The Indigenous community-owned Chalalán Ecolodge provides Bolivian Amazon family activities and uncommon animal encounters
We heard the snorts first, like bullets in the sauna-thick air. Eight jack-in-the-boxes emerged from the water near our dugout boat. In Bolivia’s Amazon rainforest, Chalalán Ecolodge guide Gilder Macuapa muttered, “Wow, giant otters!”
He secretly maneuvered the boat behind trees so we could see the world’s biggest otters fish. Macuapa described his excitement as my five-year-old daughter snorted at the rare 2m-long creatures. Never before have so many been here. Our conservation is effective.”
San José de Uchupiamonas, the Qhecua-Tacana village that owns and maintains Chalalán Ecolodge on the Tuichi River in Madidi National Park, is where Macuapa was born His mother, Emerécia Nabia, founded the resort in 1997. Eco-tourism helps him and other Josesanos (community members) support their community and forest.
Macuapa added “Chalalán has been a school for everyone”. “Many people from other communities also came to work here and saw how important it was to conserve the trees and the animals.”
Madidi National Park is one of the most biodiverse areas on Earth since it spans icy 6,000m Andean peaks, low-lying marshes, pampas, dry woods, and rainforests. Established in 1995, the 1,895,750-hectare park is home to over 12,000 plant species, 1,200 bird species, 120,000 insect species, and distinctive creatures including tapir, jaguars, monkeys, and giant otters.
Our family arranged a five-day ecolodge vacation to see the park’s riches. We picked the community-run Chalalán to explore Bolivia’s distinct cultural richness. Four Indigenous areas overlap with Madidi, although only San José de Uchupiamonas is inside the park.
The lodge was difficult to reach
Macuapa greeted us at the airport after our flight from La Paz to Rurrenabaque. Our two kids laughed when dad informed them Gilder meant “big tree” in Tacana, one of four languages grandpa knows well. We boarded a large motorized canoe the following morning for a six-hour, rainy trip up the Beni and Tuichi rivers to the ecolodge.
Our family welcomed Copenhagener Margrethe Rasmussen. This was her second Chalalán visit. “The forest is my finest location. The space seems clean and vibrant, she added. “And Chalalán is absolutely my favourite.”
From the start of Bolivia’s summer rainy season, the five of us had Chalalán’s verdant pathways and sparkling lake to ourselves. During peak season, the lodge can hold 20 guests.
We stopped to observe a capybara family munch riverbank vegetation on our upriver sail to the resort. For lunch, the driver beached our canoe along the Beni and Tuichi rivers. We had plantains, cold roast chicken, and oranges. Macaws soared above, raucous and colorful. Around 14:00, we “docked” on Chalalán’s mudbank. We fastened our ponchos and carried our bags for the 20-minute stroll to the lodge, our family’s first Amazon nature trip.
Macuapa showed out a 2cm-long bullet ant on the route, called because “its bite hurts worse than being shot, trust me”. He paused to kneel by a mud depression. “Jaguar track,” he said. My amazed son gasped. Macuapa sniffed and handed me a handful of brown leaves. “Jaguar pee. Female ready to mate.”
Robert Wallace, a senior conservation scientist with WCS in Bolivia, says the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has monitored jaguars in Madidi National Park’s Tuichi River basin since 2001. Camera traps reveal that large cat populations are quietly rising from fewer than two per 100 sq km two decades ago to about six now. Wallace informed me Madidi’s tapir, brocket deer, and white-lipped peccary populations had grown, which jaguars eat.
The increase in animal populations is “a very good indicator” that ecotourism companies such as Chalalán can preserve the Bolivian Amazon’s immense natural resources
“Indigenous communities were already committed to a sustainable vision for their forest and have been some of the most important defenders of the protected area,” he added. “Tourism is a way for them to benefit from that commitment, and at the same time, share their culture with the rest of Bolivia and the rest of the world.”
Yosseph “Yossi” Ghinsberg, an Israeli explorer who survived three weeks alone in the Bolivian Amazon in 1981, helped the San José de Uchipamonias community build Chalalán Ecolodge. Ghinsberg’s 1993 popular book Back From Tuichi and the 2017 film Jungle chronicled his terrifying experience. An American acquaintance rescued Ghinsberg and requested the Josesanos to seek for him when government officials failed.
