile were round trip (returned to back Chile), whereas we could get a ‘one-way’ tour if we started in Bolivia. If you are starting in Chile, you need to fly into Santiago and take a connecting flight to Calama (~ 2 hours) and then take a 60-90 minute shuttle to San Pedro de Atacama (~2 hours if you take a public bus)
accommodations
Uyuni Salt Flat & Lagoons
We’ll be honest, accommodation and food aren’t the best in the Salt Flats, but every tour group seemed to be eating similar foods and staying at similar places, so it’s just the reality of travelling in rural Bolivia which isn’t well developed. Accommodations are small rural hostels located in the national parks. They look pretty shabby from the outside, but they offered warm beds and hot showers, so if you go in with the right expectations, it’s worth giving up some comfort it for the amazing views.
San Pedro de Atacama
In San Pedro, there is a wide range of accommodation options fitting every budget. If you want to splurge, you can stay at Explora Atacama which is all-inclusive and offers tours ($600/pp/per night, minimum 2 nights. We recommend the Terrantai ($300/per night). It was an excellent hotel right in the middle of the town (so close to restaurants and the pickup point for your tours). The hotel felt like a serene ‘desert-chic; oasis. Service was great, breakfast was good, rooms were clean and they had a wonderful pool to cool off in the hot afternoons. They ran 1-2 free activates per day – including a wine tasting. They also heard we had recently gotten married and set up a wonderful welcome gift of cookies and champagne. We would highly recommend.
- EZ Tip If you’re picky with food, make sure to pack some protein bars and snacks for the Bolivia salt flat tour. While lunch and dinner were fine, breakfast weren’t great in the rural hostels. If you’re a coffee addict like Emily, you may also want to bring some higher quality instant coffee and creamers, as the stuff offered on tour but not match your standards
Logistics
Getting To Uyuni, Bolivia
The Salt Flats are located in Uyuni, Bolivia, but it is a small town without an international airport. Most international flights will land in La Paz or Santa Cruz. We arrived in La Paz and from there you have two main options for getting to Uyuni:
- 1) 10 hour overnight bus from La Paz to Uyuni (most popular option)
- 2) Flight from Uyuni to La Paz. Before COVID there was a direct flight, however as of Jan 2023 this wasn’t offered anymore and you had to take connecting flights.
Due to timing, we opted for the overnight bus. We had heard some horror stories about Bolivian buses, so we did quite a bit of research on companies. Local buses are reported to frequently break down, are cold and crowded, so if you aren’t super restricted on budget, we’d recommend booking with a more reputable company.
We went with Todo Tourism and the experience met our expectations. It was well organized, bus was clean, and it was a lot less bumpy than we expected, I think because bus was newer and had good suspension. Food wasn’t great, but I don’t think any companies have great food, so we recommend just eating dinner before you leave. Wifi also doesn’t work (even though its advertised), however we heard that’s the case for every bus company – there just isn’t coverage out in the rural roads. While we both didn’t get much sleep, we did feel safe, which was what I was must concerned about.
Transport in and around San Pedro de Atacama
San Pedro is a very small town and is easily walkable. Most restaurants and tour companies are within a 10 minute walk from one another. There are taxis available if you need to get to / or from the bus station, but if you are taking a tour from Uyuni they will usually drop you off at your hotel. Our hotel was right in town so we walked everywhere.
The closest airport to San Pedro de Atacama is in Calama, which is ~60-90 minutes by shuttle or 2 hours by bus. The shuttle service (We used Transfer Pampa) will pick you up at your hotel and it’s about $20USD for a one-way transfer (cheaper for roundtrip).
