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Geography:
Location: Central South America, southwest of Brazil and east of Chile. It is one of the two land-locked countries in South America.
Area: Slightly less than three times the size of Montana
Terrain: Rugged Andes Mountains with a highland plateau (Altiplano), hills, lowland plains of the Amazon Basin.
Weather:
Varies with altitude. The environment in the jungle is tropical and humid. The environment all along the Andean Mountain range 8000 feet above sea level is cold and semiarid.
The altitude at Curahuara and Turco is around 10,000 feet. It takes many people time to adjust to this change. If you know that altitude is a problem, you may want to come a day early to give yourself a bit more time to adjust. The weather is cool at night. Bring warm sweaters or a jacket.
 History:
Bolivia, named after independence fighter Simon Bolivar, broke away from Spanish rule in 1825. Comparatively democratic civilian rule was established in the 1980s, but leaders have faced difficult problems of deep-seated poverty.
People:
Population: 9,247,816
Ethnic groups: Quechua 30%, Aymara 25%, mestizo (mixed white and Amerindian ancestry) 30%, white 15%
Literacy: 86.7%
Religion:
Roman Catholic 95%, Protestant (Evangelical Methodist) 5%
Language:
Spanish (official), Quechua (Potosi, Cochabamba and Sucre), Aymara (around La Paz and the Altoplano area)
Goverment:
Republic, with the legislative capital being in La Paz and the Judicial Capital in Sucre.
Economy and Politics:
Bolivia, one of the poorest and least developed Latin American countries, has made considerable progress toward the development of a market-oriented economy. Successes under President Sanchez de Lozada (1993-97) included the signing of a free trade agreement with Mexico and joining the Southern Cone Common Market. His successor, Hugo Banzer Suarez tried to further improve the country's investment climate with an anticorruption campaign. In 2005, Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, was elected. Strongly left-leaning, Morales faces fierce opposition from more conservative Bolivians, and his policies have inspired some departments (like U.S. states) to call for regional autonomy.
Currency:
Boliviano - 7.8616 Bolivianos = $1.00 US
Industries:
Tin and silver mining, smelting, petroleum, food and beverages, tobacco, handicrafts, clothing
Agricultural products: soybeans, coffee, coca, cotton, corn, sugarcane, rice, potatoes, timber
Project Sites:
Vinto-Anocariare, Bolivia, which is located twenty minutes east of Cochabamba, Bolivia and the base of the Andean Mountain range.
Health Facts:
Life expectancy at birth (2008): 63.86 years male and 69.33 years for females.
Child mortality rate (per 1000 live births): 52.54 for males and 45.48 for females.
For more information about Bolivia, see the CIA World Factbook, which is the source of much of the information cited on this page.
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