SOUTH AFRICA: Cape Town Is Most Biologically Diverse City On Earth

Cape Town was recently named the most biologically diverse city on Earth, but its natural beauty is under threat according to a new study.

Cape Town was named the most biologically diverse city on Earth in the first ever City Nature Challenge.

The challenge, which began in the US in 2016, is an international effort to get citizens to record plant and animal species, and to see which city can make the most observations and record the most creatures.

It started out as a battle between San Francisco and Los Angeles, but went global in 2018.

In 2019, Cape Town won by a long margin. We did not just win the challenge, Tony Rebelo, a senior scientist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi) said. We totally outperformed all other cities when it came to species.

The city boasts 53 763 observations by 1 141 people and recorded 4 588 different species. Its closest competition, La Paz in Bolivia, saw 46 931 observations and 3 006 species recorded – even though it had more people (1 500) trying to observe species.

San Diego County in the US came third, with 38 241 observations of 3 019 species.

The Cape is home to the smallest of the planet’s six floral kingdoms. The Cape Floral Kingdom has a high number of unique species that are found nowhere else on the planet.

In the meantime, the Cape’s natural treasure seems to be under threat according to a new study published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

According to the study the Cape has experienced the second highest plant species extinction rate since 1900 at 37, after Hawaii which has lost 79 species.

Rebelo estimates that 13 plant species are already extinct in the city, and this is having a knock-on effect on insects, amphibians and other animals. “Cape Town has a huge responsibility for conservation of our biodiversity.”


Tourism Observer

BOLIVIA: Salar de Uyuni Flat Accident Claims Two British Teenagers

Two British teenagers have been killed in Bolivia after their speeding car flipped on the world's largest salt flat.

Freddie Michael McLennan and George Joseph Atkins, both 19, were named as victims in the horror crash at the famous Salar de Uyuni flat.

The mangled wreckage of a car that flipped on a salt flat in Bolivia, killing two British teenagers.

A third victim, 22-year-old Bolivian driver Alberto Barco, was also killed, local police announced last night.

Traffic police commander Col. Bernardo Isnado said their car was apparently travelling over the speed limit when it overturned.

Photos and footage posted online showed the mangled wreckage of a black 4x4.

Four other people - believed to be from the UK and Argentina - were injured in the accident on Sunday night.

The Sun Online has contacted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for comment.

The Salar de Uyuni - roughly meaning "flat enclosure" - is about 186 miles south of the Bolivian capital of La Paz.

At 4,086 sq miles, it is the world's largest salt flat and the main tourist destination in southern Bolivia.

Due to its vast size, the flat is a major transport route and cars are permitted to travel across it.

The car flipped after apparently speeding across the vast salt flat in southern Bolivia on Sunday.

Two British teens and the Bolivian driver were killed in the horror crash, police said.


Tourism Observer

MEXICO: Los Cabos Has Most Prized And Protected Resorts, Yet Highest Murder Rate In The World

San Jose del Cabo is a city in Los Cabos.

Los Cabos is a municipality located at the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, in the state of Baja California Sur. It encompasses the two towns of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo the municipal seat linked by a twenty-mile Resort Corridor of beach-front properties and championship golf courses.

The area was remote and rural until the latter 20th century, when the Mexican government began to develop Cabo San Lucas for tourism, which then spread east to the municipal seat.

The main draw is the climate and geography, where desert meets the sea, along with sport fishing, resorts and golf. This tourism is by far the main economic activity with over two million visitors per year. Over 1 million visit from the United States.

The town of San Jose del Cabo is located at the foot of the Sierra de la Laguna, 130 km SSW of La Paz, the state capital of Baja California Sur. Although it is the seat of government for the municipality of Los Cabos, it is smaller than the other city of Cabo San Lucas.

However, because of federal and private investments in tourism, its growth is now rivaling that of the more famous resort area.

This growth has been regulated to outside of the town center, especially to the south where the beaches are, leaving the historic town center quiet and relatively unchanged.

There are still cobblestone streets, adobe houses, jacaranda trees and a central square in front of a church that dates from the 1700s, where people still gather in the evening when it is cooler.

A number of the large houses in the center date from the 19th century, and most of these have been converted into restaurants, art galleries and shops selling everything from fine handcrafts, silver, local gemstones and souvenirs.

The art scene in the town is well-developed because of tourism and people with vacation homes. These shops carry high end paintings, sculptures in from traditional Mexican, Mexican contemporary and international artisans and artists.

