Bolivian Heights

Much of Bolivia is at literally breath taking altitude. La Paz is the highest capital in the World; Lake Titicaca, the sacred lake so important to the Inca civilisation, one of, if not the highest navigable lakes in the World; Potosi at over 4000 metres and the Siloli desert, where we stayed in a duende haunted hotel at 4,600 metres, the highest desert. Tourist cars carry oxygen cylinders on the Altiplano and headaches are habitual during acclimatisation. We were lucky not to be unduly affected, badly blocked noses the most irritating minor affliction and that occasional moment when, after a brief uphill walk, you take a breath that just isn’t quite there.

After a wet and chilly La Paz, we were caught out too by the sun at altitude, suitably on Sun Island, Isla de Sol, in Lake Titicaca, where we mistakenly basked for long enough in welcome warmth to peel most of the skin off our faces a few days later and make us unusually grateful for the following morning’s pouring rain. The weather cleared in time for a glimpse of snowcapped mountains in the late afernoon light and for a visit to a floating reed island whose occasional inhabitants had fully imbibed the merits of a temporarily captive market.



A visit to the town of Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca, particularly festive on a Sunday, is one of the delights of the lake. The great whitewashed Basilica is a magnet, not only for pilgrims paying respects to a miracle working image of the virgin but for drivers of new cars and trucks decorated with flowers and ‘baptised’ outside the cathedral with copious quantities of beer. Aymara women complain vociferously and reasonably about photographs but may be prepared to relent at the cost of a good sale from their market stall and, standard in Bolivia where hats, the ubiquitous bowlers and other more rakish styles, are de riguer, there is an excellent hat shop hard by the cathedral – buyers should be warned that transporting more such squashable purchases than can be carried on one head is nothing by trouble.



We were mistakenly seduced again by headwear in the constitutional capital of the country at Sucre, where the Supreme Court sits in a building of imperial splendour surrounded by schools and universities in this beautiful colonial city. A shop called Sombrero distracted us even from Sucre chocolate, noted for its particular perfection and sold in dozens of boutique outlets where chocolate cake and chocolate espresso appear to be a standard breakfast. Sucre, with its spacious squares, well-kept churches and monasteries, its bars, sophisticated shops and comfortable hotels has an affluent feel borne out by its clean streets and well-dressed population.