There’s a new tourist draw at the Uyuni salt flats in southern Bolivia: visitors can stay with a local family to enjoy the vistas, then help to shear llama.
For $15 (R100) a day a foreign visitor can stay with a peasant family and live in a home without electricity, running water, or – gasp – internet access. Outhouses are used as bathrooms, says Rosa Perez, who heads the Uyuni regional tourism board.
The Salar de Uyuni is the world’s highest and largest salt desert, a blinding white expanse that stretches 11 000km2 at an altitude of 3 600m.
Tourists have been visiting the Salar for years, but in the past five years interest has grown in extracting the 5.4 million tons of lithium – around half the world’s supply – found in the desert. – Sapa-AFP