During the high season from October to May, these galleries stay open late into the night. The town has resisted the addition of large shopping malls and chain stores.

There is also some colonial era architecture as well, but this style has more in common with colonial towns to the north into the United States rather than the center and south of Mexico.

The main example of colonial architecture here is the town’s parish church. It was part of the Estero de las Palmas de San Jose del Cabo Mission, founded in 1730. The facade is marked with a tile mural depicting the martyrdom of founder Nicolas Tamaral, killed by the local Pericu people.

The patron saint of the town is Saint Joseph, whose feast day is celebrated here on March 19. Another important occasion is the feast of the Our Lady of the Pillar on October 12. Occasions like these are marked with traditional dance in dress styles known as Flor de Pitaya and the La Cuera.

Other important landmarks in the town include the municipal hall or palacio municipal, which dates from 1981 and the cultural center or Casa de Cultura, housed in a 19th-century building.

The tourist area of the town is the area between the town proper and the shoreline. This area has a nine-hole golf course and a line of hotels and resorts facing the ocean, which served over 900,000 hotel guests in 2011.

San Jose del Cabo is the seat and the government for the communities found in a 3,451.51km2 area, located in the extreme south of the state of Baja California Sur. It is connected to the capital of La Paz via the Transpeninsular Highway .

The municipality borders that of La Paz to the north, with the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of California surrounding it in the other directions. The municipal government consists of a municipal president, a syndic and fourteen representatives called regidors.

The main areas of the municipality are the seat, Cabo San Lucas, and the tourist corridor along the coast between them. Although San Jose del Cabo is the government, Cabo San Lucas has a higher population and its natural arch at Land’s End is the symbol for the municipality.

Outside of the two main cities, other important communities include Colonia del Sol, Las Veredas, Colonia Los Congrejos, San José Viego and La Ribera.

The municipality is one of the most important tourist destinations in Mexico, for its fishing, beaches, and resorts. Historical landmarks are relatively few but include the municipal hall, the Casa de Cultura in San Jose del Cabo, the Faro Viejo and the San Jose del Cabo and Santiago de las Coras missions.

The city of Cabo San Lucas, about twenty miles to the west of San Jose del Cabo, is far more commercial. Unlike most Mexican towns, Cabo San Lucas has no main plaza or large cathedral. Instead, it is centered around the marina and entertainment district.

Up until the latter 20th century, the area was a small fishing village when tourist infrastructure was begun. Despite its success, high rise construction has been kept limited, focusing on resorts and sand-top restaurants in the beach area.

The main attractions are fishing, nightlife and whale watching. It is a place for vacation, where most visitors stay at all-inclusive resorts. The two main events during the year are Spring Break and Sammy Hagar’s birthday on the first weekend in October.

The latter focuses on his Cabo Wabo bar and restaurant in the city.

The success of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo has created a tourist corridor along the coastal highway between the cities. While there has been some development of resorts, hotels, and golf courses, there are still smaller isolated and undeveloped beaches.

By far the main economic activity for the municipality is tourism, focused on a shoreline corridor between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo. Most visitors come from the United States especially California and Canada, followed by Mexico, and many visitors return year after year.

Visitors can get by in Cabo San Lucas purely in English and use U.S. dollars. Most of the about two million visitors a year arrive by plane to the Los Cabos airport, but the Cabo San Lucas marina also has facilities for cruise ships.

In 2012, the area has hotel occupancy of just over 60% with 248 cruise ships visiting. The area’s high end resorts have also attracted notable names such as Bruce Willis, Kelly Preston and John Travolta, and San Jose del Cabo also has a notable expatriate population, mostly retirees who have economic influence.

The main draw for most visitors has been the environment, where the desert meets the sea, best symbolized by El Arco, a natural stone arch over the ocean in Cabo San Lucas where the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California meet.

The natural features have led to ecotourism such as boat tours to El Arco, tours of the San Jose Estuary and the coral reefs of Cabo Pulmo, and whale watching from January to March, when the animals are here to breed.

Sports fishing is a major and the longest established draw as there are about 800 species of fish in the waters off the coast. High season for this activity is in the summer, the season for marlin, although fishing for various other species extends all year.

There are certain exotic species that are off limits due to conservation concerns and others are catch-and-release only.

