🇧🇴 Bolivia · Altiplano and the Andes
Sol de Mañana is one of the most overwhelming corners of the Salar de Uyuni tour: a geothermal field at almost 4,900 meters where the ground steams, the mud boils and the earth seems to breathe. Pools of grey mud bubbling away, craters spitting steam and fumaroles throwing up columns of sulfur-smelling gas make up an almost infernal landscape, a reminder of the fire beating beneath the southern altiplano.
The name says it all: the best time to visit is dawn (the 'morning sun'), when the freezing early-morning air makes the columns of steam look enormous and ghostly against the first light of day. Tours usually pass through very early, before continuing to the Polques hot springs and Laguna Verde, on one of the most intense days of the circuit.
This guide goes over the practical side of visiting Sol de Mañana: that you see it as part of the salt flat tour from Uyuni or Tupiza, the essential precautions on dangerous ground full of boiling pools, the challenge of extreme altitude and the dawn cold, and how to make the most of a stop that is as brief as it is striking. It is a place where nature shows itself at its rawest and most fascinating.
Sol de Mañana lies in the Sud Lípez region, crossed since pre-Hispanic times by camelid-herding peoples and llama caravans that traversed the altiplano toward the Atacama Desert and the Pacific coast. The name, 'Sol de Mañana' (morning sun), refers to the ideal hour to visit: dawn, when the steam from the geysers looks most impressive in the freezing air. The geothermal field is a manifestation of the intense volcanic activity of the Western Cordillera of the Andes, which here marks the border between Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. That same geothermal energy has been the subject of studies and electricity-generation projects in the area (Sol de Mañana / Laguna Colorada geothermal field). The area was protected within the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, created by decree in 1973 and named after the Bolivian hero Eduardo Avaroa, who fell in the War of the Pacific. Today Sol de Mañana is one of the most photographed stops on the Salar de Uyuni tourist circuit. 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.
At almost 4,900 meters, in the middle of the Bolivian altiplano, there is a place where the earth boils. The ground steams, the mud bubbles and columns of vapor shoot several meters into a freezing sky, with a smell of sulfur you notice before you see anything. This is Sol de Mañana, a geothermal field in Sud Lípez province, at the southern end of the department of Potosí, inside the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa. It sits at one of the highest points on the entire Salar de Uyuni circuit: a place where the heat of the Earth's interior surfaces in spectacular fashion.
In a geothermal field, groundwater comes into contact with hot rock associated with volcanic activity and turns into high-pressure steam, which escapes through cracks in the ground. At Sol de Mañana that shows up as fumaroles (jets of steam and volcanic gases), pools of boiling mud (grey mud bubbling with the heat) and steaming ground dotted with yellowish sulfur deposits. The strong sulfur smell, the hiss of the steam and the heat coming off the ground create an almost infernal atmosphere.
The name 'Sol de Mañana' (morning sun) refers to the ideal hour for the visit: dawn, when the freezing early-morning air makes the steam condense and look enormous and ghostly against the first light of day. It is that combination of extreme geology, altitude and dawn light that has made this corner of the altiplano famous.
The existence of Sol de Mañana is explained by the geology of the Andes. The geothermal field sits in the Western Cordillera, the belt of volcanoes marking the boundary between Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, one of the most volcanically active regions on the planet. There, the Nazca plate sinks beneath the South American plate in a subduction process that generates the magma and the heat behind Andean volcanism.
That same process has raised the great volcanoes around the region —such as Licancabur (5,916 m), which presides over nearby Laguna Verde— and keeps the ground beneath the whole area hot. The geothermal heat that surfaces at Sol de Mañana is the surface expression of that deep fire: groundwater heats up on contact with rock associated with magma and escapes as steam.
The same volcanic activity explains other nearby phenomena on the circuit: the Polques hot springs (water that surfaces hot thanks to geothermal heat) and the extreme chemistry of the colored lagoons themselves (minerals of volcanic origin dissolved in their waters). Sol de Mañana is, then, a direct window onto the geological engine that shapes the whole landscape of the southern altiplano.
