Noel Kempff Mercado National Park

Noel Kempff Mercado covers around fifteen thousand square kilometres in the far northeast against the Brazilian border, and its defining feature is the Huanchaca plateau, a sandstone tableland rising two to five hundred metres above the surrounding forest in sheer cliffs, with waterfalls including Arco Iris and Ahlfeld dropping off the rim. The plateau is thought to have inspired accounts that reached Conan Doyle before he wrote The Lost World. Below it the park holds Amazonian forest, cerrado, savanna and wetland, with jaguars, giant otters, tapirs and a bird list past six hundred species. It is among the least accessible protected areas in South America: no road reaches the core, visits are flown in or made by long river journeys, and the park was inscribed in 2000.

History

Percy Fawcett explored the area in 1908 on a frontier survey for the Bolivian government, and the photographs he later showed Arthur Conan Doyle in London fired the imagination that produced The Lost World. The park was founded on 28 June 1979 as Parque Nacional Huanchaca and renamed in 1988 after the Bolivian biologist and conservationist Noel Kempff Mercado, who was murdered in the park by drug traffickers after he stumbled on a secret cocaine laboratory on the Huanchaca plateau. UNESCO designated it a World Heritage Site in 2000 for its range of habitats and its viable populations of many globally threatened large vertebrates (Wikipedia, Noel Kempff Mercado National Park).

The landscape

• The Huanchaca plateau - sandstone cliffs rising from the forest.
• Rim waterfalls - Arco Iris and Ahlfeld dropping off the tableland.
• Amazon and cerrado - several major habitats meeting in one park.
• Giant otters and macaws - the wildlife of the rivers and forest.

When to go

May to October, the dry season, when rivers and airstrips are usable; the wet months make access effectively impossible. Even in season, weather can ground flights for days.

Practical notes

This is an expedition requiring flights or several days of river and road travel, arranged well in advance through the few operators who work here, and it is expensive. Facilities are basic camps. Access has been intermittent over the years as operators come and go. Confirm before committing.

Nearby

Concepción lies southwest; the Brazilian border runs along the park's east.

Key facts