On a natural high

Who needs mind-altering substances when you're backpacking through Bolivia, where you've got stunning landscapes and weird customs - and a shortage of oxygen?

- NICK DALL

You may have heard of Lake Titicaca while playing Trivial Pursuit. Located on the border between Bolivia and Peru at a giddy 3812 metres above sea level, and big enough to engulf 26 Vaal Dams (surface-wise), Titicaca is “the world’s highest navigable lake”.

But this indigo inland sea, fringed by snowcapped Andean peaks and dotted with ochre islands, is much more than a pub quiz factoid.

Back in 2006, I was teaching English in Mendoza, Argentina. I decided to spend the long summer school holidays exploring Bolivia.

Just getting to the lake is an adventure. The central bus station in La Paz (Bolivia’s capital) was designed by Gustav Eiffel - of Eiffel Tower fame - but its wrought-iron formality had long since given way to South American exuberance. Balloon-cheeked ticket touts rattled off destinations like horse-racing commentators and surly teens in balaclavas vied for the honour of scrubbing my putrid hiking boots.

After agreeing to a boot clean and wolfing down a salteña (the nation’s sweet, citrusy take on the Cornish pasty) I took my seat on the bus - an old blue-and-white number with frilly curtains and half a dozen saints hanging from the rearview mirror.

For a while it seemed like I’d get two seats to myself, but I should have known better. Bolivian buses only ever leave when they are full, and soon enough a pigtailed Aymara woman, clad in characteristic bowler hat, skirt and petticoats, squeezed into the seat next to mine.

After escaping La Paz’s claustrophobic cobbled streets, we were released into the big skies of the Andean escarpment, passing dormant volcanoes and snowmelt lakes; comical llamas and forlorn villages. At around noon, I caught my first glimpse of Lake Titicaca - and a narrow strait with no road across.