Bolivian president vetoes Amazon road

by Kraig Becker on

Bolivian President Evo Morales signed a law on Tuesday that forbids the construction of a new road through the Amazon Rainforest. The road was seen as a threat to the ecosystem of one of Bolivia’s more popular national parks and a tribe of indigenous people that live there.

The new road was to be funded by Brazil and would have been approximately 177 km (109 miles) in length. But the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia, and a number of environmental groups spoke, out against the plans, and as a result, Bolivia’s Legislative Assembly created a law halting construction on the project. The road would have passed through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory, but Morales’ signature ensures that will never happen.

This story is similar to the plans to build a road across the Serengeti in Tanzania, which drew heavy criticism from conservationists and scientists alike. The government in that country said the route was necessary to promote economic development, but it was also seen as a major threat to the wildlife as well. Eventually the plans were abandoned in order to leave the Serengeti’s ecosystem intact, but unlike Bolivia, it took months for the Tanzanian government to change their plans.

The road through the Amazon would have likely brought an economic boost to Bolivia as well, and that country could sure use one. But the government there recognized the value of their natural resources and didn’t want to do anything to put those resources, or their people in danger. As a result, they made the hard, but correct, choice to resist the easy money in favor of protecting their environment for the future.

10 unique experiential hotels from around the world

by Jessica Festa on

A trend in the travel world that is becoming increasingly popular is the “experiential” hotel. Many travelers are no longer looking for a basic room in a premier location, but instead for an experience that will allow them to get to know an (often remote) area, or at least have their hotel be something they’ll never forget. From staying in mines in the deepest hotel suite in the world to getting in touch with nature in a tree-top accommodation, these ten unique hotels are must-stays for the experiential traveler.

The SnowHotel
Location: Ylläsjärvi. Finland

This hotel is an experiential property located in the Snow Village, a compound of snow and ice making a restaurant, bar, lobbies, sculptures, walls, slides, and, of course, the SnowHotel. Stay overnight in a room made completely of snow and enjoy the illuminated ice art that surrounds you. Rooms range from double igloo rooms to “furnished” ice suites.

The Sala Silvermine
Location: Sala, Sweden

The Sala Silvermine is not for the claustrophobic. Stay in the deepest hotel suite on Earth. Once you arrive, you will be given a guided tour of the mine, once Sweden’s largest producer of silver, which is 155 meters underground. After the tour, guests are given a goodie basket of fruit, biscuits, cheese, chocolate, and wine, which can be a romantic touch in the dim, candle-lit room. Prepare to rough it a little as the toilets are located 50 meters from the room, while the showers are above ground in the hostel.

Safari Land Farm and Guest House Resort
Location: Tamilnadu, India

Often called the Tree House Resort, Safari Land will really get you in touch with nature. Safari Land is specifically designed with wilderness lovers, bird watchers, and environmentally conscious. Guests will stay in tree houses perched above 4,000 feet high hills. Look down and you will see a tranquil stream pouring down the hill. Look forward and your view will be of the Blue Mountains in India. And for those who want to have a rustic experience but still enjoy some comforts of home, electricity, toilets, and hot water are available.

La Balade des Gnomes
Location: Heyd Nr Durbuy, Wallonia, Belgium

La Balade des Gnomes is an experiential hotel for those who have a big imagination. With a fairy-tale theme in mind, the rooms are extremely detailed and over-the-top. Sleep in a boat under twinkling lights while floating in a swimming pool or opt for the enormous Trojan Horse Suite where you will literally be staying inside a trojan horse.

Palacio de Sal
Location: Uyuni,Bolivia

Those with high sodium levels, beware! The Palacio de Sal is, exactly as the name states, made entirely out of salt. Not only are the walls, ceilings, and floors made out of salt, but also the furniture. And, it doesn’t stop there. Salt artwork and a salt golf-course are also part of the experience.

Controversy Tram Inn
Location: Hoogwoud, Netherlands

Guests of the Controversy Tram Inn can experience sleeping in a railcar converted into a 5-room Bed and Breakfast, each with a unique theme. A double bed, shower, sink, and toilet are also included. Next to the experiential hotel live the owners, Frank and Irma Appel, who also live like their guests, sleeping in a London double-decker bus in their living room and eating in a kitchen that is now a French Van.

Jules Undersea Lodge
Location: Key Largo, Florida

Imagine having to dive underwater to get to your room? If you stay at Jules Undersea Lodge, this becomes a reality, as guests dive 21 feet to get to this completely submerged experiential hotel. Meals and luggage are handled in waterproof suitcases, and the food is actually hot. Each room holds a 42-inch round window so that guests can check out the many species of sea life swimming in the lagoon. If you’re into diving, the hotel provides unlimited tanks for their guests to explore the sea.