On a nighttime canoe trip around Lake Chalalán, Macuapa told us Ghinsberg tales. My youngster loved Ghinsberg’s careful embrace of a fire ant-covered tree. The adrenaline surge from the excruciating stings gave Ghinsberg the stamina to go through the bush, malnourished, delusional, and covered in a fungal rash, to the Tuichi River, where the Josesanos discovered him.
Ghinsberg returned to Bolivia in 1992 to thank his lifesaving community. He promoted building Chalalán and garnered assistance from the IDB and Conservation International.
“We have also always lived in harmony with nature,” he said, “but we needed a little more incentive and motivation to continue conserving everything.”
Profits from the lodge employ community members and provide services for many San José de Uchipamonias inhabitants
The lodge has supported English education, community health care, a school, and clean water. America Tours Bolivia general manager Jasmin Caballero called it a success story. From 1998 to 2000, Conservation International employed her and her scientist husband David Ricaldi to teach Josesanos hospitality and guiding.
When Caballero started helping the neighborhood, most Josesanos hadn’t graduated high school. She claimed many children of those original workers had graduated from college. After moving to La Paz at 18, Indigenous Macuapa suffered harassment for speaking Spanish as a second language at university. He worked as a surgical nurse for nine years.
After his wife died of cancer young, leaving him to care for their 18-month-old baby, Macuapa returned to San José de Uchipamonias and Chalalán, where he had worked as support staff from 15 to 18. He told me this tale one afternoon as we paddled on Chalalan’s untamed property’s central lake in the quiet, sultry air.
Nature and my guiding job have helped me overcome depression – Gilder Macuapa
A turquoise-and-peach agami heron sprang off a log on cue. I watched it with binoculars, awestruck. The youngsters saw little yellow squirrel monkeys playing in the deep canopy near the coast. Macuapa steadied our boat while the infants jumped between trees for fruit.
Jovanna, our cleaner and waiter, brought us lemonade and bananas after the paddling. I showered in our cabin. Twin mattresses, mosquito netting, and a separate bathroom made the modest, screened-in wooden house cozy. I heard the kids marveling about a palm-landed toucan as I rested. They joyfully pursued the sun-drenched butterfly clouds, capturing a half-dozen with each net sweep before releasing them.
Macuapa led us on a longer trip around Chalalán’s 50km trails the following morning. He showed how his people use the jungle’s treasures: trees whose bark tastes like garlic for cooking, others that can be tapped for drinking water or rubber, bugs to eat, including the rich liquid inside the rear-end of a queen leaf-cutter ant, which “tastes like butter” to my son.
Macuapa carried our daughter to show her a flock of prehistoric huaxín, like a peacock and pheasant, sitting in the woods. My spouse saw tasty orange mushrooms growing from a stump.
We learned to avoid creepy-crawlies like the small poison-dart frog from Macuapa. His forefathers coated spears and arrows with poisonous skin excretions to kill animals immediately. He also taught us amusing methods like blowing through a bamboo leaf to sound like a predatory insect to deter mosquitoes. “Nature is very strategic, right?” Macuapa smiled as our kids blew their leaf-kazoos.
I sat on the lodge’s shady porch with Macuapa. The lodge hasn’t always been easy to maintain, he said. The community has struggled to stay open due to financial issues during Covid, maintenance issues, and less airline trips.
He added poachers, miners, loggers, and others trying to take natural resources from Madidi National Park are Chalalán’s biggest challenge.
Wallace says unlawful gold mining in the Tuichi River is a major danger to people and animals. Gold miners dredge the river, clogging it with silt and mining waste, including poisonous mercury used to extract gold. “It’s a big problem, not just for Madidi but throughout Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador,” he warned.
Macuapa fears the government would construct a hydroelectric dam on the Beni River near Rurrenabaque, flooding Chalalán’s forest. Imagine thousands of insects, amphibians, mammals, and birds dying. Imagine this dam overflowing, destroying neighborhoods. These are our worries.”
Macuapa said his children give him “strength to continue fighting” to protect the forest that has sustained him and his village “for future generations to come”.
On our final morning at Chalalán, my daughter and I jumped into the lake’s bath-like water, piranhas and all. The gigantic otters snorted over the water. My kid questioned, “Mama, will the otters eat us?” and hurriedly returned to the ladder.
“No, but the caimans will,” her brother said from the pier. I laughed but left the murky water.
We had quinoa soup and Tuichi River catfish for our final lodge lunch with Macuapa after drying off. When I enquired about sighting a jaguar on the boat journey back to Rurrenabaque, he drank papaya juice and smiled. “Anything is possible. Nothing is guaranteed.”
