Secreted away in an Andean valley is the world's highest capital and definitely one of the most unique. This is where Indian women wear derbys and colorful outdoor markets wow the senses. You'll find an exotic blend of 21st century, Spanish Colonial and Ayamara Indian architecture. There is much more to Bolivia than LaPaz. You can find the ruins of Tiahuanacu, an archaeological wonder. There is also Sucre, a city that still lives comfortably in the 16th century. Try Chacaltaya, the world's longest ski run. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world where modern, sleek hydrofoils race past reed canoes. Legends say that here the first Inca was born. Bolivia is certainly "high" adventure.

Capital: La Paz

Population: 7,900,000

Area: 424, 169 square miles

Language: Spanish is the official language but more than half of the population speaks various Indian languages.

Time: + 1 hours from New York

Electricity: 220 volts AC / 50 Hz Be mindful that in some areas 110 volts is still used and that electricity is turned off at night. Flashlights are often essential.

Geography: Bolivia is bordered by Brazil and Peru in the north, Paraguay and Argentina to the south and Chile to the west. The country is not as mountainous as many may think. In fact the country is made up mostly of lowlands which are sparsely populated. The area of the Gran Chaco is level scrubland overrun by a thicket of cactus and spiny trees. The mountainous area in the west which runs along the borders of Peru, Argentina and Chile have mountains which reach up over 20,000 ft. The Altiplano, which is a treeless plain stretching over a huge area and contains a few solitary volcanic peaks. In this area is also found Lake Titicacca - the highest navigable lake in the world.

International Airports

La Paz - The El Alto Airport (LPB) - The airport is about 6 miles from the city and takes 20 minutes to transit. Busses and Taxis are available.

International Airports

La Paz - The El Alto Airport (LPB) - The airport is about 6 miles from the city and takes 20 minutes to transit. Busses and Taxis are available.

Banking: Banks are open at 9 am close for lunch at noon reopen at 1pm and close at 4pm. There are no Saturday or Sunday hours.

Currency: The Boliviano

Money Exchange: Travelers checks are difficult to exchange. Best to carry US$ currency and/or Visa or Master Card for cash advances - which will be time consuming.

Credit cards: Master Card, Visa. Very few places take American Express or Diners Club.

Climate

The rainy season is from November to March through all of Bolivia. With the country's varying geographic features the weather varies as well, ranging from near Antarctic conditions in the mountains to tropical in the rain forest of the Amazon Basin.

The hand of nature built the best road in South America: the hard mineral crust of the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt pan, which lies embedded like a white gem in the rugged Andes of south west Bolivia.

This gleaming expanse is smoother than any Bolivian road, but it doesn’t exactly lead anywhere except to bleak sulphur mines, llama herders’ crofts and lonely army camps. What a joy to escape the potholed dirt roads and cruise at top speed in a truck or jeep over this perfect surface.

I first drove on the salt flat at the start of the of dry season just after the last salty puddle had evaporated, leaving the surface clean and renewed.

What a strange sensation. The thin cold air rushed by as we headed, navigating by compass like sailors, into a featureless sea of white. The only landmarks were distant volcanoes that puffed ash into the blue sky. In most directions the salt flat curved away to the shape of the earth then evaporated into a shimmering horizon where distant objects — islands, trucks, bicycles — floated in mid air then, as we approached, split into two, then melted together again. It felt like flying.

Our journey began in the cold frontier town of Uyuni. Although in the tropics, both the town and the salt flat have been pushed up by the Andes to a height of 3600m, leaving them with a climate as harsh as the landscape. By day the sun roasts down through thin air. At night the temperature plummets to a rock-cracking -20C. This is one town where you need factor suntan lotion and a all-season’s sleeping bag.

The salt flat is a prime attraction to travellers in South America, and the townsfolk of Uyuni have been quick to capitalise. The centre of the settlement was packed with small tour agencies offering day trips and longer. We had no need of their services as we were travelling by our own truck, but the friendlier agencies gracefully offered advice on the salt flat and sold us photocopies of maps.

They also warned us that, although it seemed flawless, the flat did have soggy patches where a truck could get stuck like a dinosaur in a tar pit. The edges of the flat, where the salt gave way to black mud, were the worst.

It was with some trepidation, then, that we picked our way through large saline-filled bog holes in the tracks leading on to the flat. With some relief we splashed our way out on to the crust.

On the way we passed one of the llama salt caravans that still follow ancient trade routes from the highlands hundreds of miles away to the salt-deprived jungle. The row of imperious cameloids, each laden with two small blocks of crystal, ignored us as we rattled by, as did the herders on foot half-hidden in their hats and shawls at the back.

