First Week
As soon as you arrive your family will be waiting for you at the airport and you will live with them one week.
The very first day of your Spanish lessons you will take an examination in order to set you in a group after identifying the level of the language you have.
You will also see that during the week there are extracurricular activities such as free salsa lessons, cooking lessons and sports.
Second Week
You will move to the students’ residence, and stay there the whole week.
You’ll also start working as volunteer in a certain social project which will be assigned according to your interests and the level of the language.
You can work either in orphanages, kindergartens, day care centers, scholar support projects, mental hospital or institutions of disabled people.
Third Week
The 3rd Sunday you will visit an incredible town located at 64km from Sucre, a place which played an important role during the independence war, and now it has a beautiful native market.
You will travel to Potosi. It is from Potosí that most of the silver shipped through the Spanish Main came. According to official records, 45,000 tons of pure silver were mined from Cerro Rico from 1556 to 1783. Of this total, 9,000 tons went to the spanish monarchy. Indian laborers, forced by Francisco de Toledo, Count of Oropesa through the traditional Incan mita institution of contributed labor, came to die by the thousands, not simply from exposure and brutal labor, but by mercury poisoning: in the patio process the silver-ore, having been crushed to powder by hydraulic machinery, was cold-mixed with mercury and trodden to an amalgam by the native workers with their bare feet.
After visiting the mines, you will be taken to the Mint and will also walk around this beautiful and colonial city.
Trip to Uyuni. You’ll visit the salt flats, its original name is Thunupa Salt lake. 40.000 years ago the salt flat were a huge lake called Minchin. Nowadays it has 64.000 millions tons of salt and every year people extract at least 25.000 tons.
The Incahuasi Island is located in the middle of the salt lake. There you can find incredible cactus that are 10 meters high. The Red Lagoon, which has an area of 1 km2 it turns red due to the sediments of fito and zoo plankton. It houses 3 different species of flamingos. In Green Lagoon there is no life, it has magnesium, arsenic, copper and sulfur. On the road, you will get to see the Ollague Volcano, the only active volcano, it is located on the border line with Chile, and it has sulfur mines.
Trip to La Paz.
Fourth Week
Trip to Rurrenabaque, a town located where Beni river converges with the tropical Andes and the Amazonia plains.
It is one of the most biodiverse areas in the world and it is possible to come across wildlife and share local customs with rural and indigenous communities.
From Rurrenabaque there is an access to two important national protected areas: Madidi National Park and Pilon Lajas Biosphere Reserve.
You will travel to San Miguel del Bala by boat, and will spend the last week volunteering in this community. You will stay in with an indigenous family and help in all the daily activities.
