TOUR AGENCY 

ANDES XTREMO 

Description: This extreme sports agency offers a high level of service and security according to the established and standardised requirements worldwide to share and disseminate these high impact experiences through activities that challenge human nature by discovering new sensations and limits. Its main activities are paragliding, mountaineering and trekking in different areas around La Paz, Cochabamba, Toro Toro and the Cordillera Real. 

Facebook: @andesxtremo

Website: www.andesxtremo.com

Photo: Huayna Potosí peak by Toomas Tartes on Unsplash @toomastartes

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ARTE SANO MUTANTE

Description: 'A couple of crazy people who one day decided to mutate and do things that make their lives happy and hope to expand their joy to others.' This is how Gabriela Carreon and Leonardo Romero describe their business. Their designs transform everyday items into beautiful souvenirs from Bolivia: cups, tote bags, stickers, clothes, postcards, pillows and more!

Facebook:@ArteSanoMutante

Contact: +591  789 77277

Photo: ARTE SANO MUTANTE

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MUSEUM

MUSEO DE MUÑECAS ELSA PAREDES DE SALAZAR

Description: This is a unique and curious museum founded in 2009 by Elsa Paredes de Salazar and her daughter Roxana Salazar in their old family home. The museum was a dream come true for Elsa, who had been collecting dolls her whole life. Their vast collection of dolls is from every corner of the globe. They’ve also dedicated a whole room that explores Bolivian history and tradition for different dances and celebrations. 

Contact: +591 76201981

Tickets: Bs. 10 (nationals) Bs. 15 (foreigns)

Address: Sopocachi, Rosendo Gutierrez  #550 

Photo: Lola Newell

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RESTAURANT / BAR

MAGICK CAFÉ CULTURAL

Description: MagicK is much more than just a café; it’s also a bar, with live music and other events – and above all, incredible food! MagicK’s dishes are seasonal and experimental, everything from healthy spins on traditional meals to exquisite culinary creations featuring unexpected flavour combinations

Contact: +591 77553535

Opening hours: Tuesdays to Saturdays from 16:00 to 23:00

Facebook: @MagickCafe

Address: Sopocachi, Presbítero Medina #2526

Photo: Alicja Hagopian

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CULTURAL CENTER

THELONIOUS

Description: Originally established in July 1997, Thelonious is one of the few spaces in Bolivia dedicated to jazz. In 2016, Thelonious was reborn as a cultural centre, and it’s now going strong, with both performances and jazz instruction sharing centre stage. A place where you can enjoy live music – jazz, bossa nova and blues – accompanied by great cocktails and drinks.

Address: San Jorge, Av. del Libertador #2998

Contact: +591 72043198

Photo: Rachel Durnford 

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DESTINATION

LOS YUNGAS

Description: Los Yungas is the subtropical region of the department of La Paz. Located just three hours from La Paz, you reach an Andean forest and a semi-jungle landscape with a warm and humid climate. Ideal for a weekend trip, you can easily visit Coroico by minibus from the bus terminal in Villa Fatima, or you can go down the famous death road by bicycle

How to get there: There is daily transportation from 'Terminal de Minasa', the prices go from 20 to 40 Bs..

Photo: Kal Visuals on Unsplash @kalvisuals

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ECOLODGE

SENDA VERDE 

Description: Staying at La Senda Verde Ecolodge also helps the Wildlife Sanctuary while you enjoy the beauty of Los Yungas. Due to its ecological design, its comfort, its beauty, its functionality and its complementarity with the animal shelter, the eco-shelter of La Senda Verde is considered one of the best in Bolivia. The accommodation includes breakfast and a tour of the refuge.

Website:www.sendaverde.org/en/travel/ecolodge/

Photo: La Senda Verde

Images: Courtesy of Academia Boliviana de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil, illustrations by Claudia Illanes Iturri 

The Organisations Leading the Charge for Children’s Literature in Bolivia 

For billions of people worldwide, reading is a skill often taken for granted. But it’s an essential exercise for childhood development that increases intelligence and empathy, and it enhances brain connectivity. Plus, the ability to read is essential to innumerable aspects of everyday life.

