In terms of supreme natural beauty and unbeatable remoteness two places come immediately into my mind: Tibet and Bolivia. On my first trip to Bolivia in 2010 I first visited friends in La Paz. La Paz and its sister city El Alto with their dramatic mountainous setting over 4000m high on the Altiplano and with 6400m Illimani looming above, took my breath away. To minimise the risk of altitude sickness I strolled like in slow motion through the high-rises in the center. Every imaginable Gringo fast food chain and even a butchery chain of German origin were at hand. I stepped into the ultra-steep side streets where the high-rises gave way to haphazardly assembled stalls laden with hundreds of dried llama and frogs fetuses as well as peculiar ceramic figures of naked couples. I had found the Mercado de Hechicería, the witches‘ market where I learned that every item had a promising magic purpose: The llama fetus protected the house, the frog‘s provided luck and the naked ceramic couple ensured a fulfilled sex life, at least. Instead of the lama fetuses I got more enchanted by llama steak. Paired with Spätzle and washed down with a heavy Cabernet Sauvignon from the southern Bolivian wine region of Tarija, it came as a wonderful preparation for the tough travel days which lay ahead.

Early next morning, way before sunrise on a damn cold winter morning, my driver Eduardo and I went off from La Paz to the south. After some 200 km, just behind the Carnival town of Oruro, we left the tarmac road and entered another world. For eight hours we drove on dirt roads through a sheer impenetrable wall of dust, passing the dramatic landscape of the Altiplano high plateau. My eyes felt like in a blurred Chinese ink painting. Apart from the distant snowy caps of 6000 m plus mountains, the entire landscape looked barren and hostile to any life. From time to time we passed a tiny settlement and saw Quechua women with their massive bowler hats and voluminous skirt constructions. Admiringly they were eking out a living from this seemingly unforgiving high altitude desert. The journey felt endless, and we were finally glad to arrive at Salar de Uyuni in due time for sunset. What a glorious landscape, what an ocean of salt, crowned by the dormant 5300m Tunupa volcano to the north. Pure white salt everywhere: Salt crunched under my feet, my lodging was entirely built of salt, the sinking sun creating gorgeous patterns on the salt, in the world’s largest salt flat,

Two days later the return trip from Uyuni to La Paz offered an extra challenge: The local Quechua people had orchestrated another of their famous bloqueos: Every crossing, every dirt road eventually leading back to La Paz had been blocked by self-appointed Quechua committees hindering all vehicles from proceeding. Their leaders were polite but determined: No way to pass unless the government would confirm the fulfillment of their demands for better rural infrastructure. Eduardo went over hill and dale, for hours, until he finally found a loophole to overcome the bloqueo. In the middle of the night we made it back to La Paz. It was my eye-opener that Bolivia was genially different: In contrast to basically all other Latin American countries where the descendants of the European colonialists were more or less still exclusively running the show, the indigenous people of Bolivia were at least visible and had a say. Moreover, in Bolivia, it felt that the gap between the rich and the poor was less striking. Could that also be the reason that Bolivia came as the safest country of all Latin America?

Another experience came just a few days later in the course of a trip to Lake Titicaca: On our way along the northern lakeshore with wonderful views of snow-capped Andean mountains we passed hundreds of Aymara farmers on the streets, all but dressed to their finest. Something solemn and special seemed to be in the air.  Suddenly helicopter noise filled the crystal altiplano air. When the helicopter finally was landing in just a few meters distance and its rotors were blowing us almost into Lake Titicaca, the Aymara were chanting and waving their  “rainbow squares” flag used as the pan-indigenous flag of Andean peoples. After the dust settled and the helicopter’s flap opened, the locals stood in awe in front of their adored saviour: Evo Morales, ethnic Aymara, son of impoverished llama herders, first indigenous President in a majority-indigenous country and being after three years in office (from almost 14 in total) already Latin America’s most remarkable president. I remember that I once discussed it with my Carioca drinking buddy and SPIEGEL correspondent Jens Glüsing that we Europeans too often see Latin America from the Gringo or European- means-Spanish-origin-elite point of view. so it did not come as a surprise, that Evo Morales, protégé of Fidel Castro and obviously proud owner of a portrait of Che Guevara (made out of coca leaves) was not everyone’s darling. But without doubt, during his time in office, Evo Morales transformed Bolivia, reducing poverty, giving the Aymara and Quechua finally a voice. And they loved him for that!

Politics aside, I could not get enough of the sublime beauty of Bolivia and wanted more. So when we were fortunate to live virtually in the “neighborhood”, my wife and me soon backpacked in 2012 from our new home in Rio via the mighty Iguazu and Paraguay towards Bolivia with Santiago de Chile as final destination. We spent our first days in Bolivia at Parque Nacional Amboró in a valley of tropical rainforest. we swam in crystalline rivers and gazed at the granite peaks of the Andean Cordillera which surrounded us. It was a magical place, a place where the Amazon kissed the dusty Chaco which lay behind us and where the Amazon kissed the Andes which lay ahead of us. From the jungles of the Amazon we slowly made our way up towards the Altiplano. We passed the Hippie foodie pueblo of Samaipata with its fascinating pre-Inca archeological site. Climbing higher and higher through a wide river valley still flanked by lush mountains , we were suddenly stopped by a tremendous landslide which must have occurred just a short while ago. It first looked that we had hit our end of the road, as the mountain of mud ahead of us looked impenetrable for our vehicle. A passing excavator came as a godsend. As so often on my travels, a good amount of luck was traveling with me.

