Hike to Quebrada Palala

It is about three kilometers walk through the suburbs of Tupiza from the town center – by road or on track torso – to the place where the river Palala broke its way through red rock ridge. From here slowly begins the interesting part of this trip.

You can see rock towers around you. From here you will walk only about a kilometer along a dusty road leading to Altiplano before this road turns sharply left and begins to rise along the surrounding ridges.

Along the way you will pass „rock cathedral“ with perpendicular rock wall, which is a few tens of meters high. Even here you can see the beginning of erosion. There will be just a group of isolated towers from stronger material in a few thousand years.

The walk leads through half-deserted landscape, but it is fortunately not so hot here thanks to the altitude of almost 3,100 meters above sea level. On the horizon is already visible the first destination of this trip – rocky towns in the hillside of much higher hills.

You will probably not meet anyone in the remote parts of  quebrada. But there will be a lot of half-wild animals – altiplano donkeys, llamas, dogs, goats…

It's eight kilometers of walking from the red rock arches to the rock towns, so this trip is not very short and you also need to count with the way back. Some people come here in jeeps or on horseback, but they cannot enjoy possible ascents to worse accessible outlooks then.

The closer you are to the end of the valley, the more impressive are the rock formations around you.

After more than two hours walk from Tupiza you come to the junction of valleys below another impressive rock castle at about (3 350 m asl). If you turn left, you will reach the starting point – so-called „Tube Sillar trek“ – the way to breathtaking outlooks of El Sillar and to forgotten valleys. To the right is a small rock town, which is also worth a visit.

If you turn right at the crossroads, you will come to the amazing rock needle having height more than twenty meters. But compared to the neighboring rock castle it looks like a little crumb.

It is almost impossible to ascent to most local hills due to rock towns. If you want get to an outlook point, you need to get further and deeper into the side valleys.