About Terra Bolivia

Terra Andina celebrated its 21st birthday in 2021 and has never stopped evolving. Fabrice, Nicolas, Eric, Thibault, Myriam, Lucie, and Alice have succeeded one another as head of the agency, each with their own team, style, context, and time. If you’re curious, we invite you to read the story of our history through the testimonies of each of the agency’s managers below.

Terra Andina Bolivia began as an adventure travel agency. Until 2009, we were mainly organizing long treks, Andean ascents, and 4WD expeditions on the Altiplano, often combined with trips into Chile, Argentina and Peru. We regularly worked for TV productions or magazines, from time to time we organized big trips across the continent, and ultimately we got involved in what was called community tourism. Terra co-built the ecolodge of Tuni in the Royal Mountain Range with a few Aymara families.

Since 2010, Terra Andina Bolivia has made a shift towards tailor-made and thematic travel, diversified its clientele, and become more international. During this period, the agency invested heavily in the web, travel technology, security and team training, and generally became more organized and professional following the evolution of a more democratic adventure tourism industry.

In 2019, we experienced a brutal existential crisis, becoming aware of the climate emergency and tourism’s tendency to destroy what it desires. We realized that while denouncing consumer tourism, we were active participants in it. It was therefore necessary for us to leave the tourism of "things to see" in order to propose a journey of "experiences to live", and to align our business actions with our convictions. Traveling is a story that we tell ourselves, and it is our job to tell it in a responsible way that speaks to our values.

The sudden halt in our activity in 2020 due to the pandemic acted as a gas pedal for a return to our roots in community tourism, with the objective of eco-designing our services. We took it upon ourselves to study very seriously the world of Tomorrow (morning, given the urgency) and to explore the possibilities of an alternative, more thoughtful mode of travel. In the end, we came up with the concept of low-tech travel, that is not only useful, but sustainable and accessible.

A round trip flight between Europe and Bolivia is equivalent to about 3 tons of CO2 emitted. The Paris Climate Agreement sets a target of a 2 ton carbon budget, per year and per citizen, by 2050. In 2019, the average Occidental person emitted a whopping 12 tons of CO2 equivalent. It goes without saying that a trip across the globe must become exceptional. It is for this reason that Terra Andina’s trips are designed to be just that: exceptional, out of the ordinary, the trip of a lifetime.




Travel less often, for longer, more responsibly,
and for better reasons.


We have set up our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), whose main objective is to :

durable ECO-IMPACT

Reduce the eco-impact of our travels, through tours lower in CO2 emissions.

utile MEANING

Increase the meaning and value of our trips through meetings, sharing, learning and once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

transition TRANSMISSION

Inform, sensitize and prepare ourselves, our teams, our suppliers and our travelers for the ecological transition by dedicating a significant part of our revenue to it.

aspirer DIGITAL

Change our relationship to digital platforms with a Green IT policy that simplifies our website, uses free software, and reduces use of adwords.

communiquer COMMUNICATION

Change our communication via social networks and redirect our marketing expenses to champion our values.

gestion MANAGEMENT

Update the mission of the agency manager to optimize the overall wealth produced (including the well-being of our employees, for example) over financial profits.

Adventure travelling according to Terra Bolivia

aventure

Terra Bolivia has eliminated domestic flights from its trips, as they pollute much more per kilometer traveled than transatlantic flights. We have placed some private transportation with shared transportation, and some hotels with homestays. We now favor "local" meals.

At the same time as we are trying to reduce our carbon footprint, we are also trying to increase the value of our trips. We have reduced our offer from 50 trips to only 7 trips, focusing all of our efforts on the content, effectiveness and interest of every single day. Each trip has a theme, a specific audience, and unfolds like a story being told.

After all, Bolivia has many unexpected stories to tell... here, they are the masters of resilience, of resourcefulness, of "low-tech". What if Bolivia had it right all along?

On the paths of Serendip


Terra Bolivia is about great human adventure. Our “raison d'être” is to enrich every day and every traveler with a beautiful unexpected story, tailor-made with the passion and experience of our guides.

We have chosen to take the path of Serendip, or the art of finding what we are not looking for. We are explorers on a journey towards an uncertain and exciting future, and there is no better setting to us than Bolivia. We would be delighted to take you along for the ride, if you’re up for it.

Interested? Want to see where your heart leads you? It's up to you to tell us what kind of traveler you are by testing the travel compass here

Our story

Fabrice - The visionary

The beginnings

When we launched our business in October 1998, I told my partner Pierre: "We are going to start without taking too many risks - we are going to be serious. If on January 1, 1999 we don't have ten contracts for our first season, we'll give up and I won't go to Bolivia". On January 1st, we had our first contract. There were nine contracts missing, but I went to Bolivia anyway, and Pierre was still up for the adventure...

Strangely enough, the first client to have confirmed a service to me had the worst experience of my tours. (not sure I understand this last sentence?) When I came back from this famous first tour, a trek in the Cordillera Real, one of the guides said to me: "You know, Fabrice, I was expecting this. Before your arrival, I had an argument with the muleteer who was to accompany you at the beginning, a so-called Mario. And I contracted another team... Mario was furious, he went to see the yatiri (chaman) of the village to cast a spell on your trek! You see, it works!" Turns out we’re all a bit superstitious...

Fabrice - The visionary

Alice - The Resilient

The Renewal

When the borders closed in March 2020, I told myself that it was nothing we couldn't overcome. Less than 6 months after the political crisis that agitated our travels for several weeks, I naively thought that I had already had my quota of complications for the next few years...! We had bypassed road blockades on foot between Sucre and Potosi, improvised a homestay with one of our drivers near the airport to avoid the demonstrations in La Paz, organized escapes to Peru, because nothing stops a trip in the Andes...

