Travel in Bolivia: an itinerary decided by altitude and the rains

Why altitude shapes every itinerary

Most international arrivals land at one of two airports: Viru Viru at Santa Cruz in the lowlands, or El Alto on the plateau above La Paz, where Lonely Planet notes that oxygen tanks wait in the arrivals hall for passengers who feel the height. The INE adds Jorge Wilstermann at Cochabamba to the international airports. Which of the two a visitor starts from decides how the first days go.

How high La Paz is depends on which part is measured. Britannica gives a range from 3,250 to 4,100 metres across the city; one Lonely Planet article gives 3,600 metres and another nearly 4,000. El Alto stands about 500 metres above the centre. Potosí, at 4,050 metres by Britannica's figure, and the Salar de Uyuni, at 3,656 metres, are as high or higher. Lonely Planet's advice is to spend a few days in La Paz before going on to Uyuni, and not to overdo the first days in the city.

A visit usually follows one of two circuits. The highland one runs from La Paz to Lake Titicaca, south across the Altiplano to the salt flats and east to Potosí and Sucre. The lowland one covers the Jesuit mission towns of the Chiquitanía, the hills around Samaipata and the Amazon parks reached from Rurrenabaque. Wikipedia's country article names Nevado Sajama, Torotoro National Park, Madidi, Tiwanaku and the city of Uyuni among the most visited places.

Organised tourism is younger than the sites. Wikipedia's tourism article dates the first state regulation of it to 1930 and the first travel agency to the 1940s, when Darius Morgan, a Romanian working for Ericsson, began running tours to Lake Titicaca with tents and food carried in because the lake had no hotels. Visitor numbers have grown from a small base. Wikipedia's tourism article gives 319,000 international visitors in 2000 and more than 1.1 million arrivals in 2012, and cites the INE for around two million tourists in 2023, about half of them from abroad.

When the dry and wet seasons fall

The calendar is the second constraint. Lonely Planet's seasonal guide puts the dry season from May to October, the southern winter, when hiking in the Andes is easiest but nights on the plateau can fall below minus 15°C, and the lowlands are warm and less humid. August, with Independence Day on 6 August, is the month with the most visitors. September suits the Amazon, with fewer mosquitoes and less heat.

From December to March the rain changes the routes. January and February are the wettest months and road closures are common; Lonely Planet's guide to getting around advises asking about road conditions in the wet season, which it dates from November to April, and notes that air travel may be the only way to reach many places in the north. The same rain lays a thin sheet of water over the Salar de Uyuni between December and February, which turns it into a mirror. April and November, between the seasons, combine sun and little rain across most regions.

What the highland circuit covers

La Paz sits in a hollow cut into the plateau, framed by the Cordillera Real, with peaks of 6,000 metres along its horizon. Mi Teleférico, the cable-car system, links Calacoto and the colonial Casco Viejo with El Alto above, and Lonely Planet describes it as the first public transport in the country built for people with disabilities. Visitors go to the Witches' Market, the Mercado de las Brujas, to learn about Aymara ritual, and the Valle de la Luna, a maze of eroded clay and sandstone spires in the district of Mallasa, lies about 10 kilometres from the centre.

On Lake Titicaca boats leave the pier at Copacabana, the town of the Virgin who is the country's patroness, for the Isla del Sol twice a day. The island holds Inca ruins, a museum and the spring called the Fuente del Inca, and Lonely Planet warns that it has no cash machines and little internet. A tourist train runs from El Alto to the ruins of Tiwanaku, inscribed by UNESCO in 2000, and on to Guaqui on the lakeshore, returning the same evening.

What the Yungas road is now

The road from La Cumbre in the Cordillera Real down to the Yungas valleys, known as the Death Road, is now closed to motor traffic and used for a one-day mountain-bike descent of more than 3,000 metres from snow to subtropical forest. Wikipedia's country article records that the Inter-American Development Bank once called it the "world's most dangerous road" and that more than 25,000 cyclists ride its 64 kilometres each year.

How the salt flats are visited

The Salar de Uyuni is visited mainly on tours by four-wheel-drive vehicle from the town of Uyuni, usually lasting three days, with stops at the deserts, geysers, hot springs and coloured lakes to the south. Laguna Colorada is among the sights Lonely Planet lists. A train links Oruro with Uyuni, and Cochabamba is the only airport with flights to Uyuni. Britannica warns that the highland region around the salt flats is often hard to reach in the rainy season.

South of the flat lies the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna Reserve, about 7,000 square kilometres in the south-west of Potosí department against the Chilean and Argentine borders. Wikipedia's tourism article describes its lakes: the Laguna Colorada, coloured red by the pigments of algae and mineral sediment, the Laguna Verde, green from copper and arsenic at the foot of the Licancabur volcano, and the Laguna Hedionda, named for its smell of sulphur. Andean, James's and Chilean flamingos feed in them. The rock formations of the Salvador Dalí Desert and a field of geysers and hot springs complete the usual tour.

