Ten thousand square kilometers of the courtyard
The salt hotel offers just over fifty beds. Each room, made of large bricks of salt, looks inside like an igloo. The rooms overlook a broad patio with a number of salty pillars in the middle, which keep a semitransparent roof. The roof itself is traditional – made of light wavy plastic sheets. No wonder. The owner shows me damage caused by an ordinary rain.
“Thanks God, it doesn’t rain here very often,” he smiles. “Otherwise we would have to rebuild the hotel every year.” And thus they rebuild it every three years.
The rooms are tiny but impressive. Some broad blocks of salt make simple beds, the meticulously hewn ones – tables and chairs. Some particularly large and beautiful blocks are shaped into sculptures of llamas and people which decorate the patio. Even terracotta and glazing in the bathrooms consist of pure, polished salt. Fortunately the lavatory bowls are normal - ceramic. Still, there’s a salty bar coupled with tall salty stools, white salty armchairs and sofas, even a tiny swimming pool entirely made of salt and filled with salty water. The owner and his wife proudly show me around.
In the evening the three of us seat in the living room by the candles. I share with them a Coke and a pineapple – all my modest supper. My hosts play a table game. They tell me about their problems with water and solitude. They listen to my travel’s accounts and stories about far and exotic Europe. I show them some pencil sketches in my notebook, stamps in the passport, my pictures… The salt llamas gaze at us in the shimmery candlelight. Outside the last sunbeams slowly die out, then the full moon rises. Millions of stars flood the sky with uneven dim light. Over the white plain, the stars seem closer than the distant lights of Uyuni.
“It’s all too impressive,” I tell my host, pointing the salty walls and sculptures. “But honesty, it’s not the hotel that I envy you. It’s its courtyard.”
“Indeed,” he answers with a suddenly absent glance. “Open spaces are this world’s true perfection”.