— 2018 → 2026
Each year built on the last. Without leaving Bolivia. Without losing sight of the goal.
Daihana Travel, born in Cochabamba, works as a freelance guide and grows increasingly frustrated with foreign tour operators selling Bolivia through outdated templates. She starts keeping a field journal — season by season, route by route — noting what no guidebook ever captured.
Pandemic. Tourism collapses worldwide. In Santa Cruz, Daihana uses the silence to build Love Bolivia from scratch: a service designed to be planned locally, with real knowledge, for travellers who want depth over convenience.
First five routes published. 60 travellers in the first year. Abel Galeano, an Aymara community leader from Tiwanaku, joins as Altiplano & Andean guide. Word spreads by recommendation only — no advertising budget, no paid placement.
The team grows to 8 local guides, each an expert in their own ecosystem. 19 active routes covering the full breadth of Bolivia. Over 200 travellers guided — zero pre-packaged tours sold.
Recognised by Bolivia's Ministry of Tourism as a model for responsible, locally-owned tourism development. Still based in Santa Cruz. Still run by Bolivians. Still not a travel agency.
LOVEBOLIVIA is not a travel agency. We do not sell pre-packaged tours, we do not work on hotel commissions, we have no exclusivity agreements with any supplier. What we do is design specific routes for specific travellers, based on six years of field notes accumulated season by season, ecosystem by ecosystem, by a team of Bolivian guides who live in the places they describe. The result is a travel plan you cannot buy anywhere else because it does not exist anywhere else — it is the product of conversations, verified local knowledge, and the honesty to say "this month is not right for that place" when the evidence says so.
Bolivia has historically been sold by external operators through images of Uyuni and little else. International operators work through local intermediaries who in turn work with sub-contractors, and real ground-level knowledge is lost at every link in that chain. LOVEBOLIVIA was founded in Santa Cruz by Daihana Travel, who grew up as a freelance guide frustrated with that chain of intermediation. Each of our guides lives in the ecosystem they guide: Abel Galeano was born in Tiwanaku, Marcos Terceros grew up in San Ignacio de Velasco, María Vaca was raised on the banks of the Mamoré. That proximity is not a marketing argument — it is the reason the knowledge we offer cannot be replicated from an office in Europe or North America.
The field journal Daihana began keeping in 2018 records observations that no travel book captures: which bank of the Yacuma River concentrates river dolphins in a dry July, how many days after November's first rain the mirror effect appears at Uyuni, at what exact hour Sol de Mañana geysers are most photogenic based on the previous night's temperature. Six years of local data, season by season, translating into recommendations that go beyond any published guide. When we design your route, we are not consulting a generic database — we are drawing from an archive of direct field observations that updates every time one of our guides goes into the field.
"The difference between a mediocre trip and a life-changing one comes down to who plans it — and whether that person has walked the same roads as you."
Book a 45-minute consultation and we'll design your Bolivia route together.