The flat is a working landscape as well as a view. Its crust is mined for salt and covers a lithium brine that the state has begun to exploit, and Wikipedia's article on the flat records that the surface is used to calibrate the altimeters of earth-observation satellites.

What remains of the silver cities

Potosí, inscribed by UNESCO in 1987, was added to the List of World Heritage in Danger in June 2014. Mining continues inside Cerro Rico, and visitors can join tours through its narrow tunnels to meet the miners who work there. In the town the Casa Nacional de la Moneda, the eighteenth-century mint where the silver was struck into coins, is the main museum; Britannica records that it holds early mining machinery, ethnography and art. The churches, among them San Lorenzo with its carved Baroque façade, show the Andean Baroque that UNESCO credits Potosí with spreading.

Sucre, inscribed in 1991, has a historic centre of 113.76 hectares of white colonial and republican buildings laid out on a grid. Its Casa de la Libertad, built in 1621 as part of a Jesuit convent, is where independence was declared in 1825, and UNESCO calls it the most important historic monument of the country. The cathedral was begun in 1559 and completed 250 years later. The sources disagree on Sucre's place among the presidents: the Worldmark encyclopedia calls him the first, Lonely Planet the second. Tarija, further south, is the centre of wine growing, with cellars open to visitors and a harvest in March.

Where climbers and walkers go

The Cordillera Real above La Paz has seven peaks over 6,000 metres and more than 600 over 5,000, by the count in Wikipedia's tourism article. Huayna Potosí, Kunturiri, Illimani and Illampu are climbed from La Paz, and Nevado Sajama from Oruro department; the same article reserves Illampu, Illimani and Sajama for experienced climbers because of their steep faces. Sajama National Park has been on UNESCO's tentative list since 2003.

The walking routes run downhill as often as up. The El Choro trek is a three-day route, and shorter trails run around Coroico, Chulumani, Challapampa and Samaipata. Torotoro National Park has trails through canyons and caves, and the Isla del Sol and Cerro El Calvario on Lake Titicaca have paths of their own. The Inca road system, inscribed in 2014 as Qhapaq Ñan, crosses the country. In Chuquisaca, the palaeontological site of Cal Orck'o, found in the quarry of a cement factory, has been on UNESCO's tentative list since 2003 under the title "Footprints of time".

The festival calendar changes what a visitor sees. Alasitas fills La Paz in January, the Carnival dominates Oruro in February, the grape harvest comes to Tarija in March and the cemeteries fill on 1 and 2 November. The culture article covers what each of these marks.

What the eastern lowlands offer

The lowland circuit starts from Santa Cruz. The Chiquitanía mission towns, founded by the Jesuits between 1691 and 1760, keep their churches; six missions remain, among them San Xavier, Concepción, San Miguel de Velasco and San José de Chiquitos. Tours begin at San Javier, about four hours from Santa Cruz, and use San Ignacio as a base. An International Baroque Music Festival is held across April and May every second year.

Samaipata, about three hours from Santa Cruz, is the base for El Fuerte, a hilltop rock carved with seats, channels and niches at the centre of a ceremonial site of the Chané and Inca peoples, inscribed by UNESCO in 1998, and for the fern forests of Amboró National Park.

Madidi National Park, 18,958 square kilometres in the upper Amazon basin, is reached by boat from Rurrenabaque, itself reached by air from La Paz. Visits include river dolphins and community-run ecotourism projects; Wikipedia's tourism article records 31 Indigenous communities living within the park. Noel Kempff Mercado covers 1,523,446 hectares in north-eastern Santa Cruz along the Brazilian border, from lowland rainforest at about 200 metres to open savanna at about 1,000 metres around the sandstone range of the Serranía de Huanchaca.

How visitors get around

Buses carry most Bolivians and most visitors. Lonely Planet distinguishes the long-distance flotas, the regional buses and the micros, or minibuses, and recommends paying for a cama or semicama reclining seat on long routes. Journeys involve large changes in height on winding roads; a bus to the Amazon basin can take 24 hours. Taxis in the cities are often trufis, shared cars on fixed routes.

Flights cover the long distances. The state-owned flag carrier, Boliviana de Aviación, has the widest network, Amaszonas serves much of the north and EcoJet runs a small network. Lonely Planet records that schedules change at short notice and cancellations are frequent. Rail is limited to the two networks the INE describes: the western one, run by Ferroviaria Andina, with the Oruro to Uyuni and El Alto to Guaqui services, and the eastern one, run by Ferroviaria Oriental, from Santa Cruz east to Quijarro on the Brazilian border and south to Yacuiba on the Argentine one.

Few visitors drive themselves; many hire a car with a driver in La Paz. Traffic keeps to the right. The supply is 230 volts, with Europlug and North American plugs both in use, and the currency is the boliviano.