Bolivia Discovery Guide

Bolivia is the highest, most Indigenous and least developed country in South America, and the cheapest by a wide margin. The Salar de Uyuni is ten thousand square kilometres of salt that turns to mirror under a film of water, and La Paz sprawls into a canyon at 3,600 metres with cable cars overhead. Within hours of the capital, the road falls four thousand metres into Amazon rainforest and the pampas of the Beni.

The main travel issue

Altitude and the calendar pulling opposite ways. El Alto airport sits at 4,061 metres, so arriving direct from sea level brings symptoms within hours, and the dry May-to-October window that guarantees road access across the altiplano is precisely when the Salar will not mirror.

The solution

Build in acclimatisation days before anything strenuous, and pick the season by which Bolivia you want: dry for trekking and reliable roads, the rains for the mirror. The British advisory's carve-out is small and specific: the Chapare region of Cochabamba, including Villa Tunari and the stretches of highways 4 and 24 that cross it. Nothing on the altiplano circuit goes near it.

• La Paz Region
• Oruro
• Potosi

The standard circuit

La Paz, Lake Titicaca and Isla del Sol, then south to Uyuni for a three-day salt flat and lagoon tour ending at the Chilean border, with Potosí and Sucre on the way back. Two to three weeks.

If you want the Amazon

Fly to Rurrenabaque and go either into Madidi national park — one of the most biodiverse protected areas on earth — or onto the pampas of the Beni, where anacondas, caimans and pink river dolphins are more easily seen. Madidi is better forest; the pampas are better for spotting animals.

If you want mountains

The Cordillera Real above La Paz has six-thousand-metre peaks within sight of the city. Sajama, the highest in Bolivia at 6,542 metres, stands in a park of geysers and the highest forest in the world. Trekking routes like the Choro and Takesi follow pre-Inca stone roads down from the altiplano into the Yungas.

If you want colonial cities

Sucre, the constitutional capital, is a UNESCO-listed white city at a comfortable altitude. Potosí, also UNESCO-listed, sits under the silver mountain that funded the Spanish empire and is one of the highest cities in the world.

Bolivia is the most Indigenous country in the Americas by proportion, and the last twenty years have been spent making the state reflect that.

Plurinational

The 2009 constitution renamed the country the Plurinational State of Bolivia and recognised thirty-six Indigenous languages alongside Spanish. The wiphala, a chequered rainbow flag representing Andean peoples, flies beside the national one on every public building.

Aymara and Quechua

Both are spoken by millions, and in the altiplano markets and villages Spanish is often the second language. Pachamama, the earth mother, receives offerings before construction, journeys and harvests, alongside Catholic practice rather than instead of it.

Cholitas

The Aymara and Quechua women in bowler hats, layered polleras and shawls went within two generations from a marked underclass to a visible political, commercial and cultural presence — including a wrestling circuit, a climbing team that has summited six-thousanders in skirts, and a fashion industry.

Altitude as a way of life

Two thirds of Bolivians live above 2,500 metres. Coca leaf, chewed or drunk as tea, is the ordinary remedy for it and is legal, cultural and quite distinct from cocaine — a distinction Bolivians make firmly and often.

Uyuni is the pressure point. Hundreds of vehicles cross the salt flat daily in season, fuel and waste are dumped, and the lagoons in the Eduardo Avaroa reserve are fragile. Choose an operator with a real environmental policy, insist that rubbish comes back with the vehicle, and do not drive on the flat when it is wet enough to damage the crust.

Community tourism is well established here. Isla del Sol and the Titicaca villages, the Tomarapi lodge under Sajama, and Chalalán in Madidi — run by the Uchupiamonas community — are owned and staffed locally and are the best places to stay in their areas anyway.

Coca leaf is legal, traditional and useful at altitude; buying it from a market rather than a tourist shop supports growers directly. Do not attempt to take any out of the country.

In the mines at Potosí, tours are led by former miners and conditions inside are genuinely dangerous. If you go, go with a cooperative-run operator, bring the customary gifts, and be conscious that this is a workplace where people die young rather than an attraction.

May to October is the dry season and the main window: clear skies, cold nights, and reliable road access across the altiplano and into the lowlands. This is when trekking, the salt flat crossings and jungle trips all work best.

December to March is the rainy season. Roads in the lowlands and the Yungas become difficult and some routes close, but this is when a film of water sits on the Salar de Uyuni and produces the mirror effect the photographs are famous for — January and February are the best chance of it.

April and November are transitional and often excellent — fewer people, green landscape, mostly passable roads.

Two dates fill the country: Carnaval de Oruro in February or March, a UNESCO-listed procession that runs for twenty hours, and Independence Day in August. Book accommodation months ahead for Oruro.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the country

The one genuinely expensive thing is reaching the Amazon: flights to Rurrenabaque and lodge packages cost several times a week of ordinary travel elsewhere in the country.

Plan on cash. The currency is the boliviano (BOB), and credit and debit cards are not widely accepted outside the urban centres — carry small notes for street food, taxis and tips. If you need to change money, bring US dollars: other currencies are difficult to exchange here.