Do not go looking for a weaving class or a silversmithing course here: Uyuni is a windswept railway and expedition town on a 3,670m salt plain, not a highland artisan circuit, and the workshops you may have read about elsewhere are not part of what’s actually on offer around the Salar. What genuinely exists is narrower, tied to the salt itself and the desert sky above it. Colchani salt processing demonstration

Search for a self-guided Salar de Uyuni walking route and you will find nothing bookable, and that gap is the first thing worth knowing: setting off on foot across the salt flat alone is one of the genuinely dangerous ideas a traveler can have here. There is no shade, no water, no cell signal, and no visible landmark once the horizon curves away in every direction. Disorientation, sunstroke and severe dehydration in that featureless white void have proved fatal to unprepared hikers, and nights drop well below freezing even when the day was warm.