Blogs from Parque Ambue Ari, Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia, South America

The parque was primarily home to cats, with six jaguars, four ocelots, fifteen pumas and a Brazilian wild cat. However they had howler monkeys, a night monkey and a squirrel monkey. Their bird populace included pios, parabas, parrots, macaws and toucans. Sprinkled in for good measure was a tapir, a deer and tortoises. And that's just the animals the parque officially took care of, with no thought of the amazing array of wild animals living on parque lands - including the biggest tarantulas you could ever hope to see! I came out the other end having been bitten by a jaguar, a spider, a toucan, dozens of ants and millions of mosquitoes. But for the most part, I dealt with a select few animals. Ru The fist week or so at Parque Ambue Ari for me ... read more

Inti Wara Yassi Leaving Santa Cruz on a 7AM bus, we saw the first car smash of our trip on the outskirts of town. A truck had smashed head first in to a bus and the wreckage implied that neither driver had escaped with their life. Otherwise, the trip to Guarayos was a hot, sweaty affair and we arrived around 12:30ish. We went for a feed at a restaurant directly opposite the bus station where the middle-aged waitress took our expectations for Bolivian service to new lows. We ordered food, a bottle of coke, used the toilet (it didn´t flush and so had a couple of “presents” sitting in it), ate, paid and left. She treated us as though we had come in, spat in her face and called her a whore. We returned to the ... read more