Noel Kempff Mercado — Planning a Recon Expedition into the Southern Plateau
I've been working on something a bit different from the usual trip report.
Earlier this year I spent time on the rivers of northern Noel Kempff Mercado National Park in eastern Bolivia — a UNESCO World Heritage site that most people have never heard of, let alone visited. That trip is written up here for anyone who missed it:
Now I'm turning south. The southern sector of the park is anchored by the Caparú Plateau — part of the Serranía de Huanchaca, a massive sandstone mesa that rises out of the lowland forest and is covered in cerrado savanna. It's the landscape that’s said to have inspired Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Access is through a gateway village called Florida, then overland to Los Fierros (an old park station), and from there by 4x4 then on foot to a waterfall called El Encanto at the base of the escarpment, and up onto the plateau itself.
Almost nobody goes there. There's no established route. The logistics are genuinely uncertain — water availability, road condition, ascent feasibility, camp viability — all unknowns.
So I'm planning a 15-day reconnaissance expedition for August 2026, in coordination with SERNAP (Bolivia's national parks authority), to evaluate whether this corridor can support a repeatable, low-impact photography expedition. The goal is not to complete a trip but to answer a question: can this route work?
I'm documenting the entire planning process — operational, environmental, institutional — on my blog:
I'll use this thread to share updates as the planning progresses, and eventually to report from the field if everything comes together. Happy to discuss the logistics, the park, the photography potential, or the realities of working in a place where the nearest anything is a very long drive away.
May 07, 2026 at 04:10 PM
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