Far from the ocean, land-locked Bolivia is, none the less, a country of dramatic contrasts. The largest city, La Paz, is set at an altitude of 3636 metres (11,930 feet). Bowler-hatted women sell their wares on its narrow streets, and traditional markets coexist with the glass-fronted skyscrapers of the business district. From the city, a single, narrow road crosses the snowline to drop almost 4000 metres (13,000 feet) in just 80 kilometres to dense, tropical forests. Bolivia’s rainforest national parks combine with Peru’s reserves to form the largest area of protected forest on the continent.
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South of La Paz, and beyond the folkloric centre of Oruro, the vast salt pans produced by Lake Titicaca stretch, blindingly white, to the horizon. On the high Andean plains, the infamous silver mines of Potosí gave birth to the world’s highest – and once its richest - city.
In the southeast, the colonial charm of the white city of Sucre, Bolivia’s de facto capital, gives way to the lowland Amazon plain and the more tropical character of Santa Cruz, the country’s second city and just a day’s journey from the border with Brazil.
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