The High Plateau and the Salt
The hardest and strangest country in the Andes: La Paz in its canyon, Titicaca’s island of the sun, the silver mountain at Potosí, colonial Sucre, and four days across the salt flat and the coloured lagoons of the southwest.
La Paz
You land at El Alto, 4,050 metres, and descend into a canyon city that runs downhill for a kilometre of vertical. Do nothing on day one beyond the Mercado de las Brujas and a short walk. The altitude is not a suggestion.
The cable-car city
La Paz has the largest urban cable-car network in the world, built because the geography defeats roads — ten-odd lines linking the canyon floor to El Alto on the rim. Ride the red and yellow lines for the best urban view in South America, then the Valle de la Luna badlands south of the city.
Titicaca and Copacabana
Four hours to the lake, crossing the Tiquina strait on a barge that carries the bus separately from its passengers. Copacabana’s basilica holds the Virgin whose name travelled to a beach in Rio.
Isla del Sol
Boat to the island the Inca held as the birthplace of the sun, with terracing, a sacred rock at the north end, and no vehicles at all. Walk the ridge trail and stay the night — the lake at dusk from 4,000 metres is the reason.
Back through La Paz to Sucre
Return to the city and fly or take the night bus south. Sucre is the constitutional capital, sits at a merciful 2,800 metres, and is white-walled, warm and full of students.
Sucre and the dinosaurs
The Casa de la Libertad, where independence was declared in 1825, and the textile museum whose Jalq’a and Candelaria weavings are among the most extraordinary in the Andes. Then Cal Orck’o, a cement-quarry wall carrying thousands of dinosaur footprints tilted almost vertical by tectonics.
Potosí
Three hours up to 4,090 metres and the Cerro Rico. The Casa de la Moneda — the royal mint, with its mule-driven wooden gearing intact — is the best museum in the country and tells the whole story of what this hill did to the world economy.
The mountain, or the churches
The cooperative mine tours go underground into working shafts — hot, low, dusty and genuinely not for everyone; read the ethics of it before deciding. The alternative is a day among the finest colonial churches in Bolivia, which is not a lesser day.
To Uyuni
Four hours southwest across the altiplano to a windblown railway town that exists to service the salt. Afternoon at the train cemetery — rusting British-built locomotives abandoned where the nitrate line died.
Onto the salar
The largest salt flat on earth, over 10,000 square kilometres, flat to within a metre across its whole extent — flat enough that satellites use it for calibration. Isla Incahuasi rises out of it covered in ancient cactus. In the wet months a film of water turns the entire surface into a mirror.
South to the lagoons
The second day of the circuit climbs into high desert past Laguna Cañapa and Hedionda, all of them holding flamingos — three species breed here — with volcanoes on the Chilean border behind. Basic refugio accommodation and no heating.
Colorada, Verde and the geysers
Laguna Colorada is red with algae and dotted with white borax islands at 4,300 metres. Sol de Mañana’s fumarole field sits near 4,850 m and is visited at dawn. Then Laguna Verde under Licancabur, and thermal pools at Polques for the only warm moment in three days.
Back to Uyuni, or across to Chile
The circuit either loops north to Uyuni or drops you at the Hito Cajón border post for the transfer to San Pedro de Atacama — a two-hour descent of two thousand metres that ends in a warm town with hot showers.
Out
Fly Uyuni–La Paz, or take the overnight bus. Leave a buffer day before any international flight; altiplano transport is reliable in intention rather than in schedule.
Good to know
This is the highest itinerary on the site. La Paz 3,600 m, El Alto 4,050 m, Potosí 4,090 m, and the southwest circuit sleeps above 4,200 m for two nights. Acclimatise in La Paz for two days minimum and do not attempt it directly after arriving from sea level.
The southwest circuit is a 4x4 tour run by many operators of very different quality. Vehicle condition, driver hours and whether the refugio has heating are worth paying more for; fatal accidents on this route are not hypothetical.
Mirror season on the salar is roughly December to April; the dry hexagon-crust season is May to November. They are different experiences and neither is better.
Shorter or longer?
La Paz, Uyuni and the southwest circuit only, flying both legs.
Exit the circuit at Hito Cajón into San Pedro de Atacama and continue south.
Add four days from La Paz to Rurrenabaque for the Madidi rainforest and the pampas.