There are four main golf courses in the municipality, designed by the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Pete Dye. Other activities for tourists include snorkeling, diving, dune-buggy rides, camel rides, zip-lining, rides on water-propelled jet packs, surfing especially at the Acapulquito Beach, jet-ski riding, kayaking, sailing, horseback riding, ATV riding, hang gliding, mountain biking, camping, tennis and rappelling.

Off the beaten path, there is the town of Miraflores for its leather crafts, the Santiago fossil museum, the traditional towns of Caduano, San Antonio and San Bartolo and a glass blowing factory.

Los Cabos hosts a culinary event called Ritmos, Colores y Sabores, which attracts chefs from the United States and Europe. The gastronomy of the region is based on seafood, which includes clams, marlin, snails, tuna and shark. A locally produced liquor is Damiana, sweet and flavored with a local herb, said to be an aphrodisiac.

The main export of the municipality is the production of salt. There are also limited mineral deposits, especially in the Capuano and Mezquite areas such as limestone and granite.

The small town of Miraflores is known for its leatherwork, especially saddles and other gear for horseback riding. Jewelry and decorations made with shells are produced in San Jose del Cabo, Cabo San Lucas and Santa Rosa.

The municipality of Los Cabos is at the southern end of the Baja California peninsula, where desert meets the sea and the Gulf of California meets the Pacific Ocean.

The area was originally underwater, evidenced by the many fossils of marine animals, which are up to 25 million years old. The basement rock underlying Los Cabos formed even earlier, approximately 115 million years ago.

The municipality has an average altitude of forty meters above sea level. There are three main terrain types, mountain terrain, semi flat areas and flat areas.

The mountains consist of the Sierra de la Laguna and the Sierra de San Lázaro, both formed of volcanic rock, covering about fifteen percent of the total territory with peaks between 400 and 1000 meters.

The semi flat areas are located between the coast and the mountain ranges, mostly of sedimentary rock and account for sixty percent of the territory. The flat areas are along the coast, beaches and alluvial plains, which account for twenty five percent of the territory.

One of the main natural resources is the beaches. Major beaches include Los Frailes, Buena Vista, Agua Caliente, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Chileno and Punta Colorada, often promoted together as the Costa de Oro or Golden Coast.

One very popular beach in Cabo San Lucas is Lover’s Beach, which is surrounded by dramatic rock shapes. The sea experiences lows of 72–73 °F (22–23 °C) in winter, and highs of 77–84 °F (25–29 °C) during the summer months.

As it is on the edge of the desert that covers most of the Baja California peninsula, it is one of the sunniest locations in the world, with an average of 320 days of sunshine per year.

The climate is characterized as hot and dry to the north of the town of San Jose del Cabo, hot and semi moist in San Jose and along the southern coast and temperate and dry in the highest elevations, because of cyclones that hit this area.

Average annual temperature is 24C with the coolest month being January. There is a rainy season in the summer, with most rain in September. The rain and terrain make for a variety of micro climates, including areas with a climate similar to the Mediterranean.

Areas between 0 and 400 meters are desert and semi-desert, with many areas having deep sand deposits. Higher elevations get more water and can have pine forests.

The main surface water of the municipality is the Rio San Jose or San Jose River, which runs north to south, mostly during the rainy season.

Other streams run only during rains and include Santiago, Miraflores, Caduano and Las Palmas. There are subterranean deposits of water such as the Santiago and San Jose del Cabo, but the lack of water is the main impediment to human development in the area.

The Río San José stops just shy of the ocean, with a one km long sand bar creating an estuary, the third largest in Mexico. This pooling of brackish water has created an oasis in the surrounding Sarcocaule desert.

The Rio San Jose flows largely underground for 40 miles (64 km) from its origin in the Sierra de la Laguna or Laguna Mountains, although its Miramonte River tributary adds almost an additional 10 miles (16 km).

Its tributaries flow down the eastern side of the sierra and include Santa Rosa, Santa Lazaro, San Miguel, San Ignacio at La Palma, Caduano, Miraflores and San Bernard. The river used to flow above ground until the beginning of the 20th century due to anthropogenic causes.

For more than 250 years the Rio San Jose has furnished drinking and irrigation water for the town of San Jose del Cabo, beginning as a source of fresh water for Spanish galleons traveling back from the Philippines.

Over the sand bar from the estuary is a bay referred to by early Spanish explorers, including Sebastian Vizcaino, as the Bahia de San Bernabe or Bay of San Bernabe, and now as the Bay of San Jose del Cabo.

