Uyuni, Bolivia · South America

5 ideal things to do in Uyuni

The short list, pulled out of the long essay. No opening hours, because they change and I would only get them wrong — just what is worth your morning, roughly when to turn up, and where I have wasted time so you don’t have to.

By Ščenza

Last checked February 4, 2025

1. 01

   Sunrise on the salt in the wet season

   Out on the flat, an hour or so from Uyuni town·December to March for the mirror; the water is deepest in February

   After rain, a film of water a couple of centimetres deep turns the flat into a mirror 129 kilometres across, and at sunrise there is no dependable horizon anywhere — sky underneath you, sky above, your own 4x4 standing in both at once. It is the most disorienting beautiful thing I have looked at. Bring boots you have already given up on, because the salt eats everything it touches, and expect a driver who has done this a thousand mornings to get out and watch it anyway.

2. 02

   The Cementerio de Trenes

   3 km outside Uyuni town·First stop of the tour, mid-morning

   Antique steam locomotives left out in the desert to rust, with nobody bothering to fence them off. You climb on them. Everyone climbs on them. The metal is sharp in several places and the tetanus arithmetic is entirely your own business. It is a strange short stop that every visitor photographs and nobody quite explains, and it sets the tone accurately for three days of a landscape mostly made of things abandoned at very high altitude and then left alone.

3. 03

   Isla Incahuasi

   In the middle of the Salar, well out from Colchani·Midday stop on day one

   Fossil coral rising out of a salt flat, covered in cardón cacti several metres tall, with viscachas — long-tailed rabbit relatives with no discernible fear of anybody — sitting about on the rocks. A short path takes you to the top and a view of nothing but white in all directions, which is the point of climbing it. The geology takes a moment to land: this was the floor of a lake, and the thing you are standing on used to be a reef. I ate a cheese sandwich on it and felt underqualified.

4. 04

   Laguna Colorada

   Eduardo Avaroa reserve, day two·Afternoon, with a night in a refugio nearby

   Sixty square kilometres of red water at 4,278 metres, coloured by algae and sediment, with James's flamingos standing about in it at a temperature that would put me in hospital. Around forty bird species live out here and there is essentially no shelter from the wind. The refugios are basic — bunks, a shared bathroom, and fewer blankets than you will want by two in the morning. This was the night I properly understood that the altiplano is not a beach holiday, and I say that as a man from a beach.

5. 05

   Sol de Mañana at dawn

   Around 4,800 m, near the Chilean border; day three·Pre-dawn departure, before the sun thins the steam

   Fumaroles and mud pots at nearly five thousand metres, reached in the dark, because the steam columns only stand up like that in the cold before sunrise. There are no railings and no marked path, and the ground in places is a crust over something you would rather not meet. Walk behind your driver and put your feet where he puts his. Between here and the border you pass the Árbol de Piedra, a rock the wind has whittled into a tree, standing alone in the Siloli desert like set dressing nobody came back for.