🇧🇴 Bolivia · Altiplano and the Andes
Few landscapes sum up the strangeness of the Bolivian altiplano as well as Laguna Colorada. Above 4,300 meters, in the very heart of the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, this salt lagoon stretches out, its water turning red, orange and ochre depending on the hour and the light, dotted with borax islets of a blinding white. It's one of the most iconic images of Bolivia and, for many travelers, the most striking moment of the famous Salar de Uyuni tour.
What makes Laguna Colorada unique isn't only its color but the life it holds: it's one of the main refuges for high-Andean flamingos on the continent, with all three species sharing the red water. Watching them walk, feed and take flight against a backdrop of snow-capped volcanoes, in absolute silence and biting cold, is a spectacle that's hard to put into words.
This guide covers the practical side of visiting Laguna Colorada: that you almost always see it on the salt flat tour out of Uyuni or Tupiza, what to keep in mind about the altitude and the extreme cold, when the colors look best, where you sleep and how to enjoy it while respecting its fragile ecosystem. It's a remote, demanding corner, but beautiful enough to justify every discomfort along the way.
Laguna Colorada lies in the Sud Lípez region, territory crossed since pre-Hispanic times by camelid-herding peoples and by llama caravans linking the altiplano with the Atacama Desert and the Pacific coast. The name is descriptive: 'colorada' for the red of its water, a color that tradition and science alike attribute to pigments from microalgae and to suspended sediment. The lagoon came under protection inside the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, created by decree in 1973 with the aim, among others, of preserving populations of high-Andean flamingos, for which Laguna Colorada is one of South America's great sanctuaries, and of vicuñas. The reserve is named after the Bolivian hero Eduardo Avaroa, killed in the War of the Pacific. Because of its importance for high-altitude waterbirds, the lagoon belongs to a network of internationally significant wetlands. Today it's one of the most visited points on the Salar de Uyuni tourist circuit and a symbol of Bolivia's southern altiplano. The full history of the region and its geology is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The department of silver and of the salt flats: home of the Cerro Rico that financed the Spanish Empire and of the Casa de la Moneda, of the Salar de Uyuni —the largest salt desert in the world and one of the great lithium reserves— and of the colored lagoons of the Eduardo Avaroa Reserve, on the highest and most desolate altiplano in the country, cradle of the hero Eduardo Avaroa.
Read the history of Potosí →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
There's a place in southwestern Bolivia where the water is red. Not red from pollution or a camera trick: genuinely red, a red that turns orange and brick depending on the hour, dotted with white borax islands and rimmed with flamingos. This is Laguna Colorada, a shallow salt lagoon at around 4,300 meters above sea level, in Sud Lípez province, department of Potosí. It sits deep in the Andean altiplano, one of the largest high plateaus on the planet, in a sector that already belongs to the great desert shared by Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, an extension of the arid Atacama.
Geographically it's an endorheic lagoon: it doesn't drain to the sea but takes in meltwater and spring water and loses it through evaporation, which concentrates the salts and minerals and explains its salinity. Its shallowness, from a few centimeters to about a meter across much of its surface, and its size (several square kilometers) turn it into a vast shallow mirror reflecting the sky and the volcanoes.
The setting is one of the most extreme in the inhabited world: thin air from the altitude, near-total dryness, ferocious solar radiation by day and temperatures that plunge far below zero at night. In that inhospitable scene, the lagoon and its bofedal wetlands are an oasis of life supporting a surprising quantity of high-altitude birds and wildlife.
The feature that gives the lagoon its name and its fame is that intense reddish color, swinging between pink, orange and blood red depending on the hour, the light and the wind. The most widely accepted explanation combines biology and geochemistry: the color comes from pigments of microalgae that thrive in the salt water and from suspended sediment, all heightened by the minerals around it. When the wind stirs the shallow water and lifts sediment off the bottom, the color can deepen.
That red doesn't stand alone. In the lagoon and along its edges there are plenty of borax islets and crusts, a white boron mineral that contrasts spectacularly with the water and was historically mined in the region. The combination of red water, white borax, the deep blue of the high-altitude sky and the cones of the surrounding volcanoes produces one of the most singular landscapes in South America.
