Bolivia is the best-value country in South America and the one that asks the most of you: everything worthwhile happens above 3,500 m, the night buses are cold, and the payoff is landscapes that do not look legal. This loop strings the classics together and ends with the salt flats approached the right way — from the south.
La Paz, city in a canyon
Acclimatise first; La Paz's airport sits at 4,061 m in El Alto and the city pours down the canyon below it. Ride the Mi Teleférico cable-car network — genuinely public transport, about USD 0.45 a line — over rooftops and cholita markets for the best urban views on the continent. Wander the Witches' Market with its dried llama fetuses (offerings for Pachamama, buried under new buildings), eat a salteña mid-morning like everyone else, and if you must do the Death Road by mountain bike, pay for a good operator (USD 60–80) rather than the cheapest. Dorms run USD 8–12.
Copacabana and the lake
Four hours by bus (USD 4–5, including a comic ferry crossing where the bus floats over on a barge without you), Copacabana is Bolivia's toehold on Lake Titicaca. Take the slow boat to Isla del Sol (USD 4), walk the island's spine from north to south past Inca ruins and terraced hills, and sleep a night in Yumani for a sunset that turns the highest navigable lake in the world to hammered copper. Trout lunch on the beach: USD 3–4.
Sucre, the white city
Back through La Paz, take a night bus south to Sucre (12 hours, USD 12–18 for a full cama seat — Bolivian night buses are cold, so keep your sleeping bag handy). Sucre is where backpackers accidentally stay a month: the constitutional capital is all whitewashed courtyards and orange roofs at a merciful 2,800 m. Spanish lessons cost USD 6–8 an hour, the central market's fruit-salad ladies will fight for your loyalty, and there is a wall of actual dinosaur footprints — thousands of them, near-vertical thanks to tectonics — just outside town at Cal Orck'o.
Potosí, the mountain that eats men
Three hours on (USD 4), Potosí was once the richest city on Earth, funding the Spanish empire from the silver of Cerro Rico. At 4,090 m it is the world's highest city of its size, and it is sobering: mine tours (USD 15–20) with ex-miner guides take you crawling through working tunnels where men still chew coca and make offerings to El Tío, the devil-figure who owns the underground. Some travellers skip it on ethical grounds; if you go, choose a cooperative-run tour and buy your gifts of coca and drinks at the miners' market.
Tupiza and the four-day crossing
Instead of bussing straight to Uyuni like everyone else, continue south to Tupiza (USD 5–6), a red-rock canyon town where Butch Cassidy met his end. From here, 4x4 tours run the salt-flat circuit in reverse — four days instead of three, roughly USD 200–250 per person including driver, cook, and basic refugios — and you cross the Eduardo Avaroa reserve before the Salar: the blood-red Laguna Colorada crowded with flamingos, the Sol de Mañana geysers steaming at dawn at 4,900 m, hot springs at Polques, the Salvador Dalí desert. Because you run opposite to the Uyuni-departing convoys, you get the lagoons nearly alone.
The finale works perfectly: you sleep in a hotel built of salt blocks, then drive onto the Salar de Uyuni itself for sunrise — 10,000 square kilometres of white hexagons, or, in the February–April wet season, a sheet of water that mirrors the sky so completely the horizon disappears and the 4x4 appears to drive through clouds. Cactus-studded Incahuasi island, the obligatory perspective photos, and you roll into Uyuni town by afternoon, from where buses and the Expreso del Sur train head north.
Practical notes
May–October is dry season with brutal nights (-15°C on the altiplano; ask your operator about sleeping bags). Budget USD 30–40 a day outside the tour. Carry cash boliviano everywhere — ATMs vanish south of Sucre.
