Bolivians Are Building A Hotel Of Salt
April 29th, 2008In the salt desert Uyuni situated in the south-western part of Bolivia locals are building a new hotel of salt blocks. They build it with their own hands without any additional special equipment.
Uyuni is the biggest alkaline land in the world. It occupies the area of more than 10.5 thousands square kilometers. This real salt desert is situated in central Andes at an altitude of 3650 meters above the sea level.
40 thousands years ago there was a huge prehistoric lake, and now there are left just two modern lakes Poopo and Uru Uru, and also two alkaline lands: Uyuni and Koypasa, a less in area one.
Despite the exterior jejunity lands surrounding the alkaline marsh, some kinds of cactus vegetate here and also dwell and propagate exotic species of hummingbird and three species of flamingo.
And of course it is necessary the tourists queering to see the wonder of the nature and give a try of extreme feelings to be there. There are such talks that being caught in the middle of endless white space with small humps of the winning salt seem like on the other planet or like the last day has come.
The hotels made of salt (being more precise, - salt blocks) have appeared because of the tourists. Everything in the hotel: walls, housetop, chairs and tables, bar counter, beds and even the floor are made of salt blocks, wined not far away. On the walls you can see polite notices: Dont lick please!.
Now locals began the colossal construction of a new huge hotel, which reminds a medieval castle. It is not given the name yet but the word salt should appear in it for sure.
It may be well imagined how would be happy to live in this castle the few people engaged in salt business in Europe of their times and the fewer ones who considered the salt being worth weight of gold.
By the way, up to now this is the place to win annually 25 thousands ton salt of 10 billion available salt stock.
Iuri Tarabanov writes about interesting travel experiences. His Travel Reservations site is http://www.travelime.com
