As I stepped out of the Toyota Land Cruiser, it felt like walking on shattered glass. Spinning around, all I could see was a white void stretching to the horizon, a surreal, almost lunar landscape. It struck me that this might be the closest the planet has to complete, timeless nothingness; from pre-Incan peoples to the present day, humanity has made almost no impression on this endless expanse of white.
Covering some 4,000 square miles at an altitude of 3,650m, the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is the world’s largest salt flat. It has long been a popular destination for backpackers, who come and stay in the handful of basic hotels around its perimeter and make day-trip excursions out into the salty desert. Now, though, travellers can stay right in the middle of the mesmerising emptiness, camping out in a shiny Airstream caravan.
The trips have been created by Darius Morgan, a local tour operator and hotelier who has imported three 25ft-long Airstream Safari caravans from the US so that guests can view the bizarre landscape in glorious solitude. “Now you can pay for the indulgence of being completely alone – you feel as if you actually own time and space,” he told me when I flew down from La Paz earlier this month to be his first guest.