A Road Trip Through the Andes, the Altiplano and the World’s Most Dangerous Road

This is the first post in a series documenting a 22-day road trip through Peru and Bolivia — Lima to Uyuni, the Andes to the Altiplano. Two people, two countries, one trusted 4Runner, and one guide who slept well in the back seat. If you’re new here, this is the place to start. Some people collect stamps. We collect roads.

Some trips are a pilgrimage. Machu Picchu had been on the list for years — a distant, half-formed ambition that kept getting bumped by Siberia, or Kyrgyzstan, or Vietnam. Peru and Bolivia finally got their turn in 2024.

After self-driving through Kyrgyzstan with a group, we wanted to do it alone. Peru was straightforward — a good Peruvian travel agent named Annelies sorted it cleanly. Bolivia was another matter. Other agents couldn’t make it work, so we went back to Annelies. She did her best but couldn’t guarantee full self-drive, so Bolivia came with a guide. We accepted the compromise.

It started with Lima. Fourteen courses. One of them was guinea pig.

It ended with the world’s most dangerous road.

In between: the Nazca Lines, Machu Picchu, a floating village on Lake Titicaca, the largest salt flat on earth, geothermal fields at nearly 5,000 metres, flamingos in a red lagoon, and a police officer with a radar gun who was perfectly pleasant about the whole thing.

Pablo had warned us about that last one.

The roads keep getting longer. We’re not complaining.