Bolivia vacations 2024 & 2025

In Bolivia, you can experience endless salt flats, towering mountains, lush jungles, and even a witches’ market. Driving through an enormous salt pan with a sea of white around you is one of the main reasons to visit Bolivia, but you’ll also be able to explore the Amazon Rainforest, visit traditional communities living on Lake Titicaca’s islands, or take a guided tour of La Paz.

You could also get out on foot to visit small villages, explore the otherworldly landscape of Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon), see flamingo-filled lagoons and mud geysers, or wander around pre-Columbia archaeological sites. Whether you’re interested in food, Indigenous culture, archaeology, or wildlife, you’ll find a huge range of things to see and do in Bolivia.

In Bolivia, you can stay in historical mansions, comfortable lodges, local guesthouses, or international hotels. Although the options for places to stay in Bolivia are more limited than in other South American countries, you’ll still find a good choice of hotels in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Sucre, and Lake Titicaca. In other areas, the options might be more basic, but we’ve chosen a selection of characterful family-run hotels and guesthouses in each location.

For example, you could stay in a simple salt hotel on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, a small ecolodge in the Amazon Rainforest, a heritage hotel in Sucre, or a thatched stone hotel on the Altiplano. For further ideas, browse our collection of places to stay in Bolivia.

Bolivia is a large country offering a range of destinations but most visitors head for the Salar de Uyuni, Lake Titicaca, and La Paz. The main attraction for visitors to Bolivia is the vast salt flat of the Salar de Uyuni in the southwest, where a pool of water creates flawless reflections.

To the northwest, you’ll find La Paz, a bustling city set in a bowl-like canyon, and the glittering blue waters of Lake Titicaca where you can hike past Inca ruins and grazing llamas on Sun Island.

Further north is Madidi National Park where you can get into the Amazon Rainforest, while to the south, Sucre, Bolivia’s constitutional capital, offers ornate churches and the chance to visit small villages where weavers produce intricate textiles.

The best way to explore Bolivia’s salt flats is on a guided 4x4 trip. You can take a full-day trip across the salar from Uyuni or join a multi-day adventure that goes beyond the salar and into the Atacama Desert in Chile, passing curious sculpted rocks, vivid lakes, steaming fumaroles, and flamingo-filled lagoons along the way.

Boliva’s incredible biodiversity makes it a great place to spot a wide range of wildlife. In the Amazon lowlands you might spot parrots, macaws, and hummingbirds, see pink river dolphins in the water, and if you’re lucky, elusive jaguars, pumas, or ocelots. Llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas roam the high plains and condors fly overhead, while in the national parks you could spot tapirs, capybaras, armadillos, spectacled bears, or sloths.

It takes around 11 hours to fly from the East Coast of the US to Bolivia, and from the West Coast it will take around 14 hours.

The time zone in Bolivia is UTC-4 hours. Daylight Savings Time is not used in Bolivia.

The best way to get around Bolivia is to use private drivers and internal flights. For long distances between main towns, we recommend flying as the roads aren’t always well maintained and the distances and altitude can make it tiring. For shorter distances, a driver-guide will get you where you need to go as efficiently as possible and offer an insight into the country and its people as you travel.

You can still travel to Boliva in the wet season (November to March). Although you may find some delays on the roads, there’ll be far fewer visitors wherever you go, and mirror-like reflections on the salt flats near Uyuni.

The effects of the wet season are more obvious in the lowlands where roads into the jungle can turn to mud and the heat and humidity increase. In the Altiplano, the rains transform dry plains into lush grasslands, but muddy trails and cloud cover can make trekking more difficult and views less expansive.

A trip to Bolivia combines well with visits to Peru or Chile. For example, you could take an overland trip through Chile, Peru, and Bolivia which links Machu Picchu, the Salar de Uyuni, the Atacama Desert, and Eduardo Avaroa National Park.

US citizens do need a visa for Bolivia. You can apply in advance by mail or in person at Bolivian consulates in the US, or you can get a visa on arrival. Bolivian tourist visas are valid for ten years from the date of issue and allow you to enter the country three times in a year for a cumulative stay of no more than 90 days.

If you aren’t a US citizen or would prefer assistance to obtain your visa in advance, we recommend using our partner Visa Central.

Check that your passport is valid for six months beyond your date of departure from Bolivia and that it has a minimum of one unstamped double page free.

Speak to your doctor for up-to-date advice on recommended vaccinations for travel to Bolivia. You can check suggested vaccinations on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. It’s also a good idea to ensure you’re up to date with the recommended vaccinations for your home country.

As long as you rest on arrival and give your body time to acclimatize, you shouldn’t have any problems with the altitude in Bolivia.

Since the air is thinner at high altitudes you might initially experience headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, or insomnia, so take it easy for the first few days and plan your trip so that the increase in altitude is gradual. Altitude affects everyone differently so listen to your body and if you continue to experience uncomfortable affects after a few days see a doctor or descend to lower altitudes.