Although Sol de Mañana may look like a place at the edge of habitability, the Sud Lípez region it belongs to has been crossed by Andean communities since pre-Hispanic times. Aymara- and Quechua-speaking peoples, and before them the Lípez lordships, developed on the southern altiplano an economy of herding camelids (llamas and alpacas) and making use of 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 the Pacific coast, trading highland products for goods from the valleys and the coast. The geothermal fields, the hot springs and the passes between volcanoes were known places in that territory, though the areas of fumaroles and boiling mud, being dangerous, were not regularly crossed.
That ancestral knowledge of the land is the basis on which the area's tourism rests today: many of the guides and drivers who take travelers to Sol de Mañana at dawn are descended from those communities of herders and caravan traders of the southern altiplano, and they are the ones who best know the tracks and the behavior of the geothermal ground.
Sol de Mañana came under protection with the creation, by decree in 1973, of the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, which covers around 714,000 hectares of the southern Bolivian altiplano. The reserve was conceived to conserve Andean wildlife —especially the flamingos and the vicuñas— and the whole set of high-altitude ecosystems, which include its colored lagoons, geysers, geothermal fields and volcanoes.
The reserve is named after Eduardo Avaroa (or Abaroa), a Bolivian hero who fell 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 closeness to the Chilean border gives that tribute a particular resonance.
Management is in the hands of SERNAP (Bolivia's National Protected Areas Service), together with the local communities. Within the reserve, Sol de Mañana is one of the most visited spots, along with Laguna Colorada, Laguna Verde and the Polques hot springs. Its protection seeks to preserve the fragile high-altitude environment and, at the same time, to guarantee the safety of visitors on dangerous ground.
The intense heat that surfaces at Sol de Mañana is not only a sight for tourists: it is an energy resource. The Sol de Mañana / Laguna Colorada geothermal field has been studied for decades as a possible source of renewable electricity, using high-pressure steam from underground to drive turbines, as is done in other geothermal fields around the world (in Iceland, New Zealand or northern Chile).
Bolivia has pushed concrete projects to develop that potential. The most advanced is the Laguna Colorada geothermal project, run by the state company ENDE, which foresees a 100-megawatt plant built in two stages of 50 MW in the Sol de Mañana field itself, with financing from Japanese cooperation (JICA), which signed a 552 million dollar loan with the Bolivian state for the drilling, the plant and its transmission system. It is a complex undertaking because of the extreme altitude (the wells are between 4,900 and almost 5,000 meters), the remoteness and the environmental fragility of the setting, all of it inside a protected area, which is why progress has been slow and in phases.
That double character —tourist attraction and energy resource— poses a delicate balance: harnessing the geothermal energy without damaging the landscape and the ecosystem that make the reserve famous. For the traveler, Sol de Mañana is above all an overwhelming natural phenomenon; but it is worth knowing that beneath that steaming ground also beats one of the country's energy bets.
In recent decades, Sol de Mañana has become one of the most photographed stops on the Salar de Uyuni tourist circuit. Thousands of travelers visit it every year, almost always at dawn on the last day of the tour, in one of the most memorable moments of the route: the contrast between the steam of the fumaroles and the freezing early-morning air, at almost 4,900 meters, leaves an impression that is hard to forget.
That tourism has given economic value to conserving the landscape and generates income for the communities of Sud Lípez. But it also raises challenges, above all around safety: the geothermal ground is dangerous, with pools of boiling mud and unstable footing, and there have been accidents through carelessness. That is why the visit demands responsible behavior and strict respect for the guides' instructions.
Sol de Mañana sums up the spirit of the southern altiplano well: a place of raw, extreme beauty, where nature shows itself at its most powerful. For the traveler, the rule is clear: keep your distance from the fumaroles and pools, don't leave the safe areas, wrap up for the dawn cold and leave as little trace as possible in one of the most overwhelming landscapes in Bolivia.