Bolivia Travel Photography: Three Months from Lake Titicaca to Uyuni

Photographer Antony Harrison spent three months travelling through Bolivia, from Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca to the salt flats of Uyuni, the coloured lagoons of the far south-west, the silver mines of Potosí and finally down the “Road of Death” to the mountain town of Coroico. His pictures make a fine introduction to one of South America’s most dramatic countries.

Here are the places on his route, with the facts behind each landscape.

Lake Titicaca and Isla del Sol

Harrison began on Isla del Sol, the Island of the Sun, where the thin air was the first challenge. Lake Titicaca straddles the border between Bolivia and Peru at 3,812 metres above sea level. It covers 8,372 km², making it the largest lake in South America by both surface area and volume, and it is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. In Inca belief the sun god was born on Isla del Sol, and the island holds more than 180 ruins, most from the Inca period. Regular boats link it with the Bolivian lakeside town of Copacabana.

Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat

The Salar de Uyuni covers about 10,582 km² of the Altiplano in Potosí Department, at roughly 3,656 metres. It is the dry bed left behind by a chain of prehistoric lakes, and its surface is so level that elevation varies by less than a metre across the whole flat. That flatness, plus clear skies and high reflectivity, makes it a calibration site for Earth-observation satellites. The brine under the crust also holds a large share of the world’s known lithium.

In the rainy season a thin layer of still water turns the salt into a giant mirror, the effect Harrison caught in his reflection and storm pictures. Thunderstorms build quickly on the Altiplano: for his photograph “Strike”, he watched a sunset with lightning and got the shot just before he and his friends ran for cover. Isla Incahuasi, an island of giant cacti in the middle of the flat, is a classic stop. The town of Uyuni is the gateway, and about 3 km outside it lies a cemetery of abandoned trains left after the mining industry declined in the 1940s.

Laguna Colorada and the volcanic south-west

From Uyuni, Harrison joined the classic four-day drive through Bolivia’s south-western highlands, a landscape of volcanoes, sulphur fields and high lagoons that he called the most incredible place he had ever photographed. The highlight is Laguna Colorada in the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, at about 4,278 metres. The shallow lake, just 35 cm deep on average, owes its red colour to sediments and salt-loving algae, mainly Dunaliella salina, and white islands of borax stand out against the water. It is a key breeding ground for Andean, Chilean and James’s flamingos, and a Ramsar wetland of international importance since 1990.

The air is thin at these heights, so spend a few days around La Paz or Lake Titicaca first and drink plenty of water before heading south.

Potosí, Cerro Rico and Tupiza

Potosí sits below Cerro Rico, the “rich mountain”, which rises to 4,782 metres. Spanish mining began in 1545, and in the colonial era the mountain supplied most of the central Andes’ silver, making Potosí one of the largest cities in the Americas. From 1574 the Spanish used the mita, a forced-labour system, to work the mines, and many thousands of workers died. Cooperative miners still work underground today, mostly for tin and zinc, and silicosis remains a serious danger. Harrison joined a mine visit and was struck by the hard conditions.

A wildlife sanctuary and the Yungas Road to Coroico

One highlight of the trip was a stay at a wildlife sanctuary caring for sick and injured animals that could not survive in the wild. There he befriended a female howler monkey named Cheetah.

He ended his journey on the Yungas Road, the 64 km route from La Paz down into the subtropical Yungas valleys. The road drops about 3,500 metres, and in 1995 the Inter-American Development Bank named it the most dangerous road in the world. A new, paved two-lane highway opened in 2006, and the old road now draws around 25,000 visitors a year, many of them on guided downhill mountain-bike tours to Coroico.

For more on the salt flat, read our Salar de Uyuni guide, or see how other photographers frame distant places in three travel-contest photographs.

Related reading

• Salar de Uyuni: The Mirror Landscape and the Ground beneath It
• Salar de Uyuni: Bolivia’s Salt Flat in Dry and Reflective Conditions

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