🇧🇴 Bolivia · The South, salt flats and deserts
There is a corner of southern Bolivia that looks lifted from a Western, and it is called Tupiza. Set in a valley among ravines and canyons of reddish earth, ringed by rock formations carved by wind and water, this town offers landscapes of cinematic drama: red walls, stone spires, cactus and trails made for riding on horseback. It is no accident that the region is tied to the legend of the American outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who met their end not far from here.
Tupiza is horse country: riding through the red ravines, just like in the movies, is the headline activity and one of the loveliest, most affordable experiences in southern Bolivia. Add to that trips to places with evocative names —the Quebrada de Palala with its rock spires, the Cañón del Inca, El Sillar— and the feel of a calm, genuine town, less touristy than other destinations in the country, with a friendlier climate than the high altiplano.
This guide walks you through Tupiza in a practical, warm way: the ravines and canyons around it, the rides and hikes, the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid trail, its role as an alternative gateway to the Salar de Uyuni (with the 4-day tour) and as a crossing point between Argentina and Bolivia. It is a destination that surprises people, ideal for anyone after different landscapes, gentle adventure and a slice of the far west in the heart of South America.
The Tupiza region has a long history going back to pre-Hispanic times, when it was inhabited by Andean peoples —such as the Chichas— and fell under the influence of the Inca Empire, which left traces in the area. In colonial times, its position in the south of Alto Perú, on the road between the mining highlands and northern Argentina, made it an important stop on trade and muleteer routes. During the wars of independence, southern Bolivia was the scene of battles and campaigns. In the 20th century, Tupiza gained international fame through a legendary episode: near here, in the mining region to the south, the famous American outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are said to have met their end, dying in a shootout in the village of San Vicente after fleeing North America (in 1908, according to the most widely repeated version), which made the area part of their legend. Beyond the myth, Tupiza has lived off mining in its surroundings, farming in its valleys and, increasingly, tourism, drawn by its red ravine landscapes, its horseback rides and its status as the southern gateway to the Salar de Uyuni. The full story, with the Chicha peoples, the Incas, independence and the outlaw legend, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The department of silver and of the salt flats: home of the Cerro Rico that financed the Spanish Empire and of the Casa de la Moneda, of the Salar de Uyuni —the largest salt desert in the world and one of the great lithium reserves— and of the colored lagoons of the Eduardo Avaroa Reserve, on the highest and most desolate altiplano in the country, cradle of the hero Eduardo Avaroa.
Read the history of Potosí →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
In Tupiza's main square there is a statue that sums up, without meaning to, the whole history of this town: that of the mining industrialist José Avelino Aramayo, the man whose company suffered, in 1908, the last robbery pulled off by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That the most famous outlaws of the Wild West came to die in a corner of red ravines in southern Bolivia is no accident: Tupiza was always a land of passage, of silver and of frontier. And that story starts long before the revolvers.
The first owners of these valleys were the Chichas, an Andean people with a reputation as warriors who gave their name to the whole region (today's provinces of Sud Chichas and Nor Chichas). They lived off farming in the valleys of the Tupiza river and its tributaries, off herding llamas and off trade between the altiplano and the lowlands to the south. When the Inca Empire expanded southwards in the 15th century, the Chichas were absorbed into the Tahuantinsuyo and given a very specific role: because of their military skill, the Incas used them as mitimaes, colonist-soldiers relocated to guard the empire's southeastern frontier against the unconquered peoples of the Chaco.
From that era there remain traces, roads and place names —such as the Cañón del Inca itself, on the outskirts of Tupiza— that recall how these valleys were one of the southern thresholds of the Andean world. That threshold status, as a land linking the altiplano with the south, would shape Tupiza's fate for the next five centuries.
The most widely repeated version holds that Tupiza was founded on 4 June 1574 by Captain Luis de Fuentes y Vargas, the same man who weeks later would found the Villa de Tarija, as he crossed these valleys heading south. The date is celebrated every year as the town's anniversary, though historians dispute it: there are earlier documents already mentioning a town called Tupiza, Topeza or Tupica, which suggests the settlement existed before any Spaniard 'founded' it. Either way, by the end of the 16th century Tupiza was already an established stop on one of the busiest roads in the Americas.
That road linked Potosí —the silver city, then one of the most populous in the world— with northern Argentina, Salta, Tucumán and, at the far end, the port of Buenos Aires. Through Tupiza's ravines passed mule trains loaded with silver, European goods coming up from the Río de la Plata, cattle, textiles and travelers of every kind. The region also had mines of its own: the hills of the Chichas hid silver veins worked at centers such as Chocaya, Portugalete and a freezing little village at 4,500 meters called San Vicente, which three centuries later would enter legend for other reasons.
In 1776, with the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, the whole Chichas region came under Buenos Aires, reinforcing that southward orientation you can still feel today: Tupiza always looked as much to Potosí as to Argentina. A land of muleteers, traders and miners, it reached the end of the colonial period being what it had always been: a crossroads where everything passed through.
Few travelers passing through Tupiza know that 25 kilometers from town, in a small village beside the river of the same name, the battle of Suipacha was fought: the first patriot victory of the entire South American war of independence. It was 7 November 1810: the Auxiliary Army sent by the First Junta of Buenos Aires, under General Antonio González Balcarce and accompanied by the junta member Juan José Castelli, defeated the royalist troops that days earlier had pushed it back at Cotagaita. Decisive in the victory was the local cavalry of the Chicha colonel Pedro Arraya: the descendants of the Chicha warriors were fighting for their land again.
