Bolivian Andean Endemics

Welcome to Bolivia! We’ll meet you at El Alto Airport, your gateway to the world’s most diverse landlocked country. After a transfer to our comfortable city center hotel, we will enjoy an afternoon slow cultural walking tour and a visit to the famous La Paz Witches’ Market to pick up some local crafts and learn more about the history of this fascinating country.

After a welcome dinner, we will get an early night: there’s lots of birding to come!

Overnight in a comfortable La Paz hotel.

Today we will depart early to escape the bustle of La Paz. Our destination: Sorata, a small mountain town a few hours north of La Paz, and the only place on earth to find Berlepsh’s Canastero. This highly localized endemic is only known from the scrubby treeline forest above Sorata, so that’s where we’ll be heading. Along with the canastero, we’ll also have a shot at Black-throated Flowerpiercer, White-winged Black-Tyrant, Tifted Tit-Tyrant, and Cinereous Conebill. We will also exploredry the typical Andean scrub ecosysteme in search of some adicional passerine.

We’ll take as much of the day as we need to find the canastero, before driving back to spend the afternoon with some laid-back birding on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable body of water and one of South America’s largest lakes. We’ll be birding from the dock of a local hotel, and this will put us in prime position for photographs of the endemic flightless Titicaca Grebe, which can often be seen at a distance of just a few meters. Along with the grebe, we’ll be able to spot many waterfowl, wildfowl, and shorebirds like Slate-colored Coot, Puna Teal, White-eared Grebe and Andean Gull. The incredible Many-colored Rush-Tyrant is also possible here, but if we don’t get it, our guides have a good spot to try for it en route back to our nice new lodge located along the eastern bank of the Titicaca lake.

Overnight in a comfortable hotel in front of the lake.

Today, we will visit various complementary points along the shores of the Lake Titicaca.This easy, peaceful walk will allow us not only to observe the traditions of the local indigenous communities but also to spot certain common high-altitude aquatic species such as: Plumbeous Rail, Andean Goose, Least and White-tufted Grebe, James's, Chilean and Andean Flamingo, Yellow-winged Blackbird,  Correndera Pipit, Cinereous Harrier, Andean Negrito and Common Miner.

However, there are some fine passerines to be found in the surrounding altiplano as well, including and Wren-like Rushbird, Black Siskin,  Whitewinged Black Tyrant, Spot-billed Ground Tyrant, Many-colored Rush Tyrant, Peruvian Sierra Finches, Golden-billed Saltator and Yellow-bellied Siskin.

In the way back to La Paz, we will stop along the road along open-terrain sites for more highhland birds, including Ornate and Huayco Tinamous, Golden-spotted Ground Doves, Scribble-tailed Canastero, White-winged Black Tyrant, Cream-winged Cinclodes, Cinereous Conebill and Andean Swallow, Puna Ground-Tyrant, Paramo and Puna Pipit, Andean Hillstar, Puna Miner, Bright-rumped Yellow-Finch

Overnight in La Paz

We’ll depart from La Paz after breakfast and drive north out of the city. Our first stop will be at La Cumbre, a high-altitude puna lake where we will be able to observe Giant Coot, as well as various species of ground-tyrants, miners, and cinclodes. After a stop at La Cumbre, it’s on to the Pongo area, where a gentle hike will lead us to a polylepis woodland where we’ll be looking for the range-restricted Scribble-tailed Canastero and Stripe-headed Antpitta.

After birding around Pongo, we will drive down to Jucumari Lodge, a new birding hotspot that will be home for the next two nights. In the afternoon we will bird the trails around the lodge, before settling in to enjoy the spectacle of Bolivia’s first antpitta feeding station, which is attracting a near-endemic Rufous-faced Antpitta to feed on worms. After enjoying the antpitta show, We will settle into our lodge for one night. Before dinner, we will have the opportunity for a night outing in search of specific birds: Band-winged Nightjar, Rufous-banded Owl, Swallow-tailed Nightjar and maybe the rare Yungas Pygmy-Owl and Lesser Horned Owl.

Overnight in a comfortable Birding Lodge.

We’re saving the best for last today as we set out bright and early from Jucumari to spend a full day birding one of the world’s most iconic roads: the famous Death Road. This epic single-track road snakes through the untamed forests of the Yungas, and is home to many of Bolivia’s rarest birds. Don’t let the name worry you; when the road was the only route from La Paz through the Yungas, its macabre name was well-earned, but it only plays hosts to mountain bikers and intrepid birders these days. And the birding is world-class!

We’ll start the day’s birding at the start of the road, where we’ll be searching for Hooded Mountain-Toucan, Rufous-capped Thornbill, Golden-collared Tanager, Bolivian Antpitta, and a trio of tricky hemispingus species: Drab, Three-striped, and the near-endemic Orange-browed. Over the course of the morning, we will work our way down the road to around Km. 14, where we will eat lunch in the field and spend most of the afternoon.