The day when everything stopped and all our trips were put on pause, there was another type of acceleration that happened for us - that of change. We did not idle our Bolivian confinement - instead, the whole team was trained on the themes of the ecological transition and our energy impacts, and we gave ourselves the space to question our activity as travel organizers in Bolivia. This is what initiated our renewal and our transition towards a return to our roots - because tomorrow is now.

Alice - The Resilient

Lucie - The (almost) Bolivian

The roaring years

Are you ready? Close your eyes: imagine lots of colors, cymbals, improvised fireworks, thousands of dancers, applause, exalted cries of ‘Saluuud!’, shining costumes under the spotlights, percussion, shouts, hymns, whistles, the fervor of the crowd... we are going along with the Terra Bolivia team to dance the Tinku.

After three months of hard training (we trained everywhere: at the agency, in the parks of La Paz, between two customer calls...), of sharing and of costume fitting, the D-day arrived: la entrada universitaria. Our Franco-Bolivian team was going to parade for an entire day, dancing the Tinku, the traditional dance of the Potosi warriors. A great experience of immersion, community, and endurance (watch the dance, and you'll understand that at 3 600 meters of altitude, it's a physical feat!)

Lucie - The (almost) Bolivian

Myriam - La(s) Gringa(s)

The Great Projects

Soon all the details about the gringa, paciencia !

Myriam - La(s) Gringa(s)

Thibault - The Mike Horn

The Great Treks

I was told when I started at Terra Andina Bolivia, "you will be a man after this experience". I didn't really understand it then, but after my first high season I did ...

The high season is: 40 groups of 10 to 15 people at the same time, 25 transcordillera, 100 treks and ascents, and as many 4WD expeditions. We saw the guides, drivers, muleteers, cooks constantly coming to the agency. They came to do the accounts, to tell us their stories of tours, to prepare the new departures with the logistics team; gas bottles needed to be refilled, tents to be repaired and cleaned before being sent back for the next groups.

I was following the incoming and outgoing material on an Excel file, and managing long account sheets ... Everything was always down to the wire, and I usually wouldn’t sit down to rest before 8pm.

We then implemented Toogo, a sister company of Terra, which took us from our Excel and Word documents to an online software for our internal management.

Thibault - The Mike Horn

Eric - The Superguide

The 4WD Expeditions at the end of the world

It was just after my first tour as a guide that I earned the nickname of "superguide". Honestly, a few years later, it became a good fit. At the time, however, there was probably some irony to it...

The Uyuni Salt Flat is a hallucinating place, unique, exceptional, where you lose all notions of space and distance. The Salar de Uyuni was originally named after the volcano that dominates it, the Tunupa, long before the city of Uyuni existed. At the foot of Tunupa, on the edge of the Salar, is the small village of Jirira and a delightful family that lives in this charming place.

It has become one of my favorite stops because Doña Lupe, Don Carlos and their children welcome us every time with such warmth, and the pleasure is widely shared. The rooms are arranged around a patio decorated with trees and plants, which gives it a feeling of oasis and well-being in the middle of such an arid Altiplano. Then there are the children, and, around the well, animals: a cat, dogs, chickens, a ñandu (South American ostrich) and soon a vicuna.

In short it is a very pleasant place and it was the stage for my first "exploits".

Eric - The Superguide

Nicolas - The Federator

A family affair

The organization of our treks relies heavily on the villages and hamlets where we bivouac and change the llamas and mules that carry material and food. It is also from these communities that the guides and cooks who supervise the trekkers originate. We have a special relationship with the Quispe family from the community of Tuni, at the foot of the Condoriri: Calixto, the quiet one, chief muleteer, and his three sons: Andres, the eldest, debonair and discreet, is the cook; Jaime, as agile as a viscacha, guides the groups along with Gonzalo, the youngest of the group and the shyest.

I had the honor of being invited to Gonzalo's wedding on one of those cloudless sunny days so typical to the Altiplano. The ceremony is done in the presence of a pastor, but also according to the Aymaras customs. Then the meal (a delicious dish of mutton covered with potatoes and cooked in a pit under the ground) is served in a big field along with one of the most popular drinks in Bolivia - beer. We pour out a few drops of the first glass to the Pachamama, Mother Earth, before giving a toast to the bride and groom.

Since then, with the Quispe family, we have participated in the elaboration and financing of a community tourism project, with lodging and local activities. The project, now fully managed by the community, has been running since 2010.

Nicolas - The Federator

Fabrice - The visionary

The beginnings

When we launched our business in October 1998, I told my partner Pierre: "We are going to start without taking too many risks - we are going to be serious. If on January 1, 1999 we don't have ten contracts for our first season, we'll give up and I won't go to Bolivia". On January 1st, we had our first contract. There were nine contracts missing, but I went to Bolivia anyway, and Pierre was still up for the adventure...

Strangely enough, the first client to have confirmed a service to me had the worst experience of my tours. (not sure I understand this last sentence?) When I came back from this famous first tour, a trek in the Cordillera Real, one of the guides said to me: "You know, Fabrice, I was expecting this. Before your arrival, I had an argument with the muleteer who was to accompany you at the beginning, a so-called Mario. And I contracted another team... Mario was furious, he went to see the yatiri (chaman) of the village to cast a spell on your trek! You see, it works!" Turns out we’re all a bit superstitious...

Fabrice - The visionary