That triumph opened the doors of Alto Perú to the patriots, though the war would be long and cruel: the region saw the armies of both sides pass through again and again, suffered looting and forced recruitment, and supplied fighters to the guerrillas of the 'republiquetas' that held out for fifteen years across the territory. Tupiza, because of its position on the royal road, was barracks, plunder and an unavoidable waypoint for every campaign in the south.
With the creation of Bolivia in 1825, the region was folded into the department of Potosí as the land of the Chichas. The 7th of November is still commemorated locally, and the Central Bank of Bolivia minted coins for the Suipacha bicentenary: the battle is one of the firmest historical points of pride in this corner of the country.
If Tupiza had a golden age, it owed it to one family: the Aramayos. José Avelino Aramayo, born in 1809 in the Chichas region, was one of the pioneers of modern Bolivian mining: he modernized silver extraction, pushed for railways and roads, and founded the trading and mining house that his descendants —his son Félix Avelino and his grandson Carlos Víctor— would turn into one of Bolivia's three great tin empires, alongside those of Simón Patiño and Mauricio Hochschild. The three made up the so-called 'rosca minera', the barons who dominated the country's economy until the 1952 revolution.
Unlike Patiño, who operated out of Oruro, the heart of the Aramayo empire was always in the south: the Compañía Aramayo de Minas en Bolivia worked the tin, silver and bismuth veins of the Chichas —with centers such as Chorolque and Quechisla— and had its base of operations in Tupiza. The town grew with the company: offices, workshops, housing for employees, and the railway that from 1925 connected it with Atocha, Uyuni and the Argentine border. The statue of Avelino Aramayo still presides over Tupiza's main square, and much of the architecture downtown dates from those decades of the mining boom.
It was precisely a shipment of Aramayo money —the payroll for the Quechisla mine— that drew in, in November 1908, two foreign robbers who had spent years fleeing southwards. With them, the history of Tupiza crossed for good with that of the Wild West.
On 4 November 1908, at a spot called Huaca Huañusca ('dead cow' in Quechua), two masked, armed men intercepted Carlos Peró, an employee of the firm Aramayo, Francke y Cía., who was traveling from Tupiza to the Quechisla mine carrying the payroll: some 15,000 bolivianos in cash. The holdup was quick, without a single shot, and the two gringos vanished into the ravines with the money and one of the company's brown mules. They were Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the most wanted bank and train robbers in the United States, who had spent seven years on the run across South America —first as ranchers in Argentine Patagonia, then as bandits again— with Pinkerton agency detectives on their trail.
News of the robbery raced across the south: military patrols and militias were sent out from Tupiza and Uyuni to close the roads. Two days later, on 6 November, the fugitives made their fatal mistake: they walked into the little mining village of San Vicente, at 4,500 meters, to ask for lodging and food. The local magistrate grew suspicious of the mule bearing the Aramayo brand and alerted a patrol spending the night in the village, under Captain Justo P. Concha. In the shootout that followed, that night and the early hours of 7 November, the two foreigners were cornered in the room where they were staying. At dawn they were found dead: one riddled with bullets, the other with a shot to the head, apparently fired by his own companion or by himself so as not to be taken alive.
The bodies were buried in the San Vicente cemetery without any firm identification, and that is where the legend began. The Pinkerton agency declared Parker and Longabaugh dead, and most historians accept that version; but in the United States, for decades, relatives and acquaintances swore they had seen Butch Cassidy alive years later. In 1991, a forensic expedition led by the celebrated anthropologist Clyde Snow exhumed the grave attributed to the bandits in San Vicente: the DNA matched neither of them but, in all likelihood, a German miner named Gustav Zimmer. The mystery is still open, the 1969 film with Paul Newman and Robert Redford made it immortal, and today you can visit San Vicente from Tupiza and stand on the spot where —perhaps— the era of the Western outlaw came to an end.
The setting for all this history is itself a character: the ravines and canyons of red earth around Tupiza owe their color to sediments rich in iron oxides, carved over millions of years by water and wind. The Quebrada de Palala with its vertical spires, El Sillar with its rolling, almost lunar relief, the narrow Cañón del Inca and the Puerta del Diablo are the result of that patient erosion on soft rock, a landscape so reminiscent of the deserts of the American West that its reputation as the 'Bolivian far west' needs no explaining. You do not have to stretch your imagination to understand why two outlaws from Utah and Pennsylvania moved around here as if at home.
For much of the 20th century, Tupiza lived off mining in its surroundings and farming in its valleys, with the southern railway line as the umbilical cord between the altiplano and the Argentine border. The mining decline after the collapse of tin hit the region hard, but from the 1990s tourism gradually took over: first backpackers crossing in from Argentina at Villazón, then travelers from all over the world drawn by the rides through the ravines —the headline activity, pure Western style— and by a route that became a classic: the 4-day tour to the Salar de Uyuni leaving from Tupiza, which crosses the colored lagoons and the Reserva Eduardo Avaroa in the opposite direction to the traditional circuit and lets you acclimatize to the altitude gradually.
Today Tupiza embodies the meeting of all its histories: the warrior heritage of the Chichas, the colonial silver road, the first victory of independence at Suipacha, the Aramayo empire, the legend of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and contemporary adventure tourism. Few small towns in Bolivia pack so much past into such a cinematic landscape — and that combination of far west, history and Chicha hospitality is exactly what makes Tupiza stick with anyone who passes through.