This is the best spot to stake out the extremely rare Scimitar-winged Piha. While we bird this section of the road hoping for the piha, there’s also a good chance for Yungas Pygmy Owl, White-eared Solitaire, Buff-thighed Puffleg, Long-tailed Sylph, Blue-banded Toucanet, White-collared Jay, Chestnut-bellied Mountain Tanager, and, if we’re lucky, the elusive Chestnut-crested Cotinga.

After birding this area we will continue down the road to Coroico, a pretty little town in the lower reaches of the Yungas forest, where we will spend the night.

Overnight in a comfortable Coroico guesthouse.

This morning we will bird the grounds of our guesthouse for some good lower-altitude Yungas species, with the possibility of Brown Tinamou, Upland Antshrike, Buff-browed Foliage-gleaner, Bolivian Tyrannulet, Silvery Tanager, along with toucans, oropendolas, and mixed flocks of tanagers, warblers, and flycatchers. Around lunchtime, we will depart back for La Paz - along the new road this time! - for our evening flight to Cochabamba. Depending on our progress back to La Paz, there may be time for another stop at La Cumbre.

Overnight in a comfortable Cochabamba Hotel.

On our first day in Cochabamba, we will visit the dry valleys and polylepis forests north of the city. Birding the road before the San Miguel Polylepis Forest should give us our first sightings of Bolivian Warbling-Finch and Cochabamba Mountain Finch, along with other range-restricted species like Maquis Canastero, Wedge-tailed Hillstar, Olive-crowned Crescentchest, and Rufous-sided Warbling-Finch.

As we bird our way up the road, we’ll keep an eye out for Andean and Mountain Parakeets, which can sometimes be seen feeding in roadside bushes. At San Miguel Polylepis Forest we’ll keep searching for the Mountain- and Warbling-Finches, along with Giant Conebill, Tawny Tit-Spinetail, Puna Tapaculo, Rufous-bellied Mountain Tanager, and Black-hooded Sierra Finch.

After lunch in the field, we will continue higher up the mountain road to get our first real taste of the puna ecosystem on the Cerro Tunari road. Here we will be searching for high-altitude specialists like ground-tyrants, cinclodes, miners, and yellow-finches. We also have a good chance here for Andean Goose, Glacier Finch, and Andean Condor. Scanning the boulder fields could - with luck - net us a real star species: the rare and restricted Boulder Finch. Depending on our luck, we can bird lower down the road again in the late afternoon before returning to our Cochabamba hotel for dinner.

Overnight in a comfortable Cochabamba Hotel.

Today will be an early start as we head east of Cochabamba to the Yungas forests of the Miguelito Substation Road. Yungas forest consists of a narrow band of forest along the eastern slope of the Andes in Bolivia, Peru, and northern Argentina

At these slightly lower altitudes, we will have our first real chance for Yungas specialties like Yungas Tody-Tyrant and Yungas Manakin, as well as important Bolivian species like Upland Antshrike, Green-throated Tanager, Stripe-chested Antwren, Bolivian Tyrannulet, White-eared Solitaire, Unadorned Flycatcher, Slaty Tanager, and Versicolored Barbet. Toucans and tanagers can be abundant in fruiting trees, and we will be paying extra special attention to the possibility of the extremely rare Yellow-rumped Antwren.

After a full day of birding these lower Yungas forests, we’ll board the bus and drive back to Cochabamba.

Overnight in a comfortable Cochabamba Hotel.

This morning we’ll drive the same road out of Cochabamba, stopping closer to the city to bird the higher-altitude Yungas cloud forests of the Corani road. This fragment of cloud forest is home to some truly special species and we’ll be hoping for our first looks at some special endemics.

Our first stop is just before the road entrance in search of Bolivian Antpitta, Black-chinned Thistletail, and Black-hooded Sunbeam before we head to the road for a full morning’s birding. Here we will be hoping for large mixed flocks containing specialties like Orange-browed Hemispingus, Fulvous Wren, Blue-and-black Tanager, White-eared Conebill, and many more flycatchers, tanagers, and cloud forest species. This road is also an excellent spot for the highly localized Hooded Mountain-Toucan, a near-endemic Bolivian species. Depending on how our morning goes, we may continue birding here for the day, or return to Cochabamba to look for ducks and grebes at Laguna Alalay in the city.

Overnight in a comfortable Cochabamba Hotel.

The day will be organized according to the schedules of international flights or the chosen extension option. We will have the opportunity, at additional sites, to complement our already extensive list.

Then, we will leave early to the airport to fly to La Paz where we will transfer to our international flights or your extention.

NOTA: This tour is compatible with an extension in the Yungas or Chaco. Check out our list of complementary tours on the main page.