The estuary is home to both native and migratory birds and aquatic species, 250 species of tropical birds alone. Most of the migratory species use the area as a stopover on their way to southern Mexico, Central American and South America.

It also acts as a nursery to many juvenile and larval stage species. It was declared a state environmental reserve, but pollution and excessive water extraction has caused it to degenerate, leading to a complaint by Greenpeace. One effort to improve the water situation is the creation of new water treatment plants in the 2000s.

Vegetation varies mostly by altitude and soil type and how much moisture the area receives. However almost all species are those adapted to desert and semi-desert zones. The highest elevations have pine forests.

Wildlife is varied and includes mammals such as badgers, skunks, coyotes, foxes, pumas and other wild cats, deer, raccoons, rabbits, bats and various rodents. Bird species include quail, doves, cardinals, woodpeckers, swallows and marine species such as pelicans and seagulls.

There are over 850 species of aquatic animals off the coast such as marlin, sailfish, swordfish, tuna, dorado and whales. Many species and subspecies of both plants and animals are endemic only to Baja California.

Los Cabos has the highest murder rate of any city in the world. Reports of increased violence in the Los Cabos municipality are connected to the 2016 arrest of drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman, nicknamed "El Chapo," following an interview with US actor Sean Penn for Rolling Stone Magazine.

Instability that eluded Los Cabos, Mexico's most prized and protected tourist resorts according to the Los Angeles Times, stemmed from the void in the drug cartel. Generally the violence from fragmented, warring factions, seeking to gain control in the region, has not targeted tourists.

The vast majority of the violence is playing out in the poor desert hillside communities that house resort workers, far from the beaches that have made this region a magnet for business moguls and Hollywood stars.

The lucrative drug-smuggling corridor of the twin cities of Los Cabos has led to bloodshed among rival gangs contributing to the fastest-rising homicide rate in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur from 2015 to 2017.

Warring gangs often use intimidation tactics to announce their presence such as hanging victims in public spaces next to banners called narcomantas.

In December 2017, rival gangs hanged six bodies from bridges near major resorts one with a public banner that was translated as: This is what will happen to anyone who does not fall into line with us. It has been made more than clear that we hold all the power and that Baja north and south are ours.

Such signs are used to threaten government officials and serve as warnings or intentions of cleansing the drug-smuggling corridor. The city since then has considerably lowered the crime rate after the local government cracked down on violent cartels in early 2018.

The Los Cabos airport is located in San Jose del Cabo. When you get out of the terminal, you first reach customs. Here you need to have your disembark/embark card filled out, but you do not give them your declaration card here.

After you clear customs, you cross through baggage claim. At the end of baggage claim there are several rental car companies. If you made a rental, stop by and tell them you are there so they can call a shuttle driver to pick you up.

You then go through declarations. This is the point where they may pull you over for secondary agriculture inspection if applicable. When you walk out of custom declarations, you are in this room full of people.

This room actually is just people who are trying to sell you time shares and tours. Just walk straight out and you will be near the terminal exit.

If you have rented a car, the people in the room after customs declarations may lie to you to keep you in the room. In reality, your shuttle driver is already waiting outside if you talked to them before so just walk out. The rental car shuttle will take you to a brief couple minute drive to your rental car company.

When in the arrivals terminal at the airport, there is a wifi password posted on the corner of the Starbucks in Terminal 2.

If you plan arrive at the international airport of San Jose, a pre-booked transfer van is the cheapest method to get to your hotel or resort. For last minute travelers shuttle vans that charge per person and stop at various resorts can be found and booked at the airport paid with or without prior reservation.

To pre-book a private transportation from the airport in San Jose there are a couple of re-known companies providing these services.

If you rent a car in Mexico, you do need third party liability. Be sure to book this online before you arrive at the rental car company as they will charge you a higher rate. To get to downtown, you can take the main road, or a toll road which is a $2.50 USD charge or 31 pesos per auto.

Los Cabos can de reached by the Transpeninsular Highway.

The road connecting San Jose del Cabo and Cabo Pulmo along the east road cape has some beautiful views and beaches with nice surfing spots. It's possible to take a day trip or even spend a few nights on the road exploring a different side of Cabo far from the touristy resorts

Los Claros, Calle Boulevard Antonio , Cabo San Lucas. A local taco place with good fish. Get fish grilled or a la plancha and try the smoked marlin fish. They accept cash only.