Propeller Island City Lodge
Location: Berlin, Germany

With rooms designed by German artist Lars Stroschen, staying here is like sleeping in a giant work of art, with upside-down rooms and flying beds. Everything you find in the Propeller Island City Lodge is custom-made and one-of-a-kind. Rooms range from mild to extreme and have the ability to alter your sense of reality. Be prepared for surprises everywhere you turn.

Wigwam Motel
Location: Holbrook, Arizona

The Wigwam Motel is one of the last standing Wigwam hotels left from a 1950’s chain. In 2002, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Guests have the opportunity to stay in one of 14 authentic-looking teepees. Making the stay more experiential is the fact that it is located in close proximity to a number of Native American Reservations. Unlike Indian-style teepees, however, guests at Wigwam can enjoy double-beds and air-conditioning.

The Boot Bed ‘n’ Breakfast
Location: Tasman, New Zealand

Remember the childhood nursery rhyme The Old Woman Who Lived in the Shoe? Well picture that, but a lot more luxurious. This giant boot is located on 6 acres of gardens, courtyards, and well-manicured property. With private outdoor seating, a spiral wooden staircase, a cozy fireplace, and fresh flowers in rooms made for two, it is easy to see why the Boot Bed ‘n’ Breakfast is the perfect romantic experience for couples. Still, if you’re single and still want to see what it’s like to sleep in a giant shoe, make the trip anyway.

Las Pampas, Bolivia: 3 days on South America’s most dangerous tour

by Kyle Ellison on

I think it’s when we started hand feeding piranhas to wild black caimans that the reality of the situation really set in. Although this was part of a 4-day “guided tour”, I sat there and watched an overzealous Israeli man nearly get his right hand bitten off.

Slightly nervous, I jokingly asked a local guide from an adjacent tour if anyone has ever actually lost their hand. Without breaking his gaze from an even larger predator lurking in the muddy waters behind us, he claimed that last year there had only been 5. Not sure what to make of his blunt response, I couldn’t help but remind myself that this is Bolivia, and here, there are no such things as rules. Two days later, this same guide would temporarily remove some alligator eggs from the toothy mother just to get a rise out of her.

The 40-minute flight from the capital city of La Paz to the jungle outpost of Rurrenabaque should have been an indicator of what we were getting ourselves into. Even now I’m still not sure which element of the flight was more disconcerting: landing on a dirt runway that’s covered in livestock, cramming 8 people into an aircraft where you sit directly behind the pilot, or passing through the clouds in the Cordillera Real section of the Andes-the first time in my life I’ve actually been looking up at mountain peaks from the window of an airplane.

Oh, and I’m sharing the aircraft with my wife. Who’s afraid of flying. And if that’s not enough, this is our honeymoon.

%Gallery-133097%Set on the muddy banks of the Beni River, the town of Rurrenabaque is the jumping off point for Madidi National Park and the expansive Bolivian savannah known locally as Las Pampas. Although Madidi is reputedly home to the largest amount of biodiversity found anywhere on the planet, the rumble on the South American backpacker circuit is that you actually get to see more wildlife while out in the grasslands.

Motoring up a tributary of the Beni after a four hour jeep ride (which broke down), I was completely convinced we had made the right decision. Families of furry capybaras splashed in the shallow waters as clans of river alligators stood statue-still on the soggy riverbanks–their dangerously strong jaws affixed open for cooling as opposed to killing. It would still be a three hour motor upriver to the “eco-lodge”, and after the harrowing ordeal to make it this far I was more than content to sit back in the canoe and take in nature’s show happening all around me.
That was, until we had to get out and push.

“Dry season, no water” chimed our local guide, Jaime, from his perch at the motor. “You push. We move”.

Pushing a canoe off of a sandbar in piranha infested waters is a thrill you don’t plan on
repeating more than once. After the 18th sandbar, however, with the multiple pairs of googly eyes in the water starting to approach uncomfortably close, it was safe to say that the novelty had faded.

I initially thought Jaime was crazy for suggesting such an option. As it turns out, 14 hours later I would watch him pull a seven foot anaconda out of a tree.

The eco-lodge itself was a standard jungle compound of elevated wooden walkways and smoldering piles of leaves to help fend off the malarial mosquitos. In the cramped kitchen, a diminutive, black haired woman by the name of Isabella methodically prepared us our first night’s meal. For us it was our first meal at the lodge, though for Isabella, it was just another meal at her home.

After all, it was Isabella who warned us about the dive bombing nocturnal bats; she knew which trees to walk under and which ones were best to avoid.