The microalgae are also the base of the food chain that sustains the flamingos: the birds filter the water to feed on algae and small organisms, and those same pigments are what give them their pink tone. The lagoon's color, its chemistry and its wildlife are thus intimately linked within a single ecosystem.
Though it may look uninhabited and remote today, the region around Laguna Colorada has been crossed and used by Andean communities since pre-Hispanic times. Aymara- and Quechua-speaking peoples, and before them the Lípez chiefdoms, built an economy on the southern altiplano based on herding camelids (llamas and alpacas) and using wild vicuñas, adapting to one of the harshest environments on the continent.
The region was also a crossroads. Llama caravans connected the altiplano with the oases of the Atacama Desert and with the Pacific coast, trading highland products for goods from the valleys and the coast. The lagoons, the bofedal wetlands and the passes between volcanoes were known waypoints on routes memorized over generations. Salt, borax and other minerals were also worked.
That ancestral knowledge of the land is the foundation of today's tourism in the area: many of the guides, drivers and lodge owners on the circuit descend from those herding and caravanning communities, and they're the ones who know the roads, the weather and the secrets of the southern altiplano best.
Laguna Colorada came under protection with the creation, by decree in 1973, of the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, covering around 714,000 hectares of Bolivia's southern altiplano. One of the reserve's central aims was precisely to preserve populations of high-Andean flamingos, for which Laguna Colorada is one of the continent's great sanctuaries, and of vicuñas, both threatened by pressure on their habitat and, in the vicuña's case, by hunting.
The reserve is named after Eduardo Avaroa (or Abaroa), the Bolivian hero killed at the battle of Topáter in 1879, during the War of the Pacific, the conflict in which Bolivia lost its sovereign access to the sea. The reserve's proximity to the Chilean border gives that tribute a particular resonance.
Because of its importance for high-altitude waterbirds, Laguna Colorada was designated a Ramsar site in 1990, the first in Bolivia, under the international category that protects wetlands of global importance. Management is in the hands of SERNAP (Bolivia's National Protected Areas Service), which runs it together with local communities. That protection is what allows such a fragile ecosystem to keep hosting flamingos and high-altitude wildlife despite growing visitor numbers.
Beyond its color, Laguna Colorada is renowned as one of the most important places in South America for high-Andean flamingos. All three species that inhabit the Andes share its water: the Andean flamingo (Phoenicoparrus andinus), the rarest and most threatened; James's flamingo or parina chica (Phoenicoparrus jamesi), once believed extinct and rediscovered in the 20th century; and the Chilean flamingo (Phoenicopterus chilensis). The lagoon is a key feeding and breeding site, and at certain times of year it gathers thousands of birds.
Flamingos feed by filtering the water with their specialized bills, catching microalgae and small crustaceans. Those same pigment-rich organisms are what give the birds their characteristic pink: there's a direct link between the lagoon's chemistry, its microalgae and the color of the flamingos. The lagoon is also home to other waterbirds and, in the surrounding country, to vicuñas, viscachas and Andean foxes.
This ecosystem is as valuable as it is fragile. Tourist pressure, resource projects in the region (geothermal energy, mining, lithium from the nearby salt flat) and climate change all threaten the delicate balance of the high-altitude lagoons and wetlands. That's why conserving Laguna Colorada isn't just a matter of scenery, but the survival of one of the planet's great flamingo refuges.
Over the past few decades, Laguna Colorada has become one of the most recognizable images of Bolivia and a star stop on the famous Salar de Uyuni tourist circuit. Thousands of travelers from around the world visit it each year on the four-wheel-drive tour that links the largest salt flat on the planet with the colored lagoons, the geysers and the volcanoes of the southern altiplano, a three-day route that usually spends a night nearby.
That tourism has given the conservation of the landscape an economic value and generated income and jobs for the communities of Sud Lípez. But it also raises challenges: the pressure of vehicles and visitors on a fragile ecosystem, waste management in an area with no infrastructure, and the need to guarantee safety and service quality in extreme conditions of altitude and cold.
Laguna Colorada thus sums up the tension running through the whole reserve: being at once one of the most extraordinary landscapes on the continent and a delicate ecosystem that needs looking after. For the traveler, that tension resolves into a simple attitude: visit with respect, follow the guides' instructions, keep your distance from the birds and leave no trace, so the red lagoon keeps dazzling whoever comes next.