Although Bolivia has made significant inroads in increasing its literacy rate over the past few decades – as of 2015, the Bolivian adult literacy rate was 92.46 percent – there is room for improvement in providing children the materials and opportunities for reading. Human brains are most flexible early in life, making childhood the ideal time for learning vital skills, such as reading. There is much work to be done in terms of improving reading ability in Bolivia, and this work begins from the bottom up – with children.

Fortunately, there are groups in Bolivia world encouraging children’s literacy and literature. This allows children to develop both vital life skills and a love of literature, and provides otherwise unavailable access to culturally and educationally relevant books. Bolivian Express spoke with three organisations working to nurture children’s literature and, by extension, improve children’s opportunities throughout Bolivia.

Comité de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil (CLIJ)—Committee for Children and Youth Literature

Founded in 1964 by a group of writers and poets, CLIJ aims to elevate children’s literature and promote the cultural importance of youth reading.

The committee, comprised of volunteers from a variety of backgrounds and specialisations, works in parallel to the learning that children receive in schools. It recognises that families in Bolivia do not often have the money to buy books for at-home reading. But there are also other barriers.

‘The parents, they often don’t have enough school-based education. They cannot help at home to encourage children to read,’ says Pilar Martínez, the vice president of CLIJ’s La Paz branch. ‘That’s why we are stepping in for the parents, and our work is what should be done at home.’

CLIJ uses a variety of activities to achieve its goals. One is an event called ‘La Paz Leer’ (La Paz Reads). The committee sets up a ‘mobile library’ in the streets where people can sit down and read books that would otherwise be unavailable or too expensive to purchase. CLIJ also holds an annual International Congress of Literature for Children and Young People, the ninth of which was held last July. Educators, students, writers and researchers came together for four days of learning and teaching, preparing an international body of teachers and reading advocates to promote children’s literacy. CLIJ also publishes ‘Cuadernos de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil,’ a bulletin instructing adults about how to encourage children to read.

And, of course, CLIJ visits schools, sowing the seeds for a love of literature.

‘My favourite part,’ says Martínez, eyes lighting up, ‘is when we are telling some stories to the children and they are looking at us like “What is this? Who are these crazy women jumping and singing?” This is the best part, when you know that the children are really enjoying our stories.’

And that enjoyment is the real centre of the whole operation. CLIJ exists not only because its members want children to read; it exists because its members want children to love to read. This is the real goal.

‘We want children and young people to read books with pleasure, so that they can dream, so that they can imagine worlds, a lot of things,’ Martínez says. ‘For us, to read books with pleasure means that you don’t have an objective. It is just to enjoy the book. Later on, maybe years later, they will see the benefit of reading books. But now, we just want children to enjoy them.’

‘We want children and young people to read books with pleasure, so that they can dream, so that they can imagine worlds.’

—Pilar Martínez

Academia Boliviana de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil (ABLIJ)—Bolivian Academy of Children and Youth Literature

ABLIJ was founded in 2006 by Isabel Mesa Gisbert, Liliana de la Quintana, Rosalba Guzmán and Verónica Linares. They were supported by Sylvia Puentes de Oyenard, president of the Latin American Academy of Children and Youth Literature, Cuban writer Luis Cabrera Delgado and children’s literature specialist Rubén Silva.

ABLIJ focuses on forging relationships with and between children’s authors and illustrators, understanding the trends, history and context of children’s literature, and systematising the available information on the topic. Also, crucially, it conducts and publishes research about children’s literacy. This fills a vital gap in Bolivian literary academia.

‘Bolivia does not have researchers dedicated to children’s and youth literature because these have always been seen as lesser forms of literature,’ says Gisbert. ‘We, on the contrary, think it is foundational, and the way for a child to learn the skills to read adult literature… Children approach literature from an early age, and if it is not recognised that literature is part of their lives, there is a great void.’

ABLIJ is one of the foremost Bolivian organisations leading the widespread embracing of children’s books through the dissemination of research. It also aims to instigate the creation of a permanent children’s literature diploma or subject in Bolivian universities. This would ensure that education about children’s and youth literature is present in the training of professionals, and would further highlight its importance as a topic of research.