Taqueria Rossy, Carret Transport Km 33, San Jose Del Cabo. A good fish place with air conditioning, good prices, and accepts credit cards.

You can choose to visit - Todos Santos a small town about an hour and a half north.


Tourism Observer

BOLIVIA: San Pedro Prison

It is 20 years since Bolivia's chaotic San Pedro Prison became a tourist attraction, a place where backpackers stayed for weeks and partied with inmates.

The story was immortalised in a best-selling book, Marching Powder, and now the book's protagonist - a former inmate - and author have reunited to return to the prison for a new documentary film.

The inmate, Thomas McFadden, says returning to his old cell scared him. "But I always wanted to go back to Bolivia, and there was always a strong connection between me and Rusty."

Rusty Young wrote Marching Powder in his twenties, when as a young backpacker from Sydney, Australia, he stayed in the prison, and later helped secure Mr McFadden's release by posing as an international human rights lawyer.

It all began when Mr McFadden, a British-Tanzanian, was caught smuggling cocaine in La Paz airport in 1996 and found himself jailed in a place more like a warped small town than a prison.

Prisoners were expected to earn a living inside and buy their cells as if they were real estate. There was a primary school for the prisoners' children, who they brought to live with them, and in the most notorious twist of all, there was an in-house cocaine factory.

"I thought what is this place? I even had to pay my own taxi fare to get there," Thomas McFadden remembers today.

After his release in 2000, he left those days far behind and is now a chicken farmer in Tanzania. However, his life-changing friendship with his "brother Rusty" has gone the distance, and he has even named one of his children after him.

Their unusual relationship began when Mr Young joined one of the illegal prison tours that the inmate ran for foreign backpackers from early 1997 until his release.

Word had spread around local hostels that there was an English-speaking inmate who would show visitors around this strange microcosm.

Centrally located in downtown La Paz, the prison became a tourist attraction that featured in Lonely Planet guidebooks. Travellers paid an entrance fee and, in some cases, opted to stay for weeks, partying with the inmates.

Lydia Docking, a British traveller, went on not just one but repeated trips to the prison in 2008, led by a prisoner from Portugal. One of the other backpackers she met on her first day there later became her husband.

"As a conversation starter, we used to say we met in a Bolivian jail," she says from her new home in Sydney. She was 24 at the time and is 33 now.

Their San Pedro tour guide came to their wedding after his release, and although the couple has since separated, she still has their dog, named Pedro after the prison.

Despite her jokes, she is acutely well aware of the darker side of the story. "I'm still confused by it, still processing it," she says. "Over the course of three weeks, we went most days. I sometimes question why. It was mostly just to share experiences and to understand how lives start the same but can take such different paths."

San Pedro Prison remains operational today, despite many plans to close it. For years, its tours were an open secret, but one day in 2009 a local television crew arrived to get footage for a story about a politician held inside. While waiting in the plaza outside, the cameramen caught a steady stream of tourists going in.

Armed with the footage, the Bolivian press ran with the story. The main concern locally was not the tourists but the alleged corruption of the authorities, who were thought to be taking a cut of the tours' profits. "Who is watching the police?" asked an editorial in La Razon newspaper. During the ensuing "clean-up", prisoners had their visitors' rights revoked for a day. A riot followed and around 80 children were evacuated.

In 2013, the story took an even darker turn when news spread of a 12-year-old girl becoming pregnant inside the jail, after an alleged rape by her imprisoned father and other men. Child welfare charities called for a ban on children living inside.

Large-scale tours of the prison are no longer possible. Today backpackers typically opt for La Paz walking tours, which stop outside the prison walls and tell Marching Powder's story.

When Rusty Young and Thomas McFadden returned to the prison for their forthcoming documentary Wildlands, they happened upon one such tour group and snuck alongside them, incognito.

"They kept making factual errors, so I couldn't help asking smart-arsed questions," says Mr Young. Eventually an Irish traveller, who had just read the book, recognised the pair. "He whispered, 'You're Rusty, You're Thomas!' And we sneaked off together for a beer."

Back in 2000, the two men travelled to Colombia, after Mr McFadden's release. They found work as English teachers and worked on the book, which became a New York Times best-seller.

Thomas then moved to Tanzania, and Rusty went back to Australia, where after the huge success of Marching Powder he had difficult-second-book syndrome. His novel Colombiano, about a teenager who gets drawn into a Colombian terrorist organisation, is due out later this year.

