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About us

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 Environmental Educator and outdoors fanatic, 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 Argentina, and has led him to the most naturally pristine and culturally authentic country in Latin America: Bolivia.

In 1999 Gaby Cunningham arrived in Bolivia 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.