Bolivia: Cholitas, Salt Flats and the World's Highest Capital City
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La Paz is the world's highest administrative capital, sitting at 3,640 metres above sea level in a canyon carved into the altiplano — the high plateau that runs across the Andes through Bolivia and Peru. Arriving by air, visitors often feel the altitude before they leave the airport: shortness of breath, headache, a general sense that the body is negotiating something. Locals drink coca tea. It helps.
The cholitas — Aymara and Quechua women in their traditional dress of layered skirts, embroidered blouses, and distinctive bowler hats tilted at precise angles — are one of Bolivia's most vivid cultural images. The bowler hat arrived in Bolivia in the 1920s, imported from Europe for railway workers. According to the most popular story, a shipment arrived too small for the European men and was sold to indigenous women instead. They adopted it and made it their own. Today the hat's tilt signals marital status: straight means married, tilted to the side means available. The cholitas have also taken up wrestling — cholita wrestling, performed in full traditional dress, has become a genuine entertainment tradition in El Alto.
The Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat: 10,000 square kilometres of blinding white at 3,656 metres altitude. In the rainy season, a shallow layer of water turns it into the world's largest mirror, reflecting the sky so perfectly that the horizon disappears. It is one of the most disorienting and beautiful landscapes on earth.
