I’m running out of world wildlife to share every Wednesday so I thought I’d simplify my theme to plain old world Wednesday instead, sharing little parts of the world I’ve visited but still with an overall ‘Isn’t Nature amazing?’ theme. The first lies near Uyuni, in Bolivia.

Covering a massive 10,582 square kilometres, the Salar de Uyuni, or Salar de Tunupa as it’s also called, contains the world’s largest area of salt flats. In prehistoric times, this area was Lago Minchín, a huge lake with very high salinity levels, but, over thousands of years, a combination of no drainage and the super strong sunlight of the Andean Altiplano has caused the lake to dry up, leaving the salt pans, springs and seasonal shallow ponds that today bring tourists in their thousands to gaze in wonder.

The salt is still mined by enterprising locals, who also use blocks of salt to construct everything from furniture and buildings – I stayed in a salt-block hotel and slept on a salt-block bed – to artworks. You can read about and see more of my adventures in this area on my sconzani blog.