duyduck

Hello fellow travelers!
My friend and I are planning our first trip to South America from October 21 - November 4, which is about two weeks (going home is flexible, can be 5th or 6th). Our goals are Salar de Uyuni, the Amazon, and Lake Titicaca.
The biggest question: Is this possible? Is this too much time...too little time?
We are very unfamiliar with how to get around, but we roughly have something like this:
1. LAX --> La Paz
2. Overnight bus to Salar de Uyuni for 3 day tour
3. (how do we get to Lake Titicaca from Uyuni?)
4. Lake Titicaca --> Amazon
5. Lima --> LAX
How does flying from LAX to Sucre sound? The flights are $300 more expensive.
At the moment, I'd love any help with the bigger details of this trip in terms of the best way to get from place to place and back home.
If you also have any cool destinations to add, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Thank you so much!

crellston

Having just spent almost town months travelling around. Bolivia, I have realised that I made a number of mistakes in planning our itinerary and would probably do it somewhat differently the next time.

One of the primary issues you should consider is the altitude, especially if you have not travelled at altitude before. Much of Bolivia is well over 3000m, above the level that altitude affects most people. El Alto airport in La Paz is around 4000m and, although La Paz city is a few hundred metres lower, most people will feel the effects of altitude there.

One solution may be to fly into La Paz and then get a connecting flight to Rurrenabaque for Madid National Park. We spent 5 days there and it was absolutely fantastic. From Rurrenabaque we then flew to Sucre, a great place to spend a couple of days exploring the city and surrounding areas ( some of the best food in Bolivia here) and, at around 2800m a great place to acclimatise for higher altitude of Uyuni.

From Sucre you could either fly to Uyuni via La Paz or, do what we did and get the bus to Tupiza ( about 8 hours) via Potosi.

The Uyuni tour from Tupiza takes 3 night and 4 days and was one of the greatest experiences of my travelling life. On finishing your tour in Uyuni you can either fly or bus back to La Paz.

La Paz is worth a night or two before getting the bus to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca ( one of the worlds great bust trips,) maybe stay a night before crossing the border into Puno from where you can either bus or fly to Cusco and fly to Lima for your flight from Lima.

For more info on these destinations click on my screen name to find my recent trip report or visit our blog

http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blo...ai/6/tpod.html

Bolivia starts at entry #22

I have not counted up the days this will take but it should be possible within your timescale although the couple of extra days will help. Flying within Bolivia is relatively cheap but I would be inclined to start thinking of booking now, particularly for Uyuni where the service has not long started I believe. Overnight buses are a good alternative and, although not luxurious by any means, they are much better than the days buses!