One of the least visited countries in South America has some great history, birding, and Asado!!!

Paraguay is a country that is not often visited on the list of countries in South America, compared to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. However it does offer a wide range of activities from the historic center of Asuncion to the many birding and wildlife activities among the Rio Paraguay as well as the Chaco region.

First off, just like its neighbors of Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, grilling or Asado is king here. It is not uncommon to go into a supermarket to find some of the best cuts of meat for more than half the price you will find in USA, UK, or Europe. It is also not uncommon to go into a steak restaurant and order twice as much food as you would in the above countries and pay three times less of the price.

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The Paraguay River pretty much runs through the country and the biggest city on this river is Asuncion. I took a full day excursion as I have heard the birding and wildlife is good along the river. I was extremely impressed with so many different species of birds. I also learned some of their names in Spanish which was quite interesting. Among some of the species I saw were Egrets, Long Necked Heron, Cormorant, three types of Kingfishers including the Amazon Kingfisher, American wood stork, Black headed vulture, Blue Egret, Osprey, Pink Spoonbills, lapwings, and Tiger Egret among many others. As I like to photograph Kingfishers as they are on the move a lot, it is always a challenge, especially photographing birds in with the sun in a bad position. An added bonus to this was an old church from the 1860s that was built for the then president of Paraguay. It had fallen into disrepair but looks like there is efforts underway to restore it.

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An added bonus to all the birding was near the late afternoon we ran into a family of Howler Monkeys that were feasting up on the trees from the banks of the river. With the males being more dark than the females and babies, these guys were hard to photograph, but luckily they were interested in the boat and kept looking down. If only the sun was in a good direction, their features could become more clear. However it was nice to watch them hang around in the trees going about their everyday life and them being just as much interested in me as I was of them.

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Asuncion has a lot to offer and tourism is not a big thing here. With an up and coming district with restaurants and bars on every corner, to the historic center with new buildings popping up next to old buildings, this city is great for photography. It is not as bustling as other South American cities, but offers a good glimpse into a relaxed lifestyle. Mercado 4 was a bustling market where you can pretty much find anything your heart desires and more!!!! I did do a historical tour to learn about the fascinating history after Spanish colonization up until the present and saw some very interesting sites from where the government operates to different monuments scattered about the historic center.

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Overall I was extremely surprised by this country and there is a lot more to visit here. It may be one of the best kept secrets in South America and I believe within a few years the tourism will start picking up, so people can travel around this incredible place!!!

The land of intrigue and extremes

Bolivia has always fascinated me since I was a kid. It is a diverse landlocked country bordered by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay Chile, and Peru aptly named a Plurinational state because of its many ethnicity and spoken languages.

It is indeed a land of extremes as you have the jungles that are a part of the Bolivian Amazon in the north east and south east which is hot and humid and filled with birds and wildlife and flora. In the southwest you have the high and dry desert of Potosi Department which has one of the most spectacular land forms in the world and has the biggest salt flat in Uyuni. In the north west you have the highest capital in the world in La Paz which is at an elevation of 3700 meters or 12000 feet above sea level. Just above La Paz you have the newest city in the world called El Alto which is where the airport is and is about 4100 meters or 1300 feet. In fact, parts of Bolivia are so high up that they have 3 of the 8 highest cities in the world.

As I spent a long time traveling this great country, I have divided it into three sections with great photos from each:

La Paz and El Alto- Two of the highest cities in the world with a melting pot of cultures

The Bolivian Amazon- A great way to see part of the Amazon with a wide array of flora and fauna

Uyuni Salt Flats- Biggest Salt Flat in the world with beautiful lakes, strange land forms, and a wide array of animals.

Two of the highest elevation cities in the world that never stop going!!!!

These two cities (some of the highest in the world) are a melting pot of great food, great people, and great scenery. I stayed ten days in this area in order to get out and walk around and photograph people doing their everyday life. While they used to be one city, El Alto little by little became its own entity and now arguably outnumbers La Paz in people, but that is unverified. I would have to rank La Paz as one of my top ten cities in the world as the photography is amazing and the street food all over is some of the best I have had.

One of the best places to stay which I spent ten nights in is Patio de Piedra Hotel Boutique. It is a great mix of what an old villa looked like in the city and has been renovated to turn it into a hotel with ten rooms and some of the most beautiful furniture. The staff is great as Hernan was always there to help me out and get me to and from the airport and the food in the restaurant is extremely good.

