Salar de Uyuni
— the floor that turns into a mirror.
Not only on a wall.
“The world's largest salt flat, about ten thousand square kilometres across, at 3,656 metres on the southern Altiplano of Bolivia. In the dry winter the surface is hexagonal salt, hard enough to drive a Land Cruiser across at speed. In the wet summer a few centimetres of water lie still on top and the whole flat becomes a horizon-to-horizon mirror of the sky.
Salar de Uyuni, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Salar de Uyuni sits at about 3,656 metres on the southern Altiplano of Bolivia, in the department of Potosí, roughly 540 kilometres south of La Paz. It covers about 10,582 square kilometres, making it the largest salt flat on Earth, and is the dried remnant of two prehistoric lakes (Lake Minchin and Lake Tauca) that evaporated between roughly 11,000 and 40,000 years ago. The salt crust reaches up to ten metres thick in places and sits over a brine that holds an estimated 7 to 9 million tonnes of lithium, roughly a quarter of the world's known reserves.
The salar reads as two different places across the year. The dry season, May through October, leaves the surface a hard hexagonal mosaic of cracked salt and pure white horizon. During the rainy season, December through April, a thin film of standing water turns the entire flat into a mirror that reflects clouds and stars with near-perfect clarity. The mirror effect peaks in February. Daytime temperatures stay around 13 to 21 degrees Celsius across the year; nights at this elevation drop near freezing even in summer.
Most visits begin in the town of Uyuni, reached by overnight train from Oruro or by a one-hour flight from La Paz to Joya Andina Airport. Tours run as one-day loops or as three-day overland trips south to the Eduardo Avaroa Reserve and the Chilean border. Incahuasi Island, a rocky outcrop near the centre of the flat, holds Trichocereus pasacana cacti up to twelve metres tall and several hundred years old. The altitude is significant; acclimatisation in La Paz or Sucre is advisable before the trip.