The documentary Wildlands uses their story in San Pedro Prison as a launch pad for exploring all sides of the drugs trade, and includes interviews with former undercover US police agents and an assassin who was a right-hand man to Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

But the long-awaited Marching Powder feature film may still be years away. The rights were acquired by Brad Pitt's production company but have since expired. Narcos director Jose Padilha has been linked to the screenplay, and Don Cheadle and then Chiwetel Ejiofor expressed interest in playing Thomas McFadden, but filming never got off the ground.

As for the sequel to the book, perhaps that will come sooner. "My publishers been harassing me about that for years," says Rusty. "We already have a title: Marching On."

BOLIVIA: About Bolivia

Virgin Mary statuettes at Copacabana Church Lake Titicaca

Capital: La Paz, Sucre

Size: 1,098,580 km²

Population: 7.9m

Currency: Boliviano

Language: Spanish, Quechua

Visas: Not required for UK passport holders.

Food: Bolivian food varies with altitude and latitude. When in La Paz try sajta de pollo, hot spicy chicken with onion and potato, in Cochabamba go for silpancho, fried breaded meat with eggs, rice and bananas, and in the Tropics go for locro, rice soup made with beef jerky.

Drink: Singani is the local brandy. Chuflay is the very drinkable singani plus 7 Up. The hot maize drink, api (with cloves, cinnamon, lemon and sugar) is good for breakfast, especially on the freezing cold Altiplano.

Festivals: Bolivians love a party and fiestas are a fundamental part of their lives. These take place the length and breadth of the country with such frequency it would be difficult to miss one, even during the briefest of visits.

In Bolivia you learn to expect the unexpected. This is where flamingos feed from red and green lakes rimmed by volcanoes, where Dali-esque rock structures dot the Altiplano like a baby giant’s building blocks, and where waterfalls crash down on vehicles on one of the most dangerous roads in the world.

With close to a thousand peaks over 5,000m, it is no surprise that Bolivia has the highest capital in the world. Even the airport is 4,000m above sea level. The capital, 500m below in a deep canyon ringed by snow-peaked mountains, is a giant street market, where indigenous women in traditional bowler hats and brightly-coloured skirts will sell you absolutely everything you could possibly need – from a cheap pair of designer jeans to a dried llama foetus.

Despite this, most of the country is made up of tropical lowlands, a lush carpet stretching all the way to Brazil. Twisting roads thread their way down from the high Andes to steaming jungles, providing excellent – if dangerous – mountain biking. The 70km route from La Paz to Coroico is like sliding down a giant helter-skelter. Without the safety barrier.

A trip into the hinterland demonstrates that the rest of Bolivia is on a similar scale. To the north, Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world, and nearby Sorata is surrounded by mountains that locals insist are the site of the original Garden of Eden. South of La Paz is the old colonial town of Potosí, complete with silver mine, while a train graveyard lies on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s highest and largest salt flat.

Three hours west of Santa Cruz, Amboró National Park encompasses three ecosystems – the Amazon basin, the foothills of the Andes and the Chaco plain, and is home to thousands of species of insects, birds and plants. The park contains more butterflies than anywhere else on earth. In the remote eastern corner, Noel Kempff Mercado National Park is said to be one inspiration behind Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. Madidi, in the far north, is a pristine Amazonian watershed. And what’s more, the lodges in this region provide some of the best examples of indigenous ecotourism in all of Latin America.

From the ancient Tihuanaco to the 21st century, humans have left their mark on Bolivia, but they are only scratches on the country’s vast surface – leave the modern world behind as you gaze down over the world’s highest forest on the slopes of Sajama volcano, or glide in silence down the Beni river with only fireflies for company.

BOLIVIA: Amaszonas Offers Flights To Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Amaszonas offers flights to a wide range of destinations within Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Amaszonas, the Bolivian private airline whose aim is to be come the best regional airline in South America, now offers a wide range of destinations within South America.

These destinations include Montevideo, Ciudad del Este, Asuncion, Iquique, Uyuni, Sucre, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, La Paz, Rurrenabaque, Rurrenabaque, Lima and Cusco.

Amaszonas offers to flights to see Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat and Rurrenabaque, the door to the greatest reserve of biodiversity in the Amazon.

