About this journey

Charaña station stands close to the Bolivian–Chilean border — approximately 1.3 miles inside Bolivia — and carries a particular weight in diplomatic history: on 8 February 1975, Bolivia's Hugo Banzer and Chile's Augusto Pinochet met here to discuss a potential coastal corridor that might end Bolivia's landlocked status. That corridor was never established, and the station has since remained a quiet frontier halt from which this journey departs eastward across the Altiplano.

The route descends from the high plain toward El Alto, a city that sits at an average elevation of 4,000 m above sea level — the highest major city in the world — with an estimated population of 943,558 recorded in 2020. From the cab, the Mi Teleférico cable-car system, which connects El Alto directly to central La Paz in the canyon below, becomes visible as the line approaches the edge of the plateau. The journey ends at Calacoto, having traced a path from a remote border station through one of the most dramatically elevated urban landscapes on the planet.