Once safely on the flat we headed north by northwest across 6400 square kilometres of emptiness. We were in top gear now and within an hour we were almost out of sight of “land” (which is what you tend to call everything in the region that is not salt). The glare was intense and I was grateful for bringing extra dark sunglasses.

In past epochs we would have been hundreds of metres under water. The salt flat lies in a huge basin between two mighty arms of the Andes from which no water flows out. Ten thousand years ago a damper climate meant more rain which fell on the surrounding volcanic slopes formed a mineral-rich inland sea. As the climate dried, the waters evaporated off leaving a mineral residue like scale in the bottom of a kettle.

The water has not gone for good. In wet years the flat may submerge for months at a time under a several inches of saline. Older Uyuni folk can remember a time when the waters were deep enough for boats to ferry people and cargo to the outlying villages. Most years around May though, it’s dry enough to drive on.

For us and our truck, the harder and drier the better.

We were heading for an ‘island’ and, sure enough, a blob was forming on the horizon. Here was another world within a world — an outcrop of fossilised algae, convoluted and cave-riddled, covered in giant cardon cactus which rose toward the blue sky like crazy candles on a crazy cake. It was also our campsite for the night.

We parked the truck in the lee of the island and pitched tents in patches of pumice shingle among the cactus, then set off to explore this alien landscape.

A variety of robust wildlife had made it to this outpost of nature. Insects crawled over the rough cactus stalks, a kestrel fluttered among the fossil peaks, and cuddly viscachas (which look like a cross between a big rabbit and small kangaroo) sat and nibbled bushes in the evening sunlight. I sat on the island and watched the sun set. A purple sky clamped down like a cold lid and squeezed the last rays of orange light over the horizon. Stars sprang out overhead, stars clearer and brighter than I had ever seen, or dreamed of seeing, before. They floated over us like diamonds on fire and the salty plain twinkled right back at them.

It was a magic moment so I pondered over life, the universe, and everything — and watch batteries. The salt flat contains enough mineral lithium to keep the human race in watch batteries for hundreds of thousands of years (assuming we are still around, and still use watches). Mining companies are already laying plans to dig it up, but with an estimated 10,000 million tonnes of salt to cart away, they’re going to be busy.

I am happy to live without a watch to enjoy the Salar de Uyuni unscarred as it is.

Andes in Bolivia

Any visitor to South America who has travelled on local transport will probably have at least one horror story. My adventure began in Bolivia’s capital, Sucre, a town typical of many in the Andes. Centred on a large plaza, containing the ever present cathedral and government offices, the streets radiate in straight lines to the foothills of the Andes mountains.

The Spaniards favoured sheltered basins hidden from the cold winds that blow on the high Altiplano, so many population centres are surrounded by these high snow-topped mountains and Sucre is no different. I was immediately forced to bed as I had eaten something bad, again. This time it was more than the usual bout of diarrhoea and vomit. This time it was food poisoning. I knew this was one of the many delights that South America would bestow upon me, so with a resignation born of knowledge I resigned myself to dying quietly and slowly in a sleazy $US2 a night pension.

Two days later and still terribly weak I prepared myself for a 24-hour coach journey to La Paz. I needed longer in bed to recover but I’d already agreed with some travellers to leave that day. Already forewarned about local transport conditions in South America, having endured an 18-hour bus journey many years earlier in Columbia, I thought I knew what the next 24 hours would bring. How wrong could I be? I now realise that each journey on local transport is an adventure in itself. No two are alike. If you’ve travelled the 450 miles or so from London to Edinburgh by coach and thought that eight hour trip was long and uncomfortable, then come with me on this 24-hour nightmare in Bolivia.

The distance from Sucre to La Paz is only 250 miles, but the scheduled time for the journey was 24 hours. That information alone speaks volumes for the road conditions on this particular route. Only a few miles of road on either side of the cities were tarmac, the remaining 240 miles were rough, dirt tracks winding their way through the mountains and valleys of the Eastern Cordillera and up into the high Altiplano of the Andes. One wrong turn by the driver, on a tight bend with a sheer drop, would have necessitated the locals erecting yet another white cross by the roadside in memory of more victims to a very common form of death in Bolivia.

My first shock after hobbling to the coach station was when I saw our luxury coach which was to be home for the next day. I’m afraid the travel agent had somewhat exaggerated — it was neither a coach nor luxurious. It had hard, unpadded seats that didn’t recline and were so close to the seat in front, that tall passengers didn’t know where to put their legs. My all important camera bag was also jammed on the floor, making an uncomfortable situation close to unbearable. Another lesson I learned from previous trips in South America was that your most valuable possessions must always travel within constant sight and touch.