HONDURAS: Floods Damage Homes And Schools After 7 Days Of Rain

Heavy rain has caused flooding in several departments of Honduras over the last few days, according to the country’s civil defence agency, Copeco. Heavy rain has also affected several other countries in Central America, including Panama and Guatemala.
Honduras

Damage to homes, schools and roads has been reported around the capital, Tegucigalpa, and in the surrounding department of Francisco Morazán. The wall of a supermarket collapsed as result of the heavy rain. No injuries were reported. The heavy rain has also caused several landslides, and caused damage to the storm water drainage system in La Cabaña areas of Tegucigalpa.

River levels are also high, in particular the San José, Guacerique and Sabacuante, according to Copeco.

The authorities have issued three flood warnings over the last 7 days. Yesterday Copeco issued a green (low) level weather warning for the next 48 hours for the nine departments of Copan, Ocotepeque, Lempira, Santa Barbara, Comayagua, La Paz, Francisco Morazan, Valle and Choluteca.

Rainfall

Copeco say that further heavy rain is expected due to the interaction between two low pressure systems, one in the Gulf of Fonseca and the other in the Gulf of Honduras..

Rainfall figures according to WMO for a 24 hour period between 27 and 28 September 2015:

Amapala – 53.6 mm
Santa Rosa De Copan – 64.4 mm
Nueva Ocotepeque – 51.7 mm

BOLIVIA: Oruro Carnival Parade

Dancing girls strut their stuff at the Oruro Carnival Parade in Bolivia.

With water fights, costumed parades, dancing girls and blood rituals, Bolivians really know how to celebrate carnival in style.

nly seconds after we left the hotel, the attacks began. The first hit got me right in the face, a direct shot from a passing car – a drive-by. A second came from a gang of youths hiding in an alleyway. Then the bombs came thick and fast. As we edged towards the centre of town, they pelted us from hidden corners, and bombarded us from unnoticed balconies. Within an hour we were drenched.

Sequins, beads and feather headdresses have their place but, in Bolivia, carnival time is celebrated first with water fights. From late January and throughout February, Bolivians young and old take to the streets for spontaneous water fights, using water balloons, spray cans of foam, and semi-automatic-sized water pistols.

"I'm sorry," Javier, our contact in La Paz, had warned my friend Anna and me before we set off to Sucre, Bolivia's attractive judicial capital, "but as tourists you will be targeted even more!" He wasn't wrong. While exploring the colourful buildings, craft markets and cool little bars of small, neat Sucre – very different from vast, rambling La Paz – we wore cagoules with the hoods pulled tight, and wrapped our cameras in carrier bags.

Being drawn into a giant nationwide water fight wasn't the only festive fun. Though our month in Bolivia began a week before the big carnival parades, the country was already in party mode. Balloons, flags, flower garlands and streamers decorated every building; bands were playing their way around town on foot; and at weekends it was hard to spot a child not in fancy dress.

One morning we were buying textiles in one of Sucre's craft stores when we heard a brass band outside. Poking our heads out, we were swept along by a dancer who took us by the arms and twirled us along for several blocks.

Days later, we arrived at midnight in Uyuni, the desolate outpost town near the country's incredible salt flats, in a terrible storm after a grim 10-hour bus journey from Potosí. We were amazed to hear the strains of folk music floating out of the darkness from a little brass band playing their hearts out in the rain in the deserted street.

While these small celebrations add a joyful dimension to South American travel at this time of year, we would have been mad to miss one of the continent's biggest carnival parades, El Carnaval de Oruro, a week-long Rio-style procession of dozens of dancing troupes from all over Bolivia who gather in an isolated mining town on the southern Altiplano. Performing in fantastic costumes and huge masks, they continue for several sleepless days and nights, fuelled by strong spirits and chicha, a thick bubbly slop made from fermented corn.

The celebration is shown continually on Bolivian TV and becomes the focus of the nation's attention while it's on. Traditional dance groups and Oruro's own Diablada ("devil" dancers in special costumes) rehearse all year and spend hundreds of dollars on each costume, forming a parade thousands strong, with thousands more spectators travelling to attend.

It is a complex mix of Christian and indigenous tales and rituals, an expression of good over evil, of native groups over the Spanish. The dominant explanation says it commemorates the Virgin of Candelaria who, legend has it, helped an injured thief reach his home in Oruro to die and left her image in a cave where she has been worshipped by the mining community ever since.

