Uyuni, Peru

This hotel is made completely out of salt blocks.

Here we saw a mini tornado.

Here in Uyuni I took a 3 day tour of the Solar de Uyuni (Salt Flats). This is up there as one of the most amazing things I have seen so far. Besides the salt flats there is everything from geysers and hot springs to active volcanoes and rock formations that will blow your socks off. We also visited a variety of lakes that varied in color from red to white to green! If I was making a list of things to do in my life, I would add that one! For 3 days we rode around in a Toyota Land Cruiser and it seemed like every hill was something completely different! On top of a great place to visit, I was with a great group of people and I really enjoyed everything about it!!!

Salar de Uyuni

From Wikipedia

Piles of salt at Salar de Uyuni.
When it is covered with water, the Salar de Uyuni reflects the sky.
Salar de Uyuni (or Salar de Tunupa) is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 km² (4,085 square miles). It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, 3,650 meters high. The major minerals found in the salar are halite and gypsum.

Formation
Some 40,000 years ago, the area was part of Lake Minchin, a giant prehistoric lake. When the lake dried, it left behind two modern lakes, Poopó Lake and Uru Uru Lake, and two major salt deserts, Salar de Coipasa and the larger Uyuni. Uyuni is roughly 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the United States.

Economic influence
Salar de Uyuni is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt, of which less than 25,000 tons is extracted annually. All miners working in the Salar belong to Colchani's cooperative. Every November, Salar de Uyuni is also the breeding grounds for three species of South American flamingos: the Chilean, James's and Andean flamingos. It is also a significant tourist destination; highlights include a salt hotel and several so-called islands. As it is so flat it serves as a major transport route across the Bolivian Altiplano.

Satellite calibration
Due to its large size, smooth surface, high surface reflectivity when covered with shallow water, and minimal elevation deviation, Salar de Uyuni makes an ideal target for the testing and calibration of remote sensing instruments on orbiting satellites used to study the Earth. In addition to providing an excellent target surface the skies above Salar de Uyuni are so clear, and the air so dry, that the surface works up to five times better for satellite calibration than using the surface of the ocean. In September 2002 a team took detailed GPS elevation measurements of a portion of the salt flats. This GPS data was then compared to the data from several ICESat passes over the area were used to evaluate the accuracy and precision of ICESat's instruments.