Paddle Bolivia

The world is filled with wonderful places to paddle, and we’ve done our best here at gadling to bring some of them to your attention. But most of these places are on the ocean, from the lovely San Juan Islands in the Northwest to, well, exotic places like The Na Pali Coast.

Yes, in checking back on some of the places we’ve mentioned, I was reminded recently of a piece in Outside that took a group of paddlers to the highlands of Bolivia. It’s a somewhat older piece (2000), but a solid one, that takes readers and paddle fiends to some really wonderful paddle spots from the altiplano to the jungle, some of these spots feature class V rapids, so I’m talking about spots that are not for the feint of heart.

I confess that paddling the altiplano is something I’d never heard of until reading the article by Jon Bowermaster (a gadling favorite) who did it for his Ocean’s 8 project, an immensely cool project launched by Bowermaster to paddle 8 major areas around the world. But this article does a superb job describing the allure and opportunity of paddling in a lesser known country.