A journey through the Bolivian Amazon

A journey through the Bolivian Amazon



Life
in the Bolivian Amazon comes in wild, trippy, kaleidoscopic
hues. The air is sweet and moist; it smells of soil, tastes of tree
bark and sticks to your skin…

Lost between the foothills of the Andes the region is shaped by
a winding river, the Rio Beni, which flows straight out of the
Amazon. For half the year, the basin floods and thousands of
species that inhabit it have to adapt to surviving on the glassy
surface of an entire rainforest submerged in water.

For several days we lived and travelled on the river with a
local named Bismark. He took us in his boat to see toucans,
turtles, cappuccino monkeys, birds of paradise, pink dolphins, an
impassive anaconda and a remote settlement with a small team of
boys on a muddy football pitch.

His hometown was a handful of crooked wooden huts, built above
the water on shaggy stilts, strung together by lines of uneven
bridges and pathways. We slept in hammocks beneath mosquito nets
underneath a sky always peppered with stars. In the evenings, as we
drank Bolivian beer, caiman alligators would linger beneath the
kitchen window, drawn in by the warm smells.

@kamilakstanley
| kamilakstanley.com

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La Paz, Bolivia