A few hours later we arrived at La Higueira. The town was little but its significance in history was huge, as the world’s most famous revolutionary, who invented the concept of creating a socialist society through armed struggle, had here been killed in action. The little museum, not more than a living room gave new insights and lots of food for thought: Che Guevara had tried his revolutionary luck, with different grades of success, in Guatemala, Cuba, Congo-Kinshasa and Bolivia. Now, I was not sure whether Che had really been the visionary leader or had he more of a firebrand with no real focus on what he actually wanted to achieve? Even his role in Cuba, his only place of success, raised questions. He helped overcoming the regime of US-backed dictator Batista but later approved the killing of minor Batista-collaborators by firing squads. So do the ends really justify the brutal means? 

From the place of the bloody death of Che we took another day to reach the mellow university town of white-washed Sucre, feasting on great food in its market (chorizo).  Two weeks after we had left Rio we finally reached the searing mining town of Potosi, 4090m high on the cold wind-blown Altiplano. In the 16th century, thanks to the silver -greedy colonialists, Potosi might have been the largest industrial complex in the world. For hours we crawled on all fours through the dark and ultimately narrow tunnels of the infamous Cerro Rico mine, watching the miners digging for the ultimate rest of silver almost with their bare hands. If I ever had doubts about the wisdom of my career choice – in this mine, they would end in smoke…

200 kilometers further on we reached the Salar de Uyuni, my second visit. Where two years before, then in the South American winter, there was just an endless expanse of grains of salt, we stood now on the largest natural mirror in the world. We felt like floating in the air.  But the string of otherworldly landscapes had just begun: We rode through sceneries of vast sand dunes, traversed narrow canyons to be suddenly spilled out on lush fairy meadows beneath rugged cliffs where a small stream was gently cascading down, with llamas grazing on both sides, obviously with no apparent fear of the puma. We passed steaming lagunas bearing all shades of red and green, just to arrive in another landscape where we thought we were about to land on the moon, with just one mossy stone offering a precious sign of green.

The air was now crisp, the clouds were hanging low, giving us no idea of the dramatic landscape surrounding us. It was dark and freezingly cold when we reached our simple shelter. The night was shirt. We rose before sunrise, too curious of the things to come to cuddle in our warm sleeping bags. Still zero visibility, hope mixed with disappointment.

Then, as if somebody would have ripped a curtain open, the clouds cleared. Only now, in suddenly glistening morning sun, we saw where we were. We stood on the shores of Laguna Colorado, which came as red and as brown as a bottle of delicious Arthur Bryant’s BBQ sauce. Minutes later the perfect cone of a volcano shaped out of the remaining clouds and mirrored like a painting in the water. As if they would also rejoice in the sudden turn of the weather, three pink flaningos were flying in majestic formation just centimeters above the water surface. The entire landscape, except the alkaline lagoon, was like sugared by the nightly advent of fresh snow.  We climbed a little hill gaining sight of another epic image: Endless plains enfolded behind another lagoon which reflected the now brilliant blue sky, filled with thousands of flamingos.

The dirt road towards the Chilean border further climbed, up to 5000 m. In the midst of the South American summer we had now arrived in deep winter, masses of fresh-fallen snow made navigating difficult. Suddenly there were columns of smoke shooting like a miracle sky-high out of this empire of smoke. We had arrived at the geysers and hot springs of Sol de Mañana, my first drive-in geyser ever. We jumped out of the car and Gabriela, the little daughter of our driver accompanying us with her cooking mother on the entire road trip, started snowballing me. A few kilometers further and a kilometer lower in altitude a natural hot pool offered relief from the cold and the winter, amidst an endless desert strewn with huge, lonesome boulders, lying around as senseless as they were beautiful. Llamas were trotting around, their brownish skin exactly matching the colour of the boulders. A coincidence hard to believe. It was surreally beautiful and the place was aptly named: Salvador Dalí Desert.

Shortly before Bolivia’s southwestern border with Chile, we reached Laguna Verde, a striking emerald-green lake in a desolate terrain and with another volcano towering above. I thought calling it another pearl in a string of pearls or just the icing of the cake. Never again and never before I have seen such a soothing symphony of nature, such a breathtaking harmony of colors, textures and natural wonders. I sometimes heard Bolivians lamenting the loss of Bolivia’s Pacific Ocean territory in a 1879 war to Chile. But why worry, I thought, when being in possession of the most beautiful landscape I have seen anywhere in the world?