La Paz. At nearly 4000 metres Bolivia's de facto capital city is the highest in the world - a shipwrecked ark left clinging to to a hidden canyon in the Andes long after the mountains rose up from the sea. Bolivia is landlocked of course, sanwiched between Peru and Brazil. For the adventurous, there are only two ways out of here. You can take the low road, or you can take the high road.
The low road sweeps out over La Cumbre and down 3000 metres in just a couple of hours - right down to the jungle in fact. This is, however, one of the most dangerous roads in the world. On average, a vehicle slips off the edge every two weeks. The problem is not so much the lack of any barriers between you and an uncomfortable drop, but the fact that the road is only wide enough for one: have you tried reversing an HGV up a mountain pass recently? If you have, then consider yourself a compadre of the bus-drivers who career down at breakneck speed. They're all local heroes of course, even though they're not always successful. Hence why, back up at the top, and before making the descent, a priest boards the bus and offers to read the last rites for all those who wish to offer a small donation. While the passengers scrabble around in their pockets for some small change the driver gets out to perform a cha'lla. A quiet mumble of liturgies begins...
For those lucky enough to reach the bottom you will see lowland Bolivia at its best - I'm assuming your eyes were shut most of the way down. Bolivia is more or less split in two: the lowland selva plains, which are nourished by the mountains to the west and feed into the vast network of tributaries running into the inevitable and colossal Amazon; and the highland altiplano. The jungle brings with it plenty of surprises: 'rats' the size of small goats, freshwater dolphins sharing the muddy water with Caimans and magnificent birds with huge wingspans whose names I forget, but which would unlikely to do justice to their graceful dance on the thermals anyway. It doesn't take more than a few hours to have a pretty clear sense of why South America spawned the Magical Realist novel.
If you take the high road however, you'll likely end up at the Salt flats. On the way you will pass by the town of Potos¿: a 16th century tin mining town, whose people still live off the blood of Cerro Rico. The Red Mountain is so called because it claims the lives of most miners before their thirtieth birthday. For this reason most of the town is permanently drunk, celebrating the one week in eight their husband, brother or less likely, father, is on leave. Getting drunk is not very hard to achieve at an altitude of several thousand metres and it has, ironically, long been Potisians link to a more sober life. Understandably the town is often a la fiesta. Guns shots crack through the mountain air throughout the night and impromptu fiestas gaggle on till dawn.
Carry on south, towards the Chilean border and you'll find yourself at the end of the world, or the salt flats, depending on which you think best describes this savagely beautiful environment. Neither magically real, nor drunkenly unreal, this vast area is just pure surreal end of story: if Salvador Dal¿ had been here he may just have given up painting. With ghost trains, mutant cacti and high altitude pelicans sharing the same landscape there's little need to add in a melting clock. Some parts of these vast saltpans are nothing but pure blistering white as far as you can see, and the temperature drops to a cool minus 40 at night so don't stay out too long admiring them. Everybody jealously sets eyes on the well-padded alpaca's that roam the foothills that lead to nowhere. Rock formations take on the shape of figures, or resemble upside down trees. Yes, there are people here too. This used to be an important industrial area and disused train lines scar the landscape: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid even made it down before they finally got what was coming to 'em. As if this wasn't already bizarre enough, there is a hotel in the middle of a lot of nothing made entirely of salt: salt chairs, salt tables, salt walls and even a salt bar. Surprisingly, the food is a little under-seasoned, but you'd imagine that can't be hard to change.
If you come across a lake around here it will, again rather unusually, be bright red. Though this looks a little different at first you will soon get used to it, and there's a good explanation of course: red algae responding to the, yes that's right, salt again. What's more the pink flamingos (no, I wasn't making those up either) just love it. They have adapted to live with the briny water and are one of the few animals to be seen here. From this point on it's either into Chile, or back up north to La Paz. That is if you can regain your senses sufficiently to figure out Euclidian geometry. Failing that, it's the chicha brew for you my friend, something to keep you warm at night and keep you from thinking too much. That would be a dangerous thing to do in these parts.
