It’s impossible to visit Latin America without hearing a lot about one man, Simon Bolivar, the freedom fighter who drove the Spanish back home before founding six South American countries. Today, Bolivar’s legacy is proudly remembered across the continent in the names of streets, parks, stadiums, airports and even competing brands of premium cigars. Today, the Venezuelan’s fame remains such that everyone from presidential candidates to drug kingpins can still invoke his name for a quick popularity boost.
One of the many South American statues devoted to Simon Bolivar, La Paz
Along with the requisite avenues, currency (the boliviano) and even the national football team, the country of Bolivia took things one step further by naming its entire territory after "The Liberator." We crossed into the Andean region via Uyuni, a dusty border town that isn’t much to look at in itself, but also happens to be the gateway to the world’s largest salt flats. As such, the town’s entire industry is devoted to salt tourism, which can be arranged as single or multi-day expeditions exploring this sprawling 4,000 square mile (10,000 sq. km) area.
Mirror of salt
After two days in Uyuni (one day to recover from the bus, another for taking in salt flats), we caught another overnight bus to La Paz, one of the world’s highest cities, just after Lhasa. Now that we’ve visited both places, we fortunately know a few things about elevation. First, it’s essential to take things slow; even climbing the smallest of hills leaves you winded at 11,963 feet above sea level. Unfortunately, La Paz is made entirely of hills, which is stunning in terms of aesthetics but requires a lot of physical effort.
Not your traditional urban grid
Luckily, we enjoyed the city so much — with it’s colonial churches, colorful street art and red brick houses stretching into the hills — that we were happy to (very slowly) explore this place for four days. We based ourselves in the historic city center, a cobblestoned area that includes La Paz’s old Spanish churches, leafy piazzas and colonial-style houses.
Iglesia de San Francisco, La Paz
From here, we could easily catch the “sky subway” to other neighborhoods, which sprawl out from the historic center into adjacent valleys. This unique cable-car system is really the only way to transport people in a city like La Paz; hilltop terrain and regular earthquakes make engineering anything underground basically impossible, even while traffic-clogged lanes make public transportation an urgent necessity. Wisely, the country’s first native president, Evo Morales, has closely ingratiated himself with this project — the capital is filled with huge billboards of a hard hat-clad Evo personally breaking ground for new lines.
Riding the rails, La Paz-style
Our final stop, Lake Titicaca, is just three hours away from Bolivia’s capital. Besides creating a natural barrier between Bolivia and Peru, South America’s largest lake is also the world’s highest, at 3,808 meters, and — according to the Andean creation story — the birthplace of the Incas. We stayed on the Bolivian side in Cococabana, a lakeside village that runs regular ferries to two nearby islands — La Isla del Sol and La Isla de La Luna — both of which are peppered with Incan ruins.
Lake Titicaca from La Isla del Sol
The islands would be our first introduction to Incan culture, an empire typically associated with Peru that actually reached, at its height, from Ecuador into Argentina. In a few days, we’ll cross the border into Peru, though we won’t actually leave the Andean highlands for another few weeks. For awhile, the towns will look similar, but each day we're also getting more used to the elevation. This is great news, because we’re on our way up to the ultimate Incan ruin, Machu Picchu.
Jen Swanson