Regional Travel Chapters
A high-altitude overland route through Peru, Bolivia and into Chile, timed around the dry season and built around buses that are far nicer than their price suggests.
By Daniel Okoye8 min readUpdated April 8, 2026
Fly into Lima Jorge Chavez (LIM), which has the best long-haul connections on the continent's Pacific side, and spend two nights in Miraflores or Barranco before heading up to altitude. Pariwana Hostel in Barranco runs about 45 soles a night and has one of the better hostel bars in Lima. Flying straight from sea level into Cusco at 3,400 metres without a buffer is how a lot of people's trips start with a splitting headache and a wasted first day.
From Lima, fly to Cusco (a bus is technically possible but takes over 20 hours through mountain roads and isn't worth it) on LATAM or Sky Airline for around 60 to 100 USD one-way if booked a few weeks out.
Cusco is the anchor of the whole route and deserves four or five days minimum, both for acclimatisation and because the hostel scene here is excellent. Pariwana Cusco and Wild Rover both sit around 35 to 45 soles a night with genuinely social common areas, and Selina's Cusco outpost, while pricier at 50 to 60 soles, has better rooms if you want an occasional upgrade.
Use Cusco as a base for the Sacred Valley (Pisac, Ollantaytambo) by colectivo, which costs a few soles per leg, and book Machu Picchu access at least a month ahead in high season; the cheapest route in is the train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes on Peru Rail or the pricier Inca Rail, then a bus up to the site itself.
From Cusco, a tourist bus to Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca takes about six hours and costs 40 to 60 soles, with a stop at Andahuaylillas. Puno itself is unremarkable but the lake crossing to the Uros floating islands is worth a morning. From Puno, cross the border to Copacabana, Bolivia by bus (about three hours including the border stop, 25 to 35 soles), then continue to La Paz.
La Paz sits at over 3,600 metres and the altitude hits harder here than in Cusco for most people. Wild Rover La Paz and Loki Hostel both run 60 to 90 bolivianos a night and are firmly on the party-hostel end of the spectrum; Adventure Brew Hostel is a calmer alternative at a similar price with better food.
From La Paz, an overnight bus to Uyuni (about ten hours, 100 to 150 bolivianos) sets up the classic three-day salt flat tour into the Salar de Uyuni, typically ending at the Chilean border town of San Pedro de Atacama rather than looping back. This is the single best add-on on this entire route and most tour operators in Uyuni run it for 700 to 900 bolivianos including meals and basic accommodation in salt-brick hostels en route.
From San Pedro de Atacama, fly out of Calama (CJC) back to Santiago and onward home, or if you'd rather close the loop, backtrack to La Paz and fly out of El Alto International (LPB), which has decent connections to Lima, Santiago and Bogota.
Run this route during the dry season, May to October, since the Salar de Uyuni tours and Sacred Valley hiking both get considerably harder and less scenic in the wet months, and some Bolivian roads become genuinely unsafe. Altitude sickness is the real limiting factor on this trip, more than distance or budget; take the acclimatisation days seriously, drink the coca tea everyone offers you, and don't schedule a trek for your first 48 hours anywhere above 3,000 metres.
This route rewards patience more than most. The buses are long, the border crossing at Copacabana involves standing in more than one queue, and the payoff, watching sunrise over the Salar with the salt flat turning pink at your feet, is not something you can get to any faster by throwing money at it.
Hostel finds and fare rules worth knowing, nothing else.
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