Bolivia is the only place I’ve been to where I didn’t set a return date. Back in 2014 I had recently graduated, had been working for a year without breaks, and my life spark had gone missing. Traveling has always kept me grounded, so I thought to myself, what better way to reconnect with my life goals than to sail away towards a new uncharted destination? I toured Bolivia from the eastern lowlands, through the Yungas, to the Puna grasslands in the Altiplano Plateau, the most extensive high plateau on Earth outside Tibet. These lands, once home to many pre-Columbian cultures—including the Inca Empire, the Aymaras and the Quechuas,—were the major mining hotspot in South America during the Spanish colonial period. Due to its landlocked nature and cultural resilience, and despite centuries of oppression and exploitation, Bolivia has prevailed as one of the most multiethnic societies in the world, with the highest number of official languages and one of the highest percentages of indigenous population. Its aboriginal heritage is invaluable and precious to the history of the Americas and humankind. Two particular sites struck me the most for their intrinsic magnificence and tragic history of enslavement: the Salar de Uyuni and the Cerro Rico de Potosí, respectively. The first one is the world's largest salt flat, a geographical marvel that turns into a giant mirror during a brief rainy season, while the latter is one of the largest silver reservoirs in the world, once the main silver supplier of the Spanish Empire. Walking through its soundless pitch black mines was touching, and felt like—as writer Eduardo Galeano once declared—flowing through the “open veins of Latin America.”