Mirror of the Earth - Lake Salar de Uyuni
Mirror of the Earth - Lake Salar de Uyuni

Video: Mirror of the Earth - Lake Salar de Uyuni

Video: Mirror of the Earth - Lake Salar de Uyuni
Video: Pamela Johnson: Mixed-Media - YouTube 2024, November
Anonim
The world's largest salt marsh Salar de Uyuni
The world's largest salt marsh Salar de Uyuni

When you look at photos from Lake Salar de Uyuni, it seems that these are pictures from some amazingly beautiful world, where the sky is everywhere. One gets the impression that this beauty was created by a talented photographer or artist who perfectly knows his craft. But, in fact, the author of this the magnificent mirror of the earth - nature.

One of the most beautiful places on the planet, the mirror of the Earth - Lake Salar de Uyuni
One of the most beautiful places on the planet, the mirror of the Earth - Lake Salar de Uyuni

This lake is the largest salt marsh in the world: it has an area of about 10 thousand square meters and lies at an altitude of about 3.650 meters (inner plateau of the Central Andes). The inner part of the salt marsh is a layer of table salt with a thickness of 2 to 8 meters. When the rainy season comes, the Salar de Uyuni salt marsh becomes covered with a layer of water and turns into the world's largest mirror, a real mirror of the earth.

During the rainy season, the surface of the lake is covered with a thin layer of water and a giant mirror is obtained
During the rainy season, the surface of the lake is covered with a thin layer of water and a giant mirror is obtained

Salar de Uyuni is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Bolivia, with about 60,000 tourists from all over the world coming here every year. And it is not surprising, because this salt desert is considered one of the most beautiful places in the world!

Mirror of the Earth - Salar de Uyuni
Mirror of the Earth - Salar de Uyuni

These places are characterized by large changes in temperature: at night it can drop below zero, and during the day the air often warms up to 40-50 degrees Celsius. The main source of income for local residents is tourism and salt: it is estimated that the lake contains about 10 billion tons of salt. Every year, local residents shovel salt into small neat mounds that look like snowdrifts, which allows them to extract about 20,000 tons of this raw material. There is even a hotel on the lake, built entirely of salt.

The locals shovel salt into such heaps
The locals shovel salt into such heaps

By the way, due to its large size and flat surface, the Uyuni salt marsh is an ideal place for testing remote sensing devices on orbiting satellites, the measurement accuracy here increases five times (compared to the results obtained when working over the ocean).

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