Journey 03 · Bolivia
Uyuni, White Out
The salar in wet season
Published 23 Jan 2026 · Travelled 8–14 Dec 2025
- 8 moments
- 7 days
- 598 km
- Winter
- Bolivia
- Uyuni
- 07:00
Pokhara sits at 822 metres. Uyuni town starts you at 3670 and the salt itself at 3653, which my body recognised before my brain did. First number is where I live. Second is where I woke up. As a guide I preach acclimatisation; as a tourist I took the overnight bus like a fool.
- 35mm · f/5.6 · 1/500
- 20.3010° S, 66.9370° W
- Salar de Uyuni, near Colchani
- 07:50
- -3°C, clear, frost on the salt
Marco set up folding chairs and a camp table on the open salt like it was a café with one table and ten thousand square kilometres of floor. Coca tea, bread, dulce de leche. Wet season mornings are colder than the brochure admits. Nobody cared even slightly.
- 24mm · f/8 · 1/1000
- 20.2540° S, 67.4890° W
- Salar de Uyuni
- 10:30
- 12°C, flooded salt, still air
Where the rain sits a few centimetres deep the salar stops being ground and becomes sky. Marco drove us out slowly, water hissing off the tyres, and parked in the middle of a cloud that was below us. Every guide instinct I have says do not trust a surface you cannot read. I got out anyway. Everyone does.
- 24mm · f/11 · 1/640
- 20.3000° S, 67.5500° W
- Salar de Uyuni
- 12:40
- 14°C, windless, cloud above and below
Around midday the wind died completely and the reflection went perfect. There is no horizon in a frame like this, no up that means anything. I made everyone in the jeep stand still for one minute to feel how disorienting it is. Two of them wobbled. The salt does that to your inner ear when the sky is on both sides.
- 24mm · f/8 · 1/500
- 20.2410° S, 67.6270° W
- Isla Incahuasi
- 15:20
- 16°C, sun, dry salt here
A coral hill in the middle of the salt, covered in cactus older than any client I have ever guided — the tall ones grow a centimetre a year and some are twelve metres. From the top the white runs out in every direction like the world has been over-exposed. Good stairs, honest handrails. I checked. Habit.
Overheard · Salt hotel, edge of the salar · 20:15
"Tomorrow, lagunas. Red one, green one." — "Which is better?" — "The one you are standing at." Seventeen seasons of guiding and I have never summarised the job better than that.
- 70mm · f/4 · 1/1250
- 22.1930° S, 67.7820° W
- Laguna Colorada
- 11:45
- 2°C, wind, thin sun
A day's drive south of the salt, the altiplano starts producing lakes in colours that need no filter and get accused of one anyway. The flamingos feed with their heads upside down in near-freezing water at 4300 metres. Hard birds. The wind cut through four layers and they stood in it like it was nothing.
- Salar de Uyuni
- 18:55
- 5°C, clear, mirror holding
- Last frame
We went back out onto the flooded section for the final sunset. The others walked ahead into the colour and became silhouettes holding hands with their own reflections. I stood behind the camera where I have spent most of my working life, and for once had nothing to manage. Just the light, going.
- 50mm · f/5.6 · 1/320
- 20.2900° S, 67.5200° W
The route
8 stops
Journey completed
Seven days, eight stories
- Frames exposed
- 890
- Altitude of the salt, metres
- 3653
- Horizon, visible
- sometimes
- Llamas, photographed
- 31
- Favourite moment
- Standing on wet salt at dusk when the sky closed over the ground and the world had no seam
- Best food
- Quinoa soup at a salt-block table in Colchani, hot enough to matter