According to Gisbert, Bolivia still falls behind many other countries in terms of its literary culture. ‘If, in Argentina, 10,000 children’s and youth books are produced per year, then in Bolivia, there are 50 or at most 60 fictional children’s book publications,’ she says.

According to de la Quintana, this dearth of literature has to do with a lack of encouragement for authors. There are very few competitions that encourage writers, there are no comprehensive national reading plans, and few public or private libraries have a good selection of children’s books.

That said, progress is being made. Bolivian publishers are beginning to support children’s and youth literature, and ABLIJ continues to play a significant part in promoting children’s books as the culturally, historically and educationally vital artefacts they are.

Kids’ Books Bolivia

As recently as 2008, children in Bolivia had limited options if they wanted to read books about their own country or cultural heritage. They were instead largely restricted to translations of foreign titles. Heidi Baer-Postigo, academic director of SIT Study Abroad in Bolivia, noticed this lack of books that her own children (of Bolivian-American identity) could identify with in terms of their Bolivian heritage. In 2008, two SIT Study Abroad students approached  Baer-Postigo, proposing that they create children’s books about Bolivia for Bolivian children as part of their independent study. Baer-Postigo gave her approval, and Kids’ Books Bolivia was born.

Kids’ Books Bolivia’s collection of children’s books is now 45 titles strong. The books are published in Spanish and English, and sometimes in one of Bolivia’s 36 indigenous languages. They span a broad range of topics – including political allegories, environmental issues, sexual education and adoption – and most regions of Bolivia have been represented in some way, whether it be through food, life, culture, arts, history or the environment.

‘Our aims are to continue publishing books about important issues and to always find ways to respond more specifically to the local community and organisations,’ says Aliya Ellenby, Kids’ Books Bolivia’s project coordinator.

Demonstrating that creative approaches are often the best ones, one of the organisation’s most successful and longstanding partnerships is with the puppet ensemble Títeres Elwaky. The ensemble has created giant pop-up versions of two of the books from the collection and has also developed interactive storytelling formats with puppets for almost all the books. Kids’ Books Bolivia has also participated in numerous book fairs and has sets of their books in libraries across the country.

Kids’ Books Bolivia continues to work to broaden their base of local illustrators, and its books are included in school curricula and are available in libraries countrywide. Ellenby also hopes to see the organisation run weekly creative literacy workshops at its home base of Cochabamba and participate in more book fairs.

As for CLIJ and ABLIJ, a deep respect and love of books is central to Kids’ Books Bolivia’s operations. Ellenby says that books have the potential to engage the hearts and minds of children. ‘I grew up in a family of readers,’ she says. ‘I honestly can’t imagine my life without books and reading. I have worked with children who have never owned a book, who have never had a book read to them at bed time… But I have never worked with a child whose eyes did not widen when I opened the first page, who didn’t have questions as soon as they saw the first illustration… Literacy and access to literature responds to the natural curiosity and imagination of every child.’

Photos: George Fearnley 

Bolivian viniculture at the heart of Tarijan industry 

Eduardo Caceres, winemaker for the boutique Bolivian winery Cruce Del Zorro, recalls a business trip to Europe. After the inevitable mention of Argentina, Chile and Brazil when discussing South American wines, a reference to Bolivia prompted the response: ‘Where is that?’ International awareness of Bolivia in general is limited, let alone knowledge of the wines that are produced here. But things are starting to change. In the past couple of years, media such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and, most recently, NPR have published articles about Bolivian wines. Why are people starting to pay attention?

Winemaking in Bolivia is approximately 500 years old. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived on the shores of the Americas, their cargo included a variety of dried grapes picked from the vineyards of their home country. Due to the role wine plays in Catholic ceremonies, wherever the Spaniards went, they tried to grow vines. These grapes arrived in Bolivia from the west, through Peru, and the south, through Argentina. At first glance, Bolivia’s landscapes might not seem friendly to European grapevines. The rocky, snow capped peaks of the Andes in the west and the hot, humid rainforests of the Amazon in the east hardly provide the temperate climate that grapes need to thrive. However, the Spaniards had success in certain valleys that act as bridges between the two drastically different terrains. Despite the entire country being at a tropical latitude, these high-altitude valleys provide the more temperate climate the vines require.

