3 Best Sights in Southern Bolivia, Bolivia

The showpiece of Potosí is the Royal Mint, built in 1773 at a cost of $10 million USD. This massive stone structure, where coins were once minted with silver from nearby Cerro Rico, takes up an entire city block. It now holds Bolivia's largest and most important museum. On display are huge wooden presses that fashioned the strips of silver from which the coins were pressed, as well as an extensive collection of the coins minted here until 1953. There's also an exhibit of paintings, including works by Bolivia's celebrated 20th-century artist, Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas. A guard accompanies all tours to unlock each room as it's visited. The building is cool, so bring along a sweater. To see everything will take about three hours. There is an extra charge for photography or video.

One of Bolivia's most spectacular sites, the Salar de Uyuni is the world's highest salt flat, at 3,650 meters (11,975 feet) above sea level, and also the largest, at 10,582 square km (4086 square mi). Once part of a prehistoric salt lake covering most of southwestern Bolivia, it still extends through much of the departments of Potosí and Oruro. As well as the vast expanse of salt, you'll find a series of eerie, translucent lagoons tinted green and red due to high copper and sulfur contents. Living on the lagoons are flamingos (also tinted green and red), rheas, vicuñas, and foxes. Driving across the salt flat, whether in the dry or rainy season, is a unique experience.

Three miles outside of Sucre is, unexpectedly, one of the world's most important paleontological sites, with more than 5,500 dinosaur footprints petrified into a sandstone cliff. Over the past 68 million years, what was a well-traveled clay beach has been raised by the same tectonic movements that created the Andes into this 360-foot-high cliff. The footprints were exposed during work by a local cement factory, and although now protected within the park, are under serious threat from erosion. There are tours at noon and 1 pm that take you right up to the footprints; make sure to get there on time, and wear closed shoes (no sandals). The park itself is not just for kids, with an interesting time line and a dozen seriously impressive full-size replicas of dinosaurs. Transport (the Sauromovil) leaves from Plaza 25 de Mayo in front of the cathedral at 9:30, noon, and 2:30 every day and costs (Bs)15.