Travel Planning

Beyond Uyuni: Bolivia's Criminally Undertouristed Parks of Torotoro, Sajama, and Samaipata

By Suzanna

Beyond Uyuni: Torotoro, Sajama, and Samaipata, Bolivia's underrated national parks. Routes, mini-itineraries, costs, and ground-traveller tips.

Ten times as many travellers plan for "Salar de Uyuni tours" each month as for "Sajama national park tour."

That gap, more than any visa rule or road condition, explains why Bolivia keeps getting mis-sold as a one-park country. The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is extraordinary, yes. And also the only answer Bolivia tourism has been giving for two decades to everyone.

But for those asking, “what else?”, here’s your answer.

There's a Bolivia beyond the salt flats: three of the country's best national parks sit off the average Bolivia tour package.

Torotoro is a deep canyon full of dinosaur footprints in the country's centre.

Sajama is the highest volcano in Bolivia wrapped in the highest forest on the planet, four hours west of La Paz.

Samaipata is a UNESCO-listed carved rock on the edge of Amboró National Park, three hours from Santa Cruz.

The barrier has never been distance. The barrier has been that nobody with a marketing budget bothered to tell the story.

What follows is a practical guide to all three: where each park is, what it actually looks like, how to get there, what to skip, and how to fit them into a wider Bolivia trip you were probably already planning. Most trips to Bolivia could fit at least one of these three in.

For more on planning a Bolivia trip, our guide on what first-time travellers get wrong is your next read.

Torotoro National Park: Dinosaurs, Canyons, and a Cave That Runs for Kilometres

Toro toro national park in Bolivia (most maps spell it Torotoro) sits in Potosí department. The jump-off town is Cochabamba, not Potosí, a quirk that catches every traveller who tries to plan the trip from the south. Cochabamba travel is mostly a hub-and-spoke affair, and Torotoro is the spoke worth taking. The drive is four hours on an unpaved road.

What the park delivers is a 165-square-kilometre slab of canyon country. A canyon to rival the Grand Canyon! The canyon walls hold the largest dinosaur tracksite ever discovered. The footprints here are clearer than the more famous ones at Sucre, which most travellers skip past on a bus to Potosí. Fossil turtle shells sit half-eroded out of the rock.

A four-and-a-half-kilometre cave called Umajalanta runs underneath, with a guided circuit involving wading and sliding. There is also a smaller canyon called Vergel, a waterfall at the bottom, and a maze of rock formations called Ciudad de Itas.

The park requires a guide. The cost of a guide is roughly the same whether you are one person or six. The trick we recommend is straightforward: arrive in Torotoro town, find four or five other travellers at your hostel, and split the guide. Internet-booked Torotoro Bolivia tours cost several times more for the same service. Bolivia guided tours booked locally in Cochabamba are cheaper and equally good. Spanish helps; English-speaking guides in Torotoro town are rare.

3-day Torotoro mini-itinerary:

• Day 1: Cochabamba to Torotoro by shared Truffi taxi, four hours. Acclimatise. Short walk to the canyon viewpoint at El Vergel if you arrive early.

• Day 2: Full guided circuit: dinosaur footprints, Umajalanta Cave, Ciudad de Itas.

• Day 3: Vergel waterfall descent and return. Truffi back to Cochabamba in the afternoon, or onwards to Sucre via Aiquile.

For travellers who would rather skip the group-assembly step, the 3-day Torotoro Geo Park itinerary from La Paz on Foot covers the same ground with a local operator vetted through Rerooted Travel's GSTC audit process. The same operator runs a 12-day Bolivia itinerary that goes Santa Cruz to Torotoro to La Paz to Uyuni, the cleanest way to add Torotoro to a wider Bolivia trip.

Parque Nacional Sajama: The Highest Forest on Earth, Four Hours from La Paz

Bolivia's Sajama National Park is the closest real wilderness to La Paz, and almost nobody goes.

A four-and-a-half-hour drive west on the road to Chile gets you to a village at 4,200 metres, with Bolivia's highest volcano rising behind it and a forest of Polylepis trees, also called quenua, growing at elevations no other tree on Earth reaches. Sajama national park tours from La Paz exist, but independent travel is genuinely easier.

What is in Sajama? Nevado Sajama, at 6,542 metres, non-technical to summit but exhausting thanks to the loose scree. A guide is required above base camp; below base camp, anyone can hike.

The Polylepis forest, genuinely the highest-elevation forest on the planet, worth seeing even if you have seen a hundred forests. Hot springs walking distance from the village, where travellers soak alone at 3,800 metres looking up at the 6,500-metre summit. Geysers further out require a vehicle and you can go stargazing in the hot springs afterwards. Wild vicuñas, herds of llamas, a laguna with flamingos at the base, and Aymara chullpas, ancient burial towers, on the surrounding hills. The official park service page on SERNAP lists the rest.

For travellers on Bolivia wildlife tours, the vicuña and flamingo sightings alone justify the drive out.

The altitude is what catches people out. Travellers who arrive without acclimatising in La Paz for at least two or three days have a rough time. We have multiple accounts of vomiting, insomnia, and headaches at 4,200 metres. The park is also genuinely cold at night, year round. Leave buffer days.

Sajama is one of the few places in Bolivia where the casual visitor does not need a tour. The hot springs and the base-camp hike are both doable independently. For the summit, a guide and proper gear are required. Solo travel works well for this side of Bolivia, and solo female travel is almost always documented with positive reports from the village.

The 4-day Sajama mini-itinerary:

• Day 1: La Paz to Sajama village by shared transport or private taxi, four and a half hours. Acclimatise. Hot springs in the late afternoon.