“Gracias por la cena Isabella” offered the group as a whole. She smiled a weak response, knowing that she would have to tend to her 2, 3, or 4 children before rising early to prepare yet another breakfast of white bread and bad coffee.

While I wish I could claim that I slept like a child beneath my tapered white mosquito net, the dense tropical humidity replaced the blanket I had once planned to sleep under. Plus, it’s hard to drift off to sleep when there’s a howler monkey dancing on your tin roof, though such is life in the Bolivian pampas.

Luckily for us, a day involving fishing for piranhas and swimming with pink river dolphins is a good way to swap adrenaline for sleep. When fishing for piranhas, the main goal is to not be eaten by a piranha; when swimming with pink river dolphins, the main goal is to not be eaten by an alligator.

Using Macgyver’d fishing rods comprised of sticks, string, and rusty shards of metal, Jaime deftly navigated the dugout canoe to a bend in the river that offered just the slightest bit of shade. Removing a block of what appeared to be raw meat, his nimble hands proceeded to cut candy-sized chunks with his remaining 9 ½ fingers.

“¿Que occurió a tu dedo?” I inquired of his missing pinkie tip.

“Piranha“.

Tossing a chunk of bloody beef in to test the waters, it only took about two seconds for it to completely disappear.

Black Tomato launches Epic Tomato, an ambitious new adventure offshoot

by Alex Robertson Textor on


For years Black Tomato has delighted old travel hands with its inventive, bespoke itineraries to various corners of the globe. The company is especially good at showcasing beautiful destinations not yet well-known to most travelers beyond the surrounding region. Among others, Belgrade, the Carpathian foothills, the Kuronian Spit, and Bhutan have all been embraced by the company.

This morning, Black Tomato launched Epic Tomato, which showcases a selection of hardcore adventure experiences to very hard-to-reach places. These adventures are scheduled for lengths of between four to 21 days, and are grouped into five categories: Polar, Desert, Jungle, Mountain, and River. They are all led by serious expert guides, some with SAS (British special service) military backgrounds.

Bolivia’s Apolobamba mountain range, Mali’s Dogon region, the Star Mountains of Papua New Guinea (see above), the Mosquito Coast of Honduras, and East Greenland are just a few of the destinations reached by Epic Tomato tours.

Epic Tomato’s frankly epic experiences don’t come cheap. At the bottom end of the scale, three adventures come in at £5995 ($9660): 14 days in Papua New Guinea’s East New Britain and Duke of York Islands; a 21-day trek in Tibet and Nepal; and eight days in Chilean Patagonia. At the very high end: 12 days on Canada’s Ellesmere Island for £67,495 ($108,720).

Bolivia campaigns to legalize coca

by Laurel Miller on



Four Loko, meet Coca Colla. CNN reports that Bolivia has launched a campaign to legalize coca, a native plant that has been used for medicinal purposes and as a mild stimulant by the indigenous peoples of the Andes for thousands of years. And yes, coca does contain trace amounts of cocaine. The leaves are used in purified forms of the narcotic, which is what led the United Nations to ban coca in the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs. The Bolivian government would like the ban amended to make coca a controlled, but not illegal, substance.

Coca leaf is considered saced amongst Andean peoples, and historically has been used to combat everything from altitude sickness to rheumatism (it has anaesthetic properties). The leaves are also used as a digestive aid, and to suppress hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Coca is traditionally chewed or used or as a tea, but now, coca-infused energy drinks are taking the market by storm. Las year, Coca Colla was introduced; it was such a hit that a new beverage, Coca Brynco, debuted this week.

Bolivian president Evo Morales–a former union leader for coca growers–is on a mission to convince the rest of the world of coca’s legitimate non-addictive uses. Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca has embarked this week on a tour of Europe, hoping to convince EU leaders to support the campaign. The U.S. is not onboard the coca train, and filed a formal objection to legalize it on Wednesday. January 31st is the deadline for all UN members to cast their votes.Bolivia is the third largest coca producer in the world, after Colombia and Peru. If legalized, it could provide a signficant economic, uh, stimulus to the country. In addition to energy drinks, Bolivia hopes to use coca in toothpaste, and even flour (I don’t understand that one, either).

I’ve chewed coca while trekking in the Peruvian Andes, and it definitely helps ease altitude-related symptoms. Quechua porters on the Inca Trail (who are employed to haul all of the gear) chew coca incessantly. I have no doubt that, in addition to genetic adaptability, coca aids their miraculous ability to carry loads nearly equal to their body weight, at high speed, even when barefoot. It’s said that coca is what enabled the Incas to build Macchu Picchu.

There are certainly pros and cons to lifting the coca ban, but hopefully world leaders can overlook the stigma long enough to evaluate the medicinal value of the plant.