Southeast of the Bolivian Altiplano, some 4,000 meters above sea level in the heart of the Andes is a region of rugged beauty and pure, unspoiled and sparsely inhabited. One area where the rocks tortured by the cold wind gives way to salt covered with a glistening blanket large areas. Is the Salar de Uyuni, the largest reserve of sodium chloride in the world, 10,000 square kilometers of immaculate white surface that keeps growing every year after the rainy season.
In the margins of...
more »Southeast of the Bolivian Altiplano, some 4,000 meters above sea level in the heart of the Andes is a region of rugged beauty and pure, unspoiled and sparsely inhabited. One area where the rocks tortured by the cold wind gives way to salt covered with a glistening blanket large areas. Is the Salar de Uyuni, the largest reserve of sodium chloride in the world, 10,000 square kilometers of immaculate white surface that keeps growing every year after the rainy season.
In the margins of this great sea of salt, people have traditionally lived scratch when salting a product that has gradually come into disuse. Colchani is the last living people who still maintains its connection to the extraction of salt. Despite the decline in prices, they go into the nitrate salt every day, some by bicycle to pick up shovels and other granulated salt will travel about 100 miles in old trucks to reach the place where salt is more thick. The task of these workers to fill a thousand blocks of salt trucks under a blinding light, is tough as few: three days starting from the salt crust of salt bricks and sleeping in the vehicle cabin temperatures can reach up to 20 degrees below zero at night.
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