I had imagined a quaint folk-dancing show, but then I exchanged emails with travel blogger Jamie Lafferty, who sent me a link to his report of the previous year's event. This rather literally pissed on our parade: he described being beaten up and robbed at knife-point, waking up in hospital, and wild drunks peeing in the streets (and on his girlfriend). We bought waterproofs and went anyway.

The rest of the year, Oruro is just a poor unvisited mining town, with few recommendable sights, redeeming features, or hotels. The lack of infrastructure means it is not the easiest festival to attend, and those who turn up without a hotel room booked months in advance might be lucky to share a room in a private home with dozens of others.

Carnival time in Sajama, Bolivia.

Another overnight bus journey (they're unavoidable if you want to see Bolivia properly) from Uyuni had taken us right through Oruro the night before the main day of the parade, but we were warned not to get off as it was the middle of the night, dangerous, and there would be nowhere to go. So we stayed on until La Paz and arranged for a driver to take us back to Oruro the next day.

Even in the morning the atmosphere was frenetic. We had to push through crowds covered in foam to get to the parade, then wait ages for a space to become free on one of the rough tiered benches set up for spectators. As we took our seats, the Bolivians seated around us shouted "no! no!" and tried to shoo us away, worried we would attract water attacks. But several hours later we were sharing beers, crackers and coca leaves with them, singing and cheering the energetic procession. Dancers in glittering thigh-high boots, ra-ra skirts and feathered bowler hats strutted by, dashing drummers leapt and jangled their ankle bells, and suited band members, too drunk to keep their eyes open or play their instruments, wobbled along hilariously, all creating a spectacle.

After seeing another similarly noisy, sparkly big-city parade in La Paz, we felt we'd like to see how people celebrated in their normal lives, too.

Throughout the carnival period, but particularly on Shrove Tuesday, Bolivian families gather to perform cha'lla, a ceremony of thanks to Pachamama, the earth mother. Blood and alcohol are sprinkled at the corners of their homes, villages and sacred sites, sayings are repeated, streamers hung and fire-crackers let off.

Cha'lla is part of life whether you're Aymara, Quechua, or mestizo, and most folk are Catholic, too. In La Paz, I saw cha'llas on battered old cars, fast-food joints and dirty street corners, and Javier told us one day he was off to bless his office, including the computer (presumably without the llama blood).

To witness more traditional cha'lla ceremonies away from the cities, we drove south-west across the Altiplano, to a village called Curahuara de Carangas. In the sunny square they were blessing trees festooned with balloons, and preparing for a feast to be thrown by the mayor.

"I'm so sorry," he said when we met, "you have just missed the sacrifice of the llamas!"

How disappointing. Instead, we accepted an invitation to a village council meeting. He and his wife, dressed in their finest red and green ponchos and woven shawls, sat at the head of a table upon which lay a big bowl of coca leaves and the heads of 30 llamas, gifts from local families. We chewed our leaves politely while the council decided a suitable punishment for a man who'd got drunk at the party and hit his wife (a certain number of bricks would have to be made for the village, they agreed).

Houses in sleepy Sajama, at the foot of Bolivia's highest mountain

Next we reached Sajama, Bolivia's oldest national park, near the Chilean border, where Bolivia's highest mountain, Nevado Sajama (6,542m), rises up as a perfect snowy cone. Sajama village was so sleepy we thought we'd missed everything, and we were the only guests at the Albergue Ecoturistico Tomarapi just outside, jointly owned by 36 families.

But the area is also a spectacular place for hiking. To go high-altitude trekking in Sajama, we only needed to step out of our door: the village is at 4,200m. We roamed higher, over plains of green moss and quinoa fields, among herds of llama and alpaca. The world's highest forest – of underwhelming dwarf queñua trees – grows here and there were bubbling multi-coloured geysers and hot springs where we swam down peaty channels.

And then, one late afternoon, as the sky turned purple behind the snow-capped volcanos, the village suddenly came out. The boys mounted wild-looking ponies, women in frilly shiny skirts began to dance, and the men got out their quena flutes. They all formed a small but beautiful procession on the cold muddy streets and we followed them as they blessed each corner of their shabby little village for what had passed that year, and what might lie ahead.

The trip was provided by High Lives (highlives.co.uk). Its seven-day Oruro Carnival trip departs on 4 February and costs from £950pp, excluding flights. Return flights from Gatwick to La Paz via Madrid and Santa Cruz with Air Europa (aireuropa.com) cost from £1,000