This Hotel Is Made Entirely of Salt
January 5, 2015 - Located in Bolivia, Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat. Within the salt flat and its thousands of square miles of salt, the Luna Salada hotel was built using the abundant natural resource. Almost everything in the hotel is made of salt, including the tables, the chairs, the floors, and even the walls.
For more about Salar de Uyuni and the
world's largest lithium reserves that lie underneath it, click on this photo gallery.
Transcript
The hotel is unique. It’s made of salt, it’s like a museum.
You can sleep in a bed made of salt bricks. You have the desk made of salt bricks. You have the floor made of salt, everything made of salt.
It’s the biggest salt flat in the whole world. It has an expanse of 12,000 kilometers.
Here’s where everything begins. The people from Colchani construct the salt bricks. And you can see here, lines. These small lines represent the rainy season and the sediments in the salt.
We selected this location in the hill, so we have a really nice landscape of the salt flat. You can see all the salt flat from Luna Salada Hotel.
Here in the restaurant, everything is made of salt. Here we have a table made entirely of salt. These chairs are made inside the salt flat. The local people here in Colchani, they are specialists and make handicrafts, everything made of salt.
Here in the hotel we are at a high altitude. We have more than 3,000 meters. So one of the challenges is cooking the food at this altitude. Because the cooking takes more time [due to the] pressure that we have at the altitude.
So, one of the popular dishes that we have in Bolivia is quinoa. At altitude, around 18 to 20 minutes, and 8 to 10 minutes at sea level.
All the salt that we use in the dishes came from the salt flat. It’s a better flavor, to have this salt. Stronger, the taste, and it’s more pure.
One of the biggest challenges that we have is the rainy season, because the water destroys all the salt bricks. That’s the reason that all the time we are changing all the salt bricks around the hotel.
Another problem that we have in the hotel is the corrosion in the wires. Sometimes we have to change the wires, because it’s very corrosive, the salt. All the wires are made of copper, and we have to put a plastic tube to protect all the wires. In some cases we have to change the plugs, because the salt destroys all the plugs from the inside.
I’m excited to be part of the hotel. There is only in Bolivia these kinds of hotels. It’s like a piece of art.
