The salar de Uyuni, a salt flat in southern Bolivia, is so vast and so white you can see it from the moon. It spans 10,000 km {+2} (4,000 square miles), roughly the area of Kosovo. The top layer consists of salt hexagons, thick enough to withstand the weight of Jeeps and igloo-like buildings made of blocks of salt. Underneath, a layer of brine holds the world’s largest deposits of lithium, a light and volatile metal used in batteries for smartphones, computers and electric vehicles.
Such staples of modernity are scarce in the countryside around the Salar. Río Grande, a dusty village founded by quinoa farmers and llama herders, sits near its southern edge, 25km from a pilot plant for lithium carbonate (a processed form of the metal) that opened in 2013. Over the past decade, the village’s 2,000 or so residents have invested in lorries to serve the plant and built simple hotels for workers they expect to flock to the area any day now.