Bolivia, a vast, isolated country locked in the heart of South America, seems to encapsulate all that is good and bad about this continent. Blessed with spectacular scenery, huge natural wealth, and a warmhearted people, it is nevertheless plagued by poverty, corruption, and social unrest. Landlocked by the Andes to the south, north, and west, and by the jungle to the east, it is a difficult country to reach and flights are infrequent. To make matters worse, because the air is so thin in La Paz (3,900m/12,792 ft. high), the airport can't accommodate large jet planes.
Yet 400,000 visitors manage to visit this "Tibet of the Americas" each year. They find a country still in its natural state and the most indigenous society on the continent. In fact, it almost feels as though nothing has changed here at all in the past few hundred years. This is a country where indigenous women still wear multilayered petticoats and where locals in the rural mountainside weave ponchos and textiles just as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. In addition, Lake Titicaca, which was one of the most sacred places in the Inca empire, still attracts thousands of religious pilgrims a year.
If you brave Bolivia's bumpy unpaved roads and travel by bus, you can see the landscape change minute by minute before your eyes. In just 3 hours, you can leave the barren high-plateau terrain of La Paz and arrive in the lush, tropical land of Los Yungas in the foothills of the Andes. You can also visit the remains of Bolivia's days of grandeur in Potosí, once the world's silver mining capital and thus one of its wealthiest cities. Potosí and its administrative center in Sucre were bastions of art and high culture, with some of the finest architecture on the continent.
A trip to Bolivia will certainly never be boring. Recent political developments should only add to the adventure: Evo Morales' election as president has injected both fear and optimism into a society split between rich and poor, indigenous and European. No matter how Morales' term ends up unfolding, a trip to Bolivia is sure to offer you a glimpse of South America in all its splendour and contradictions.
