The first snow-fall, a change from Fall to Winter, and the ending of fall semester all get us thinking about things to come. For 15 of us that means a 3-week adventure into Bolivia to learn about the impacts of climate change, politics, social relations, and the amazingly diverse landscape and people on communities there. We’ll start low in Santa Cruz (Bolivia’s second-largest city) and work our way up in a large arc through the biodiverse Chapare, the “eternal spring” city of Cochabamba, the old mining heart of Oruro, the world’s largest salt flat outside of Uyuni, and finally to the legislative capital of La Paz, high in the Andes mountains. After exploring the impacts of melting glaciers on Andean communities surrounding La Paz, we’ll drop down into the Amazon basin to explore Madidi National Park and the rainforest communities there.
Like the leaf-cutter ants we’ll see there, this is a time of preparation for our January 2 departure!
Leaf-cutter ants in the Bolivian rainforest