most of the day | 10 nights | from $3,940 per person
the Bolivian Altiplano Vacation Package: Ten Nights Above 3,600m
The Bolivian Altiplano vacation package runs 10 nights, six of them with a guide and a vehicle. About six hours of an average day are set in advance, and the ground never drops below 3,600m.
What most of the day means here
Ten nights, six of them with a guide and a vehicle attached to your morning. The program fills the middle of the day and leaves both ends of it alone. You are not marched from breakfast to bed. You are also not free to decide on a Tuesday that Tuesday is now a reading day, because the vehicle is booked and the driver is already waiting in the street.
Altitude is the honest headline here. Nothing on this route sits below 3,600m and two nights sit above 4,200m. That changes how a day feels no matter how much of it is scheduled.
- Hours already spoken for
- About six. Vehicle days run roughly 09:00 to 15:00, and on four of them three to four of those hours are spent driving.
- The earliest you must be somewhere
- 07:15, on three mornings: the two salt flat departures and the day you cross to the southern lagoons. The other seven mornings start at 09:00 or later.
- The longest stretch that is yours
- Thirty-one hours in La Paz, from mid-afternoon on day 3 to a 09:00 pickup on day 5. Nothing is booked in it and nobody expects to see you.
- Who chooses where you eat
- A guide picks the road and the stops on the six vehicle days. You pick every dinner except the three lagoon nights, where one kitchen is the only kitchen.
- What happens if you skip a day
- Tell the guide the night before and the vehicle leaves without you. No money comes back. The driver, the fuel and the seat are paid by the day whether you are in it or not.
- Who this shape of day does not suit
- People who sleep badly and want to choose each morning whether they are going anywhere: six of the ten days begin with a driver waiting. Also anyone with unmanaged heart or lung conditions, since 3,600m is the floor of this route, not its high point.
The last row costs this company bookings and stays on the page anyway. A shape of day that does not suit you is far cheaper to find out about here than on the third morning.
What the $3,940 pays for
- 10 nights in twin rooms: 4 in La Paz, 3 near Uyuni, 3 in the southern lagoon country, where buildings are basic and water is heated for about two hours in the evening
- 6 full days of a shared vehicle with a driver and an English-speaking guide, no more than 6 seats filled
- Two acclimatization nights at the start with nothing scheduled in them, which is the most useful thing we book on this route
- All road transfers between towns, including the 5 hour run south from Uyuni over washboard gravel
- Breakfast every morning and lunch on the 6 guided days, usually eaten in the vehicle or at a roadside kitchen
- Reserve and salt flat entry fees, currently about $45 per person in total
- A pulse oximeter in every vehicle and a driver instructed to turn back down if your reading holds low
What you pay for separately
- Flights to Bolivia, priced on their own: roughly $780 to $1,250 round trip from most US cities, booked once your dates are set
- Dinner on all 10 nights, about $9 to $22 a head outside La Paz
- Extra nights in La Paz before day 1, from $95 per room
- Altitude medication and a doctor's opinion on whether you should be at this height at all. We supply neither, and we do not arrange insurance, visas or entry permits
- Tips for driver and guide, budget $8 to $12 per person per day
- Single occupancy, which adds $610 across the 10 nights
What it costs
from $3,940 per person
- Covering
- 10 nights, guided vehicle days with real gaps left in them.
- Assuming
- Two people to a room, unless the six rows above say otherwise for your case.
- Pushed up by
- The month, the grade of room, how late you leave it, and how many of the hours you want somebody else to hold.
- Fixed when
- An operator puts it in writing with its own name on it. Until then it marks the bottom of a range that genuinely happened.
You settle with the operator, through whatever system they run. This site gathers nothing and no card ever arrives at this company.
Months that hold, months that do not
May to September is dry and cold. Daytime around 15C, nights on the lagoon route down to minus 15C. Roads are firm, the six vehicle days run as printed, and the salt is white and hard.
December to March is wet. A few centimeters of water sit on the flat, which some people travel specifically to see, and the same water closes the southern lagoon road for days at a stretch. When it closes, the guided days become long detours or nothing at all.
Two windows we would steer you away from. The last week of January through mid-February, because that is when the southern road fails most often and there is no second route. And the first week of August, when domestic holidays fill the Uyuni rooms and the same beds cost close to triple.
What is still open at confirmation
Four things get settled once you commit to dates: which of the two approach roads to Uyuni you take, whether the third lagoon night is traded for a fourth in La Paz at lower altitude, whether you share the vehicle or pay to hold all six seats, and what time the pickup lands on your two salt flat mornings. The Bolivian Altiplano vacation package is written down before you leave, and those four lines are the ones still blank.