
We spent most of our time in La Paz trying to find a responsible tour operator to go to the Bolivian Amazon basin with. La Paz is full of travel agencies and tour companies, and the more we read, the more disillusioned we became. Visiting the Amazon rainforest has been a childhood dream for me. I see it as a totally sacred place: home to the greatest biodiversity of flora and fauna in the world, and also one of the major sources of oxygen for the world. It is a living natural museum, that is being desecrated from all sides (Brazil, Peru and Bolivia) by big industry, poachers, hunters and loggers (both legal and illegal), and... us, tourists. While trying to find someone to go with, we heard stories of guides picking up anacondas, trapping and subsequently killing wildlife, just so tourists can hold the animals and have their photos taken, poking crocodiles with sticks, dumping rubbish and feeding monkeys. I was almost ready to just give up on the whole idea and not go at all, until we found the website of San Miguel del Bala: http://www.sanmigueldelbala.com/. We were thinking we would go as paying guests and then we noticed
Full Text Entry: nada es seguro: volunteering with an indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon
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Hey amigos!
Did you say that you saw pinks dolphins? We want to see the photo with dahna and the pink dolphin....
See you Cusco amigos...great choro trek in your company and very nice libanese dinner.
shhhh... that is still to come! (I have not got around to writing up the Pampas tour yet... I should write less I guess, then it would not take so long... :)
Wow, what a great thing to do Dahna, realise your childhood dream and volunteer at the same time! your butterfly with the blue wings is probably a Morpho - very famous amazonian butterfly. Lucky you. Kinda like seeing a Cairns birdwing (the green one) in Cairns, or the Ulysses (blue one on the pawpaw boxes). XXXClare btw, why is the date stamp on your blog so far ahead??
the date stamp is so far ahead because I am in holiday head space and date challenged! Thanks for pointing that out to me! haha. It is fixed now.
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the red and blue macawsEven though they look like little red dots, there is a pair of blue and red Macaws in one of those hole. They are such beautiful birds, and, when they fly over head they have super long tail feathers.
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with open wingsI was wondering why I could actually take a photo of it like this, and also why the colour was less vibrant than usual. I later realised it was dead, but atleast it gives you an idea of the colour.
Feliciano took us on a medicine tourIt was all in Sapnish, so we understood maybe 30 to 40 percent of it, but even that much was amazing. Feliciano himself is an amazing guy. I felt especially frustrated with my limited Spanish, because
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Hey amigos!
Did you say that you saw pinks dolphins? We want to see the photo with dahna and the pink dolphin....
See you Cusco amigos...great choro trek in your company and very nice libanese dinner.
shhhh... that is still to come! (I have not got around to writing up the Pampas tour yet... I should write less I guess, then it would not take so long... :)
Wow, what a great thing to do Dahna, realise your childhood dream and volunteer at the same time! your butterfly with the blue wings is probably a Morpho - very famous amazonian butterfly. Lucky you. Kinda like seeing a Cairns birdwing (the green one) in Cairns, or the Ulysses (blue one on the pawpaw boxes). XXXClare btw, why is the date stamp on your blog so far ahead??
the date stamp is so far ahead because I am in holiday head space and date challenged! Thanks for pointing that out to me! haha. It is fixed now.
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The text and photos of this article remain the copyright of the Author (Dahna McConnachie and Jonathan Edwards). Under no circumstances should the photos or text be used without the express written permission of the Author (Dahna McConnachie and Jonathan Edwards). If you wish to use or publish photos or text from this article - please
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