Bolivia: a guide for beginners

By Chris Moss 1116AM GMT nineteen March 2010

The weird landscapes of the Uyuni salt flats Photo CORBIS

Bolivias story is about china and sea views. The someday southern half of the Inca heartland was renamed Alto Perú Upper Peru by the Spaniards in 1538. Home to the Cerro Rico cave at Potosí, it was one of the main sources of silver, that was mined to assistance the Spanish climax compensate off the debts. On Jul sixteen 1809, Pedro Domingo Murillo led a rebel by Creoles and mestizos (those of churned ancestry) in La Paz and admitted an eccentric state, but royalist forces were usually eventually overcome in 1824, at the Battle of Ayacucho. Following after wars with Paraguay and Chile, Bolivia lost piece of the eastern lowlands and, some-more problematically, entrance to the sea.

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Top five attractions

Colonial Potosí and the china cave in the Cerro Rico and the internal packet is one of South Americas most appropriate museums; the Star Wars landscapes of the Uyuni salt flats, most appropriate explored by 4WD; the islands of Lake Titicaca; Las Yungas, a transitory section in between the high solid and Amazonia, where there are pockets of Afro-Bolivian culture; and the Unesco-listed archaeological site at Tiwanaku, home to an critical predecessor of the Inca civilisation.

Best city

Its not pretty, but the capital, La Paz, is bustling, colourful and monumental (in all senses) with the gigantic Illimani towering as the backdrop.

Tour Bolivia Photo Workshop

This detailed safari is run in and with Bruce Percy, a landscape photographer. Starting in San Pedro in northern Chile, the organisation heads out in to the southern deserts of Bolivia in a 4WD car to observe, and photograph, the starkly pleasing landscape.

Price �1,475, together with accommodation, all dishes (but not drinks), play ground entrance fees, photography tuition, but not flights or transfers.

Contact 0131 467 7086; andeantrails.co.uk

Souvenir to buy

A garishly phony pinhead-shaped nap hat with earflaps and a repeated llama pattern.

Quirky Bolivia

It is prevalent for tourists to give miners in the Cerro Rico gifts of cigarettes (including a aflame cigarette for Zupay, the mines devil-spirit) and dynamite.

Read

Marching Powder by Rusty Young (Pan). The story of Thomas McFadden, a small-time British drug raider arrested in Bolivia and thrown in to San Pedro prison.