Bolivia Salt Flats

A landlocked country straddling the Andes Mountains of the western part of South America, BOLIVIA boasts two large salt flats (salt pans) that are visible from outer space satellite imagery. Zoom in to Southwest Bolivia with your favorite online mapping service and you will see noticeable white areas. The largest of the two "white areas" in Bolivia and the largest salt pan in the world is Salar de Uyuni, known as Uyuni Salt Flat in English. The smaller salt pan north of Salar de Uyuni is Salar de Coipasa. This landform is also called Lago Coipasa (Coipasa Lake) because it sometimes look like a lake rather than a salt flat (like on Bing Maps); in this case, the water did not fully evaporate and therefore salt is not revealed.