After four hours of unending misery and boredom our driver decided to stop for lunch in a tiny, dusty “pueblo”. Windows were boarded and shuttered against the sun. No food had successfully reached and remained in my stomach for the previous two days, so I wasn’t going to attempt to remedy that in the local cafes on this journey. I was attempting a strict diet of banana sandwiches and cups of tea to survive and to try a local dish of greasy stew would only have resulted in my unbearable situation becoming impossible.

A fellow sufferer gave in to her hunger pains and ate copious amounts of this food, only to regret it later. Seeing her, leaning out the window, splattering the roadside and the rear sections of the bus with her recently eaten meal was at least one of the funnier points of the trip. Bumping along the narrow, dusty tracks to the roof of the Andes at least provided spectacular scenery — mountain peaks close and far framed by clear cloudless skies. From her tropical lowlands to the cold Andes, Bolivia certainly has some incredibly contrasting geography. Still, it wasn’t long before the first of our many misfortunes was to befall us on this nightmare journey.

Tearing down an incline, a sudden jolt followed by a large explosion brought the bus to a screeching halt. It seemed we had parted company with the battery. To us “gringos” this appeared a real set back, but the locals didn’t even blink. With a push start we were on our way again, my unmechanical mind not realising a diesel-powered vehicle only needed a battery for starting and for lights. The race was now on to reach a town before nightfall to get a new battery. Not even in Bolivia would the drivers attempt to negotiate the roads in pitch darkness with no lights — or so I thought.

We didn’t make our objective and were stranded 10 minutes from Cochabamba, in total darkness, as the driver set off in search of a new battery. He returned three hours later to find us very cold, bored and annoyed, before fitting the newly purchased component and setting off again.

We were scheduled to have a one hour stop in Cochabamba for dinner but with the delay it was reduced to 15 minutes. One 15 minute stop after nine hours was not a lot of time to eat, visit a toilet or stretch your legs. I was lucky that as I was so ill I didn’t care if we stopped or not. On we went, up into the high Andes mountains with the road finally lit up with energy from our new battery.

Settling down to try and get some sleep after a few more hours on the road, we felt another sudden jolt and recognisable explosion — the new battery had worked its way loose, fallen and smashed itself to smithereens. The sheer incompetence and unreliability of this Bolivian bus and its driver, should have driven me to screams of anguish but I was rapidly thinking that our troubles hadn’t really begun.

The driver told us to get out and push. We told him to get lost. I must tell you that attempting to push a bus at 1am on a bitterly cold Altiplano night, with temperatures below zero, feeling so sick and ill that I could happily die, was not one of the best times of my life.

The bus started and off we went, although it wasn’t long before the 5mph speed made me realise that we had no lights and this idiot actually WAS driving along mountain passes at over 12,000ft in total darkness.

 Finally he gave up and we sat freezing and waiting for sunrise. I was wearing heavy walking boots with long thick socks, thermal long johns and top, a thick woollen tracksuit, a thermal ski jacket and gloves and a ridiculous balaclava pulled over my face and I still froze. At daybreak we started again. We knew we were only hours from La az, so surely nothing else could go wrong on this pleasant little trip. But it did. We ran right into a march of the striking Bolivian miners.

Incensed by continuing terrible working conditions these miners were marching to protest to the authorities in La Paz, from as far away as Potosi and Oruoro — as far as we had travelled. There were thousands upon thousands of these men, wrapped up against the cold, walking along the road and reducing our speed to a crawl. To avoid any possible confrontation, our driver was forced to stop to let some of them on the bus. By on the bus, I mean on the roof. So not content with just being cold, sick, tired and angry, my mind managed another emotion — fear. I had a bag on the roof with some valuables, though not the cameras, but I would have been upset at losing a sock such was my determination to beat the dreaded South American habit of having ones belongings go missing. In the end this peaceful demonstration caused us no more harm than a few more hours delay. After clearing the leaders our driver put his foot to the floor and headed toward the distant Mount Illimani which overlooked La Paz, the highest city in the world.

We eventually arrived, to our utter amazement on time, exactly 24 hours after we set off. I suffered a lifetime that day and it is only now, many months and thousands of miles away, that I can look back at that trip and laugh. Even with hindsight, I would not have missed that journey for anything — it was a remarkable experience. Roll on my next trip to South America.