Expert Guide Collection for Navigating the Diverse Terrain of Amboró National Park

A biodiversity powerhouse where the Amazon meets the Andes

Amboró National Park

Amboró National Park represents one of the most significant conservation achievements in Bolivia, protecting a remarkable concentration of biodiversity at the biogeographic intersection of several major South American ecosystems. The park lies within the Central Andes bioregion and encompasses portions of five distinct ecoregions that would normally be separated by vast distances, creating what amounts to a compressed biodiversity snapshot where tropical, subtropical, and cloud forest environments exist in close proximity. The western portion of the park reaches elevations of 3,338 meters in an area called Siberia, while the lower elevations descend to 300 meters, creating dramatic ecological zonation within a relatively short geographic distance. The park's highly dissected topography, combined with widely varying climatic regimes accompanying sharp elevation changes, partitions biodiversity into distinct ecological niches. Vegetation types within the park include lowland forests, montane forests, yungas, cloud forests, subpáramo, various scrublands, pampas, cactus forests, palm forests, and forests dominated by treeferns, with ecotones often sharply delineated by aspect and elevation. Access to the park requires a guide by law, and the area is bordered to the north and south by roads connecting Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, with the southern road having deteriorated to gravel and dirt since the opening of the northern route in the 1980s.