🇧🇴Bolivia

Salar de Uyuni

The world's largest salt flat, its blindingly white surface stretching over 10,000 square kilometers, so flat and reflective after rain that it creates a mirror effect blurring the line between sky and ground. Multi-day 4x4 tours cross the flats to visit cactus-covered islands, colored lagoons, and geysers in the surrounding altiplano. Photographs using forced perspective on the flat, featureless surface have become a signature activity here.

La Paz & the cable car network

The world's highest capital sits in a dramatic bowl-shaped valley, its extensive urban cable car system, built specifically to navigate the steep terrain, offering some of the best city views available anywhere. The Witches' Market nearby sells traditional Andean remedies and ritual items, including dried llama fetuses used in offerings. The altitude, over 3,600 meters, makes a gradual first day essential for most visitors.

Lake Titicaca

The highest navigable lake in the world, shared between Bolivia and Peru, its deep blue water held sacred in Inca mythology as the birthplace of the sun. Isla del Sol, on the Bolivian side, offers Inca ruins and terraced hillsides reachable only by boat. Traditional reed boats and floating communities add further cultural interest along the shore.

Death Road (Yungas Road)

Once notorious as one of the most dangerous roads in the world, this narrow mountain route has since been bypassed by a safer modern highway, leaving the old road largely to cyclists. A downhill mountain bike descent drops from over 4,600 meters to tropical lowlands, passing sheer cliff edges along the way. Guided tours are strongly recommended given the route's history and terrain.

Tiwanaku

The ruins of a pre-Inca civilization that once dominated the region around Lake Titicaca, its Gate of the Sun carved from a single block of stone and covered in detailed symbolic reliefs. Much of the site's original scale remains only partially excavated, with ongoing archaeological work continuing to reveal more. It's an easy day trip from La Paz.

Sucre's colonial architecture

Bolivia's constitutional capital, known for its well-preserved whitewashed colonial buildings that have earned it UNESCO World Heritage status. It's a noticeably calmer, more relaxed city than La Paz, with a milder climate at lower altitude. The nearby Cal Orck'o site preserves an extensive collection of dinosaur footprints on a vertical rock face.