Maragua Crater Altitude: How High You Go and How It Feels

The numbers

Sucre sits at about 2,810 metres. The station nearest the city, which supplies the temperatures on this site, is at just over 2,900. The trek begins on a ridge higher than either and descends from there.

By Bolivian standards that is moderate. La Paz is well above 3,600, Potosi higher still, and the altiplano beyond them higher again. Sucre is frequently recommended as the place to acclimatise before going up, which is exactly what it is good for.

Moderate does not mean negligible. At 2,800 metres there is roughly a quarter less oxygen in a breath than at sea level, and a body that arrived yesterday has not begun to adjust.

What it actually feels like

For most people, mild breathlessness on stairs, a headache in the first day or two, poor sleep on the first night, and a general sense that everything is fractionally harder than it should be.

It is not dramatic and it is not usually dangerous at this height. What it is, reliably, is enough to turn a pleasant ten-hour day into a long one if you have arrived from sea level the previous evening.

Symptoms to take seriously rather than push through: a headache that will not lift, nausea, dizziness, or breathlessness at rest. Those are altitude sickness rather than adjustment, and the answer is to descend rather than to continue.

The reason it is worse on the first night than on the third is that the body responds by making changes that take days rather than hours: breathing deeper, producing more red blood cells, adjusting the chemistry of the blood. None of that is available on demand. All any visitor can do is give it time and stop asking for performance while it happens.

Why downhill helps, and what it does not fix

The walking on this tour is a descent. That matters, because climbing at altitude is where the difficulty is: the cardiovascular demand of going up is what exposes a body that has not adjusted.

Descending is far easier on the lungs. It is harder on the knees, and on uneven stone paving it asks for balance and attention rather than fitness.

What downhill does not fix is the altitude of the start. You are still at height for the entire day, still breathing thin air, and still losing water faster than you would lower down.

The trail dropping away from the ridge into the valley

Acclimatising, which is mostly patience

Two days in Sucre before this trek. That is the practical advice and it is worth taking. Walk the city, go up the hills in it slowly, sleep two nights, and let a body do what it does without being asked to perform.

Drink far more water than feels reasonable. Dry air at altitude removes water through the lungs faster than most people notice, and a good proportion of what visitors call altitude sickness is ordinary dehydration.

Go easy on alcohol for the first evening or two. It is the other half of the same problem.

There is one more piece of advice that sounds too simple to matter and does. Walk slowly, deliberately, more slowly than feels dignified, particularly uphill and particularly in the first days. The instinct to keep up with a group is what turns a manageable altitude into an unpleasant one, and nobody on this tour is in a hurry.

How fit you need to be

Not very. This is not a demanding trek by any objective measure: two hours, downhill, on a made road, with a guide setting the pace and a vehicle waiting at the bottom.

What it wants is ordinary walking fitness and reasonably sound knees. If you can walk for two hours on rough ground at home, you can do this after a couple of days at altitude.

If two hours on uneven surfaces is genuinely difficult for you, say so at the time of booking rather than at the trailhead. It is a small group and a private vehicle, and there is more flexibility in that arrangement than in a coach tour.

The sun, which nobody warns you about enough

At 2,800 metres there is a great deal less atmosphere between you and the sun, and the ultraviolet is correspondingly stronger. The air is cool, the breeze is pleasant, and people burn badly without ever feeling hot.

A hat with a brim, sunglasses and sunscreen, applied before you set off rather than when you notice. The back of the neck and the ears are where first-time visitors to the Andes get caught.

This is not a minor comfort point. A serious burn on day two of a trip ruins the rest of it.

A related point: cloud is not protection. Some of the worst burns visitors collect in the Bolivian highlands happen on overcast days, when the temperature drops, the glare disappears and the ultraviolet does not. Cover up on the grey days as thoroughly as on the bright ones.

If you feel unwell on the trail

Say so early. Guides on this route deal with altitude constantly and would far rather hear about a headache at the top than about a collapse at the bottom.

The vehicle meets the walk at Chaunaca, and the day is built so that the walking section can be shortened or skipped without unravelling the rest of it. A first aid kit is carried.

The general rule at altitude anywhere is that going down fixes almost everything, and this walk goes down. That is a reassuring shape for a first day of walking in the Andes.

Before you book

Acclimatising, step by step

1. Arrive and do nothing

   The first evening is not the night to go out. Sleep, drink water, and let the adjustment start.

2. Walk the city slowly

   Sucre has hills. Use them at a pace that feels absurdly slow and you will feel the difference the next day.

3. Two nights before the trek

   The single most useful thing you can do. Book this tour for your third day rather than your first.

4. Drink more than feels sensible

   Dry air at altitude takes water through the lungs. A lot of what visitors call altitude sickness is dehydration.

5. Cover up before you set off

   Hat, sunglasses, sunscreen. The air is cool and the ultraviolet is not.