El Alto

The best way to get up there is of course the cable car. With 11 different lines all named by color, I believe this is the best way to see both La Paz and El Alto. Of course the most interesting thing to see in El Alto is the Chollets. These colorful buildings are usually used for different events- weddings, quinceaneras, work parties, holiday parties, etc. Although some of them actually have units of people living in them. Some of them have themes while some of them are very plain. I expect in the next 20 years a lot of these buildings will be extremely colorful.

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Another popular excursion you will find around El Alto is Chollita wrestling. These females clad in bright clothes with huge skirts is definitely fun to watch. Very similar to Lucha Libre wrestling in Mexico, the ref is always the heel which usually take the side of the female heel. With my seats above the ring I was able to get some really good photos!!!

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The city cemetery has been around a long time. As I was there before Dia De Los Muertos, I saw the beautiful street art by different artists being painted next to the tombs. They combine many Christian ideas with ideas they had before Spain arrived which makes for very interesting stories. Some of the graves are very intrinsic while others are very plain. It was interesting seeing people there to go to relatives or friends graves and while most of them were not grieving, they were instead celebrating. This was one of the most interesting cemeteries I have been to ranking it up there with Recoleta in Buenos Aires and Pere Lechaise in Paris.

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Even though the witches market in La Paz in the city center is the popular place to go for tourists, the good one is up in El Alto which gets very few tourists. Here a lot of people go to get rid of bad omens by these medicine people who have all kinds of herbs and/or liquids at their disposal, they have been known to perform miracles on different people and often have a lot of visitors. I got to get my fortune read and we will see if any of it comes true…

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La Paz

The city of La Paz is a thriving, bustling, and colorful city. You can walk every which direction and always have something to look at. From the old churches, to the narrow streets, this city has it all.

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The people of La Paz seems to be always on the go as the streets are always busy and people are always jumping into mini busses going to work or to meet friends. Other people you can see sit around from their street stalls selling stuff and others just sitting in front of the church while children run around…

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Finally, just a couple of hours out of La Paz is the mysterious civilization of Tinawaku. This civilization predates the Incas by a few hundred years and was probably at its height around 1200-1000 years ago. Here you can find decorated ceramics, a system of buildings and mysterious monolithic structures. The subterranean temple has some mysterious heads of people and/or aliens (some peoples theories) around. If you walk around the site of the Puma Punku, you may find some cut stones. Due to the complexity of the stonework many have theorized the existence of aliens. I noticed some of the cuts were very precise, but this is just a theory.

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These two cities which are next to each other was some of the best mix of culture and food and photography I have had in a long time. I will be sure to come back here as there is so much more to explore around the city and it will always be bustling…

One of the most picturesque deserts in the world

I have said that I will never see a desert more beautiful than in Namibia in my life, however I think that Namibia has some competition. If you want to see the biggest salt flat in the world, Lakes with three different species of flamingos shuffling their beaks for food, colorful mountains with alpacas, llamas, and vicunas running around them, beautiful sunrises and sunsets peaking over the vast land, rolling valleys with little streams, and hot springs that steam all hours of the day and a beautiful red lake, then you need to visit this place. It was also used in the filming Star Wars Episode 8- The Last Jedi as the planet Crait.

Of course when going here, you must do the obligatory photos with other people that show different depths of field and doing different crazy things…

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The train graveyard was interesting to see as it used to be used as a cargo train across this vast desert, however with it being so close to the town, it is often overrun with tourists all the time, but I was still able to get some interesting photos…

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The salt flats are vast. You look for miles and you still cannot see the end of them, only a few small mountains dot this barren and endless landscape

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Besides the beautiful salt flats I got a surprise Which was seeing my first culpeo which is an Andean fox most closely related to a wolf or Jackal. Another very interesting animal up on the altiplano was vizcacha which is an animal that resembles a long tailed rabbit.

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I may have got the best photos of llamas, alpacas and Vicunas due to the great sun and backdrops in the area. A lot of them were wild but some were out to feed from local farms. They were decorated with beautiful colored ribbons and were always interested to see humans, some of them scared, others very relaxed..

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One of the most beautiful parts of this land is the lakes that dot the landscape, most of them not freshwater and are instead salt water with different other minerals in them to give them either a red glow or make the water very reflective. With three of the worlds six Flamingo species found here- Chilean, Andean and James, they often feed on the plankton in the water and you can find them there going about their everyday business. With these three species, I have now witnessed out in the wild all of the worlds flamingo species!!!

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Like I have mentioned, the landscape here was very diverse and you can notice in the rock formations and the scenery that it changes every hour. Parts of it looked like my hometown of El Paso, while other parts were very barren, while other parts were extremely colorful. If you want to see beautiful smoking geysers at sunrise, steamy pools with hot springs, as well as beautiful reflective pools with majestic mountains ahead of them, then this place is for you!!!

