BOLIVIA

Landlocked Bolivia, with its fortress-like topography, has protected its national identity more successfully than its coastal neighbours. The Amazon basin covers much of the country, but it is the Altiplano highlands where you’ll find its cultural heartbeat: indigenous traditions that still shape daily life. In colourful La Paz, the world’s highest urban cable car glides over market stalls piled high with rainbow textiles, presided over by cholitas (indigenous women) in their layered pollera skirts and bowler hats; just north of the city, the shores of deep, tranquil Lake Titicaca are dotted with Aymara communities.

You’ll find the footprints of Spanish colonialism in the elegant white facades of Sucre and the working silver mines that once bankrolled the Spanish empire in sky-high Potosí. Beyond the cities, Bolivia becomes vast and elemental: the surreal Salar de Uyuni, the planet’s largest salt flat where sky and earth merge, and islands seem to float between; deep in the Amazon basin, where wildlife reserves are often accessible only by boat. Bolivia is a country that demands a little grit from visitors, but rewards with a genuine sense of discovery.