Sunset at the vineyards of Aranjuez

Throughout the years, table wines in Bolivia were produced from blends of the grapes the Spanish colonists initially brought with them, like negra criolla. Muscat of Alexandria, a white grape, was, and still is, used almost entirely for the production of Bolivia’s national spirit: singani. Then, in the 1960s, wineries in the Central Valley of Tarija began investing in modern technology imported from Argentina, which ushered in a new era of winemaking in Bolivia. There was a shift towards dry, clean, high-quality wines. French grape varieties were planted, although initially not much thought was given to whether they would be suitable to the Bolivian climate. As the expertise and experience of the workers at the wineries grew, more attention was paid to the grapes which were better suited to the high-altitude growing environment. Tarija has now become the home of wine in Bolivia, producing an estimated 97 percent of all Bolivian wine.

The Central Valley of Tarija has vineyards at altitudes ranging from 1,800 to 2,200 metres above sea level. At these high altitudes, there is less atmosphere to absorb the ultraviolet rays from the sun, which forces grapes to grow a thicker skin to protect their seeds. This makes the wines produced there rich in ripe tannins. In a 24-hour period during the growing season, temperatures can range from 12 to 33 degrees Celsius. Cold nights promote acidity in the grapes, while the warm days raise their sugar content – which is key to their eventual fermentation and transformation into wine. According Darren Armstrong, a wine sommelier and naturalised Bolivian citizen, saurazos – cold polar winds carried up to Tarija through Patagonia – have a particular effect on grapes grown in Bolivia. ‘These winds help create a close match to the typical four seasons that Vitis Vinifera vines prefer,’ he wrote in a blog post, ‘causing winter temperatures to reach the chilling range of 32-45°F for long enough to allow the vines to rest in dormancy.’ This causes the vines to produce one crop a year with an intensity of flavour and appropriate yield. Liz Aranicibia, the owner and head of Bodega Magnus, says these factors result in wines that have ‘a lot of everything’, like colour, acidity, alcohol, aroma and flavour. 

The few of the vineyards from Aranjuez’s ‘Finca El Origin’. Trying to capitalise on enotourism, the company offers
comprehensive tours of its winery and vineyards, accompanied by a tasting at the end.

In 1999, the Tarijan winery Aranjuez planted the first tannat vines in Bolivia. This little-known grape originally hails from the Gascony region in southwestern France and does remarkably well in the high-altitude Bolivian terroir. It has thick skin and is high in tannins, producing inky, rich wines. Because of the high altitude, the skins grow even thicker and make the wine full of dark fruit flavour and aroma. In 2013, Bodega Aranjuez was the first Bolivian winery to win a Great Gold Medal at an international wine competition, with its 100 percent tannat Juan Cruz Gran Reserva. ‘From this achievement, we have positioned the tannat varietal as the emblem of Bolivia,’ Gerardo Aguirre, the export manager and head of enotourism for Bodega Aranjuez, said. Indeed, Bodega Aranjuez has won four Great Gold medals for its tannat wines in the past six years. 

Another winery based in Tarija turning heads is Bodegas y Viñedos Kuhlmann, which produces Altosama, the world’s first high-altitude sparkling wine. It’s named after the nearby Sama mountain range, which provides Tarija’s Central Valley with a rainy environment during the summer months. ‘In honor of Sama, our range of sparkling wines are called Altosama,’ explains Franz Molina, the production manager at Bodegas Kuhlmann. This year, Kuhlmann’s Altosama Espumante de Altura Brut was named one of the ‘50 Great Sparkling Wines of the World’ by the Wine Pleasures website. Kuhlmann also claims to be the only Bolivian vineyard producing wine from the Marselan grape. In 2006, Molina planted several experimental grape varieties at the Kuhlmann vineyards in Tarija, but was most intrigued by the Marselan. In the extreme climate, the vines dropped most of the fruits, but those that were retained were extremely hardy and produced an intense flavour. Now, more than 10 years later, after much experimentation and hard work, Kuhlmann released its unique Gran Patrono, made from 100 percent Marselan grapes. It has received a lot of attention, with Decanter magazine describing it as ‘mysterious.’

