High plain salt flats

Daily from La Paz by road (Apr – Dec)
Tuesdays or Fridays from La Paz (by train)*
5 days, 4 nights

By public bus from La Paz to Oruro across the altiplano and past vast, glassy Lake Poopó, a reminder that this barren plain was once covered in water.

Arrive at Tawa, a village in the shadow of the golden-tipped Tunupa volcano. Overnight in a salt hotel made cosy with Bolivian rugs and tapestries.

Next day, drive through the foothills to the petrified mummies of Coquesa. Climb the ‘island’ of Isla Pescado with panoramas over the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s highest and broadest salt pan. Continue to Colchani, a village surviving on salt production and overnight at another salt hotel.

Drive to Uyuni, where Bolivia’s first locomotives rust into decay, and proceed to Potosí (for one night), the richest city in the Americas in colonial times owing to the local mining of silver.Tour the city and the Imperial Mint, and visit one of the primitive mines. Continue to Sucre, pearl-white colonial city at a lower, sunny altitude.

* Dec-Apr. From Oruro travel by rail to Uyuni and then by road to Colchani, as above.