It’s a natural wonder. 12,000 sq km of salt flat – the largest in the world. But people don’t come here for the salt. They come for the photos.

For Instagram, TikTok, and the like. Tourists and tour companies appear to have gone to some length to curate the best pose, video, and post.

And the results are stunning and sometimes hilarious. You can scroll through posts using hashtag Uyuni (#uyuni) to see what I mean.

But, there is another side to visiting this area; one that isn’t posted on social media. It’s not nearly as pretty.

The land is barren except for a few quinoa farms, meandering vicuna, and lots and lots of plastic debris.  Plastic bags are caught in the scrubby landscape.  Plastic bottles of all sizes are strewn everywhere.  People bury their trash and then light it on fire with limited success which means there are piles of partially burned plastics dotting the landscape.

There is also a lot of unfinished construction – small houses only partially started with gravity fed water tanks, no septic system, and spotty electricity.  This is the side of the Bolivian Salt Flats that doesn’t show up in the carefully curated TikTok or Instagram post.

Here are the two sides as I experienced them.

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