While the larger wineries strive for consistency year after year, boutique wineries like Bodega Magnus set their sights on producing unique vintages. ‘Each year is distinct, and therefore the result of the harvest is too, making each vintage unique’ Liz Arancibia, Bodega Magnus’s owner, says. The winery prides itself on being natural, she says, allowing the wine to age without human interference. ‘[This is] our great secret,’ says Arancibia. Another boutique winery, Cruce Del Zorro, has forged a special relationship with its grape growers through its ‘Tocando el Cielo’ (Touching the Sky) programme. Inspired by the successful coffee enterprises in Bolivia’s south, the programme aims to help ‘the local producers prosper, obtain sustainable profits, and learn valuable financial and agronomic skills.’ To aid local producers, Cruce del Zorro contracted specialists from Argentina and Costa Rica to act as consultants. ‘The bodega revolves around the small producers, who are our artists,’ said Luis Moreno, Cruce del Zorro’s owner and director. The winery produces two different lines of wine each year, La Curiosa, a single varietal, and its namesake Cruce del Zorro blend. Each year the grapes used to produce the wines change depending on the harvest. 

Distillation equipment at Bodega Kuhlmann.

When you are drinking wine, you are not only tasting the grape variety, you are also tasting the terroir. This term describes the environment in which grapes are grown, including things like the climate, soil and terrain. In fact, a common complaint nowadays is that all wines taste the same, with New World wineries mimicking Old World wineries – for example, by ageing their wines in oak barrels for long periods. But this cannot be said for Bolivian wines. With such a unique, high-altitude terroir, winemakers are keen to simply allow their wines to tell you where they come from – by their taste alone. ‘We tend to make wines with a lot of fruity character, using oak barrels in such a way that the protagonist is always the wine,’ Gerardo Aguirre of Aranjuez says. ‘Being 100 percent wines of altitude, Bolivian wines are truly unique,’ Kuhlmann’s Molina says. And this is something the wineries are trying to capitalise on. 

Bolivia will never be able to compete with the likes of Argentina and Chile in the volume of wine it produces due to limited amount of suitable land. Currently there are about 4,000 hectares of vines in Bolivia. And in the next 10 to 15 years, according to Molina, it could grow to 10,000 hectares. Argentina, by contrast, cultivates around 220,000 hectares of vines. Bolivia’s strategy instead is to produce wines of quality. As evidenced by the plethora of international awards won by its wineries, ‘[Bolivia] has already demonstrated that it has wines of equal or better quality’ to its South American neighbours, says Molina. This international recognition has led many Bolivian wineries to start exporting to places like the United States, Europe and China. On top of this, they are looking at enotourism as a means of spreading awareness of Bolivian wines and improving the sector’s economic standing. 

The Bolivian National Wine Makers Association recently conducted a study that found for every 25 acres of land used to grow grapevines in Tarija, 10 people are lifted out of poverty. And in 2016 wine production rose 44 percent in Tarija, bringing more than US$20 million into that sector. ‘We are the most important industry in the south of Bolivia after hydrocarbons,’ Bodegas Kuhlmann’s Molina says. But despite their success, Bolivian wineries have received little to no support from their government. Contraband wine smuggled in from Argentina is having a negative effect on the industry by reducing the sales of the genuine producers, impeding development. As of now there are no clear policies to fight it. More support from the local population would go along way too. Bolivians tend to prefer sweeter fortified wines to the dry wines enjoyed elsewhere. In an Interview for CGNT America, the Argentinian sommelier and blogger Laura Malbeck said, ‘The industry survives because it is an industry of passionate people.’ While it is important to receive international recognition, locals have to reinforce the market as well. 

Old aging barrels at Bodega Kuhlmann.