• Day 2: Hike to base camp of Nevado Sajama and back. Half a day each way if you move well.

• Day 3: Walk north from the village towards Tomarapi, through the Polylepis forest. Or, with a vehicle, the geysers and back.

• Day 4: Return to La Paz, or continue on to Uyuni via Patacamaya and Oruro, the route Redditors recommend for adding Sajama to a wider Bolivia salt flats trip.

This Bolivia tour package, which is a 6-day La Paz to Uyuni itinerary operated by La Paz on Foot, can be easily customised to detour to Sajama on the way west. For travellers planning to climb Nevado Sajama with a guided service, Sendas Altas is the long-established La Paz Bolivia tour operator to ask, running trips to the mountain since 2005.

Samaipata and the Edge of Amboró: A Carved Rock, a Mountain Bend, and Surprising Vineyards

A Samaipata tour is the easiest of the three to plan, and the easiest to misjudge.

Three hours by bus from Santa Cruz, the largest city in Bolivia's eastern lowlands, gets you to a small town at 1,650 metres elevation. The town is comfortable. The surroundings are not what most travellers expect from Bolivia. Tours of Samaipata, Bolivia, are easy to arrange from Santa Cruz, and day trips from Santa Cruz are also possible.

El Fuerte de Samaipata is the main reason people come. UNESCO listed it in 1998. It is a single enormous rock carved with geometric patterns, figures, and channels by the Chanè culture, with Inca additions on top and a Spanish-built settlement on top of that.

Three cultures, one rock.

The site costs around 200 bolivianos to visit on a guided tour, or around 60 bolivianos by taxi, with the driver waiting 30 minutes for free. A taxi is enough. The tour adds commentary, not access.

Beyond El Fuerte, the area opens out. Cuevas is a waterfall and swimming hole a short drive from town.

The helechos gigantes trail goes through giant ferns that predate the surrounding landscape by millions of years.

Amboró National Park sits just to the west, and Refugio Los Volcanes near Bermejo is the one access point with signed trails leading into the park.

El Codo de los Andes, the "Elbow of the Andes," is a three-to-four-hour hike on rough roads, recommended with a guide. There are vineyards. Few visitors know that Bolivia has wine country, and a chunk of it sits near Samaipata.

Two days is enough to see almost everything. The town is also the only low-altitude rest stop of the three parks covered here, useful for travellers coming off a hard stretch at altitude.

The 2-day Samaipata mini-itinerary:

• Day 1: Santa Cruz to Samaipata by bus, three hours. El Fuerte in the afternoon by taxi. Vineyard visit if time allows.

• Day 2: Cuevas waterfall in the morning. Helechos gigantes trail or, with a guide, El Codo de los Andes in the afternoon. Return to Santa Cruz, or bus onwards to Sucre (backtrack through Santa Cruz for the reliable connection).

For travellers on a longer Bolivia itinerary, Rerooted Travel's 14-day Bolivia itinerary includes Samaipata as the second stop after Santa Cruz, before continuing west to Sucre, Potosí, Uyuni, and Lake Titicaca. For Samaipata-only Santa Cruz Bolivia tours, the same operator runs Santa Cruz Bolivia travel day trips on request.

Putting It All Together: Routes, Costs, and a Few Hard Truths

The cleanest way to visit all three parks in one Bolivia trip is to start in Santa Cruz and move west.

Samaipata first, since it is the closest to Santa Cruz and the lowest in altitude. Santa Cruz is also the best city to visit in Bolivia for kicking off an east-to-west Bolivia trip. Then fly or bus to Cochabamba for Torotoro, three days minimum. Then bus to La Paz, with Sajama as a four-day detour before or after the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia's flagship salt flat. Sajama also works as one of the more rewarding day trips from La Paz, Bolivia, if you can spare the drive back.

The whole loop is realistic in three weeks; a 3-week Peru and Bolivia trip is also doable, with Samaipata as the Bolivia starting point after crossing from Lima or Cusco.

Bolivia cost of travel runs roughly USD 60 to USD 100 per day if you are travelling mid-range, less if you are willing to share transport and stay in hostels. The three parks covered here are all cheaper than a Bolivia salt flats tour, which starts around USD 150 for a three-day Uyuni salt flats tour from La Paz and rises sharply from there.

For a fuller Bolivia travel transport guide, check out the "La Paz to Uyuni: Bus, Flight, or Tour Package" post, which covers the salt flat logistics.

Bolivia adventure travel does not have to mean Uyuni only; adventure tours of these three parks are quieter, cheaper, and in many ways more interesting.

Bolivia escorted tours through a vetted operator are the higher-comfort option; private tours are the most flexible; group tours are the budget choice. All three parks can be done independently if you speak some Spanish.

Our destinations catalogue lists Bolivia itineraries across all three regions.

Two warnings apply to all three. The first is altitude. Sajama and Torotoro both sit above 3,000 metres, and Sajama sits at 4,200. Acclimatise in La Paz, Sucre, or Samaipata first. The second is bloqueos, the Bolivian protest roadblocks that can shut the only road in or out of a park for days. Check current conditions here or here before committing to dates, and leave buffer days in any Bolivia itinerary.

The best months to visit Bolivia are May to October, the dry season. November to April is wetter, which makes the Salar de Uyuni mirror effect possible but makes the unpaved road into Torotoro worse. May and September are the best months within that window: dry, cooler, and outside the peak domestic holiday weeks of late July and early August. For Bolivia trekking tours, the Sajama base camp hike and Torotoro's canyon circuits are both worthwhile.

Suzanna is a lifestyle and culture writer. For Rerooted Travel she turns research, interviews, and a serious case of wanderlust into pieces that bring far-flung corners of the world to life. One well-told story at a time!