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The photography in this place is wonderful, which is why I wanted to spend more time there and do the three day circuit again, the photography in this area is amazing and I did not get bored one day here as there was always something to see!!!! This is a place I will definitely come back to as there are more places to explore!!!

Filled with water and animals in the heart of the jungle

The Bolivian Amazon is a great way to see the Amazon if you do not make it to Brazil. Beni Department offers a great view of the Amazon and is located just a short plane ride form La Paz.

As Rurrenabaque is the most popular place to go with many tourists flocking their each year, I decided to go to the road less traveled and fly into Trinidad, and just a short ride from the airport, you will find one of the best eco lodges in the world!!!

Chuchini Eco Lodge is a family owned business in the heart of the rain forest with different types of excursions you can take and some of the best guides available. Efrem Ibis who is a Bolivian has a degree in veterinary science and can spot a bird a mile away and can also identify just about any animals. His wife Miriam is from Switzerland and is one of the most kind people answering any questions before your arrival. She speaks a variety of languages including English, German, Spanish, and a bit of French. Their Eco Hotel is beautiful and serene and the food at this place was excellent combining local Bolivian food with western style food. The fresh juices were always great especially after a long excursion in the jungle or the boat rides out on the river.

You can do any length of days you want here as there is so many activities. Walking through the jungle to see lagoons is a popular activity as well as the boat rides to see many different species of birds as well as primates, and the Pink River Dolphin. You may even decide to do night excursions on the boats to spot the Alligators, Crocodiles and Caiman or enjoy a day on horseback through the wilderness. You may also want to do a mud bath next to the river with so many different minerals in the mud or go fishing for piranhas. This place just about has it all and staying at least four nights is recommended.

They also have a great museum on the site which is dedicated to the Pre- Colombian Beni civilization. This civilization was around between 4000 BC to 1200 AD and the culture made about 200,000 artificial hills aqueducts, channels, embankments, artificial lakes and lagoons, as well as terraces. They had a very complex society, but had probably been in decline for a few hundred years by the time the Spanish arrived. Their complex system can be seen in the photos below with many items that were used for rituals that you may not have found in other parts of the world at this same time:

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The Land around here is of course a rain forest with a lot of water and dense jungles. The waterways are navigable only by boats and the jungles though very dense are filled with pathways that were created years ago by the Beni Culture. You can walk amongst the great Baosi Trees that have been around for a very long time or watch some of the parasitic vines swallow up other trees.

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A bonus for our river cruise was the elusive sloth which are very hard to photograph and stay very hidden. As we were driving, one was spotted in the tree in pretty good sunlight. He was extremely high up, but I was able to snap some good photos of him/her.

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As I have been photographing primates for many years now, I have found that trying to photograph these guys were extremely difficult due to how high they go up in the trees and how little sun is sometimes let in. Nevertheless I ran across Capuchins, Howler Monkeys in which you can hear their screeching call for a long distance and a beautiful but naughty squirrel monkey.

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There are over 300 bird species in and around the Eco Lodge, lagoons and rivers. Photographing them was a bit difficult because of the light sometimes and the movement under the trees. Some of the birds that I found interesting were the Hoatsin bird which looks like a bird leftover from dinosaur times, Jacana, Ibis, Coucou Heron, Comorant, Black Color Hawk, Needle HeronBlack Eagle, Turkey Bell and different species of King Fisher which I photograph a lot in Africa.

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Within the bird family I saw different types of parrots and macaws. The Blue and Yellow and Red and Green were some of the most prevalent ones in the area. You can also see a few different parakeets around the area as they were the most interesting to photograph.

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Besides the birds, you can see many different amphibians and reptiles. Among the ones I witnessed was the Boa, Rainbow Snake, two species of crocodiles, alligators, and turtles happily sitting up on logs getting some sun.

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One of the biggest attractions in the area is the Pink River Dolphin. They usually get their pink color as they grow up and the males may be more pink than females. They are related to some of the other freshwater dolphins in the Amazon River Basin. As they do not usually jump out of the water like the salt water counterparts it is extremely hard to photograph them.

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With all of the wildlife seen in the area it is no wonder why they have a Greater Rhea hanging around along with Capybaras!!!!

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With such a wide array of flora, fauna, and fun, it is no wonder I was not ready to lave this lovely place after four nights and five days. The photography was wonderful, the hosts were great, and all around Chuchini Eco Lodge is a great environment and a place to just do what you want to do.