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Bruce Olson

(Chalalan Lodge, Aug 2005)

My trip to the Bolivian Amazon rainforest was the adventure of a lifetime! The trip to Bolivia, and my treatment by Beatriz, the highly professional and personable Adventure Life representative in country, was phenomenal. She handled every detail with a personal touch to make the entire trip a smooth and pleasurable experience.

My visit to Chalalan, the eco-friendly safari lodge deep within the rainforest, was a truly authentic and enchanting adventure in this remote area. The lodge has been built and run by the people of the Tacana village of San Jose de Uchupiamonas, a village with over 390 years of history. They make all the visitors to Chalalan feel extremely welcome with their warm and friendly hospitality and professional customer service expertise. They have created a well-supplied camping area in the middle of Madidi National Park, which their village controls under a title granted by the national government.

The entire Chalalan experience was set up so as to give us the greatest possible exposure to the surrounding rainforest and its animal and plant life. Our guides were the most knowledgeable wildlife experts imaginable, with an uncanny knack at finding the wildlife we were most interested in seeing. From tracing down a herd of over100 wild boars to naming and explaining the medicinal use of virtually every plant in sight, our guide never ceased to amaze us with his knowledge of the rainforest all around us. His greatest accomplishment may have been finding a 300-pound tapir and its cub along the Rayamalya River. As the tapir broke through the brush a mere 5 meters from our guide’s shoulder he threw himself to the ground so as not to startle the animals and also to give us a great view for picture shots.

I could not recommend an adventure trip more highly than this excursion into the beautiful country of Bolivia. This is the trip for anyone who wants to truly experience the rainforest from the eyes of the people who have lived there for centuries.



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