Flamingos in a Salty Place

Some of you may probably have seen those otherworldly pictures from the world's largest salt flat 'Salar de Uyuni'. The surface is so smooth that reflections create bizarre optical illusions (I've not been there so I can't say anything about it). But 'Uyuni' has a rather unknown cousin located near San Pedro de Atacama: 'Salar de Atacama'. It looks completely different with rugged salt deposits. The lack of rain prevents it from becoming another flattest-place-on-earth 'Uyuni'. And that's just fine because diversity makes life cooler. Let's take a first look.

There is salt everywhere and while nobody actually knows how thick these salt deposits are, there are rumors that it may be more than 100 meters (Uyuni only has some centimeters to a couple of meters).

All pictures taken in March 2016 (The hat is the verification :D)

  

Did you know? The Atacama Salt Flat is the world's largest source of Lithium.

In the middle of the salt desert is a small lagoon called 'Laguna Chaxa' where Flamingos still wade through the shallow water like they did thousands of years ago.

Unfortunately I couldn't take better pictures. There are six species of Flamingos in the world and the Andes are home to 4 of them. Extremely weird animals. They filter the water for shrimp and algae, the color of the birds changes depending on what they eat and the reason why they often stand on only one leg is still a mystery.  

Bubbling salt.

The salt flats lie at an altitude of 2300m. Note the volcanoes of the high Andes in the background.

We are still not done with the Atacama Desert. Stay tuned @mcsvi.