The phrase “bucket list” is bandied about a lot in travel writing, but Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni absolutely deserves its place alongside heavyweights like Machu Picchu or the Pyramids of Giza.
Covering more than 10,500 square kilometres, the world’s largest salt flat transforms into a gigantic mirror during the wet season (December to April) – although it’s well-worth visiting year-round to see the criss-cross salt formations.
If you’ve been planning a trip, you might want to hang fire for just a little longer as a new boutique camp is set to open on the flats in late 2027.
Featuring five architect-designed Airstream suites, with a sixth Airstream for dining, Samkani Camp from A&K Sanctuary will be among the most luxurious stays in the area.
While daytime is great for exploration, nighttime might just be even more spectacular with the lack of light pollution offering unbeatable stargazing opportunities.
In fact, the name of the camp, Samkani, means “the one who dreams” in Aymara, the indigenous language of Bolivia’s Altiplano.
The camp comes from A&K Sanctuary, the boutique luxury lodge, camp and riverboat collection, and the team used their experience developing low-impact mobile camps in Africa during the design process.
How to get to Salar de Uyuni
The only direct connection to Bolivia from Europe operates from Madrid, with flights offered by both Air Europa and Boliviana de Aviación to Santa Cruz de la Sierra. The flight time is around 11 hours.
Unfortunately, there are no flights from Santa Cruz de la Sierra to Uyuni – you will instead have to fly to the capital La Paz, and then fly on from there.
A better option would be plotting out a multi-country journey, aka “trip-maxxing”. You can fly to Bogotá directly from cities including London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Barcelona, spend some time in the Colombia capital before flying onto La Paz, and then Uyuni.
The only other major airports with direct connections to La Paz are Lima, Peru and Santiago, Chile.