Making Contact with Nature and Culture!
The title describes us best.You may already know us, but for those who have yet to share an adventure, here’s the story:
Michael Blendinger is an Environment Educator and outdoors f
anatic, especially when it comes to bird-watching. German-born and raised in
Buenos Aires, he founded an environmental education institution based on first-hand
contact with nature in 1989. While leading volunteer native species tree reforestation and organic garden programs, he graduated as biologist, bird watching guide and eventually as cowboy too. He continued on to become a university professor meanwhile coordinating extracurricular science workshops outside of Buenos Aires and guiding groups for trekking, nature interpretation and bird-watching in Patagonia, Mendoza and Cataratas de Iguazú. His taste for adventure has taken him far from family, friends and his life in and has led him to the most naturally pristine and culturally authentic country in Latin America:
In 1999
Gaby Cunningham arrived in to volunteer helping to build a Center for Nature Interpretation in the
Noel
Kempff
M.
National Park . Looking
for a change from her life as a family lawyer in
Buenos Aires, she moved to Samaipata, where she quickly became aware of the town’s concerns and participated in a education project involving waste collection and management, and promoted a improved integration of our programs with the local community. She makes friends quickly with her capacity for tailoring excursions that perfectly suit our many unique visitors. Gaby is the public relations administrator, cabaña rental manager and she also runs our ethnic handicrafts shop. With the help of guides and local scouts we are able to offer alternative programs at a low cost.
Involved with environmental education since 1989, we offer tours based in the concepts of ecotourism and responsible tourism.
Michael Blendinger Nature Tours is a meeting point between the interests of our guests and our vocation and lifestyle. We have been legally established as a Receptive Tourism Operator Business (License RD-07-VT-0115) and our fundamental philosophy is to satisfy our client’s needs and desires for quality and security in their search of nature, adventure and recreation in Samaipata, Amboró, Carrasco, Noel Kempff National Parks and Pantanal. We are pioneers in following the steps of the famous revolutionary Guerilla Che Guevara and in discovering the route of the naturalist explorer Alcides D’Orbigny. We deliberately avoid the areas that are saturated with tourists and every year we offer innovated new sites where few have gone before. As we are Samaipatans by choice, we are interested in conserving the identity and cultural heritage of the region while at the same time facilitating a greater understanding between persons of different cultures and social classes.
Michael personally guides bird-watchers and groups that are seriously 
interested in nature. He also participates in the designing of a sustainable tourism strategy for Samaipata and Amboró Nat. Park, designs tourist information centers for visitors and writes articles about ecotourism for local papers. But more than anything he loves to take his binoculars and backpack and go exploring new areas with new friends and his faithful dog Schatzie, sharing adventures that let him dream up new routes and programs through which to Discover the Nature and Culture of Bolivia.
So, that’s our story. We don’t have a staff that’s waiting to sell you a canned tour. When you contact us by phone or email, you will be reaching our tile-roof adobe office on the cobbled street of a small Bolivian village. Perhaps Gaby will be helping guests settle in to one of the valley’s cabañas and Michael might be out exploring new routes in the cloud forest of Amboró National Park or conducting a census of the endemic red fronted macaw in a cacti desert. But one of us will soon return your call personally and you can count with someone who genuinely loves adventure amidst nature, with hands on knowledge of our programs.
Hi Michael,
Back to the grind, talking with my colleagues about their beach vacations, but my mind is still with you remembering the birds in the rich mosaic of their native Bolivian habitat. Someday I’ll come back to those brilliant deserts and “megadiverse” jungles- I’m already mixing up the names of the particular sites we visited in our birding trip where we saw almost half a thousand different wings. From condors with 3 meter wingspan at 4500 meters above sea level, to hummingbirds with turbines only 10 cm in diameter in the amazon jungle. From wings used only as oars by apterous grebes in the lakes of the altiplano, to the useless wings of the american ostrich that prefers to run through the tropical savanna. Thank you Gaby for making all the arrangements that made this trip possible and for your effort and attention to detail. We enjoyed our trip very much. The distances were stretched due to bad roads, but each new site held so many new birds it was definitely worth it. Would you be willing to trade your steep cloud forest in Samaipata for our civilized London fog for a few years?
Paul (20 days of bird-watching, from Pantanal to Santa Cruz, Samaipata, Comarapa, Cochabamba, Tunari, Potosí and Sucre) Intense Birding