Bolivia High Plains via The Death Road

Thirteen nights in a loop from La Paz across the Altiplano and the Uyuni salt flats, following part of the Che Guevara trail and finishing on the Death Road. The hire is included, on a DR650 or KLR650, with upgrades available.

La Paz starts it at 3,600 metres, which is high enough to need a day of acclimatisation before anything else happens, then Sajama National Park below Bolivia’s highest peak, and Tahua on the edge of the salt.

The Uyuni crossing follows, the largest salt flat in the world at over ten thousand square kilometres, level enough to be used for satellite calibration and disorienting to ride across because there is nothing to judge distance against. Potosi comes next, at 4,100 metres among the highest cities of its size anywhere, built on the silver that financed the Spanish empire, then Sucre, the constitutional capital and UNESCO listed.

La Higuera follows, the village where Che Guevara was captured and shot in 1967, then Aiquile on the remote Che Trail, Cochabamba, Quime and Chulumani on gravel. Coroico sits at the bottom of the Death Road, and the finish takes the Camino de la Muerte itself back up towards La Paz, a one-lane gravel road cut into the side of the Yungas with drops of several hundred metres and no barrier of any kind, now closed to most through traffic. Prices are quoted in US dollars. Bolivia asks more of a rider than its neighbours: the altitude is relentless, the fuel quality varies, and the gap between a graded gravel road and a riverbed is often a matter of opinion.