altiplano
1
8.5
- noun
- /ˌæl.tɪˈplɑː.noʊ/
- The following day, I venture out of the city to the parched expanse of the altiplano or high plain.
- Bolivian altiplano
- southern altiplano
Examples
-
Arriving as an outsider to take up residence on the Bolivian altiplano, I did not realize that even the landscape was beyond my reach.
Academic text (1999) -
Jan was relatively new to altiplano pastoral work.
Academic text (2002) -
Here on the altiplano, living on thin air, they were prisoners of altitude.
Fiction book (1999) -
At the edge of the altiplano, the road turned into a series of switchbacks dug into the side of the mountain.
Fiction book (1999) -
La Paz is built in a crater-like valley of the altiplano or high plain.
Academic text (2004) -
Indians, like llamas, adapt without fuss to the thin air of the altiplano, 15,000 feet up.
Fiction book (1991) -
The cold climates of Patagonia and the Andean altiplano discourage agriculture.
Academic text (2000) -
In the early 1980s, they expanded their missionary activity among the Aymara, inheriting an altiplano parish from another pastoral team.
Academic text (2002) -
In telling or hearing a folk tale, there is a simultaneous vision of that landscape, and seeing these places, one feels the wide open altiplano, the dry wind, and the distance opened between Azanaques and Thunapa, who once lived side by side.
Academic text (1999) -
The vast expanse of the altiplano offers breathtaking views of snow-capped mountains and shimmering lakes.
Synonyms
1
9.9
A high, cold treeless area in the central Andes
How High
Surface Forms
Etymology
The word altiplano comes from Spanish and literally means 'high plain'. It joins alti- ('high'), as in altitude, and plano ('plain' or 'flat land'), so an altiplano is a high, flat area in the mountains.