Springing up on the cusp of the mighty salt flats of the Bolivian south-west, the town of Uyuni is an unexpected diamond in the rough. It’s a place where travellers mingle with leather-skinned miners in humble coffee shops between the small-scale archaeology museum and petite marketplace of the Plaza Arce, joking about the cold and the incessant winds that caress the town. Of course, the eponymous Salar de Uyuni is this one’s most noted attraction, and there are now plenty of Uyuni tour guides in town to help organise daytrips or longer excursions to the world’s largest salt flats which encompass a whopping 4,000 square kilometres of land to the west. However, Uyuni’s charm doesn’t stop with sodium, because there are geysers and lakes in the wilderness too, and a smattering of charming adobe hamlets to explore, as well as the Los Lipez region, with its brooding volcanic monoliths and ancient rocks.