Bolivia Guide
The southern Altiplano
Uyuni
Set on the bleak southern Altiplano 212km southwest of Potosí, the cold and windswept railway town of UYUNI has little to recommend it except its usefulness as a jumping-off point for expeditions into the beautiful and remote landscapes of the far southwest. Founded in 1889 at the junction of the railways that enter Bolivia from Chile and Argentina, in its heyday Uyuni was Bolivia's main gateway to the outside world and a symbol of modernity and industrial progress. Today, by contrast, its streets are lined with a collection of shabby, tin-roofed houses and semi-abandoned railway yards filled with the decaying skeletons of redundant trains. Given the decline in the fortunes of Bolivia's railways, it's surprising Uyuni hasn't become a ghost town like many of the mining settlements whose ore exports once passed through it. That it hasn't is due to the ever-growing number of travellers who come here to visit the spectacular scenery of the Salar de Uyuni and the Reserva de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, which are usually visited together on a four-day tour from Uyuni.