MINING TUPIZA'S MARVELS.

• Author: Buck, Daniel

Lured by spectacular rock formations and historic landmarks, tourists are discovering the enchantment of this once-prosperous trade center in southern Bolivia

It's no contradiction to say that southern Bolivia's wide open spaces have been a crossroads for centuries: The earliest inhabitants fought both the Incas and the Spanish there, muleteers from the region's many mines fed their stock on the rich barley plains, and foreign travelers--from a couple of American toughs named Butch and Sundance to the more genteel set--have long been drawn to the area's bucolic river valleys, astonishing mountainscapes, and peaceful towns.

A century ago American travel writer Marie Robinson Wright was enraptured by Tupiza, the little provincial capital in the department of Potosi: "Nowhere are the valleys more picturesque, the skies bluer, or the fragrance of flowers and shade of trees more attractive to the sight than in this charming border city."

And today, Tupiza has been discovered anew. "We now see as many visitors in one week as we used to see all year," exclaims Beatriz Michel Torres. Her partner, Fabiola Mitru de Sanchez, chimes in: "Tourism has increased dramatically." And not a moment too soon, as the region's traditional mining and agricultural sectors have declined. Torres and Mitru de Sanchez operate Tupiza Tours.

The tourists--chiefly Britons, Australians, Americans, Germans, and Israelis--are attracted by the spectacular scenery and the hiking, jeeping, horseback riding, and mountain biking. Horseback excursions are particularly popular. In the immediate vicinity of Tupiza are vertiginous rock formations unique to Bolivia--El Sillar, for example, where the road mounts a sharp ridge between two valleys; the Quebrada de Palala, a tributary of the Tupiza River, which is walled by fantastic red rock formations; and El Canon, a narrow, serpentine valley just a short hike west of town.

Further away, but still attainable by jeep on a day trip, are San Vicente and Portugalete. American outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end in San Vicente, a now-dormant mining camp sprawled in a windy, desolate bowl some 14,500 feet in the Andes. They spent several months in and around Tupiza in 1908. Butch's alias, Santiago Lowe, appeared in a local newspaper listing of hotel guests just before he and the Sundance Kid held up a mine payroll at the foot of Huaca Huanusca, Dead Cow Hill, north of town. The bandits died, apparent suicides, after being cornered a few days later in San Vicente by a military patrol. They were buried in an unmarked grave in the village cemetery.

Further west some 160 miles, in the far corner of Bolivia close to the Chilean border, are the Lagunas Colorada and Verde--yes, one is red and the other green--and countless unnamed saline-rimmed lagoons and marshes dotted with high-Andean flamingos. Abandoned mines gape. Wind-seared rock formations jut out of rumpled sand dunes. One could be on Mars. Indeed...