Bolivia tours wait for foreigners, locals are new clients

International travel to Bolivia has dropped by at least two thirds from the numbers of visitors in 2019 leading to local tour guides seeking out Bolivian clients to make ends meet.

In 2019 some 1.2 million foreign tourists visited the South American nation and only 300,00 to 400,00 have come in the year of the worldwide pandemic.

"This is due to the restrictions, not just of the Bolivian government but also the restrictions of other countries from border closings or restrictions they have for citizens who travel internationally," said Eliana Ampuero, Bolivia's Vice Minister of Tourism.

The chirping of birds can be clearly heard in La Paz's "street of witches," where normally there would be a cacophanous melee of foreign tourists seeking out so-called witches to tell them their futures and to be "cleansed" using indigenous rituals going back centuries.

Today all of the Bolivian capital's tourist attractions, as well as other tourist attractions around the country, are bereft of foreign tourists.

"I think it brought us all closer to God spiritually, but economically, obviously it has affected us a lot," said Veronica Visa, a tourist trinket and memorabilia shop owner.

"We have not seen the same amount of tourists during this time where we usually see tourists from Latin America like Chileans, Argentines, Brazilians...as you can see they are not here."

Tour guide William Rojas should be busy booking tours for travelers eager to witness firsthand Bolivia's indigenous heritage and visit natural wonders like the Uyuni salt flats.

Rojas, however, is in his office at South Treks tours trying to recalibrate his business model to cater to local Bolivians in the hopes they might keep his business afloat.

"What we have had to do is to adapt ourselves as a tourist agency to national tourism," he told the AP.

According to a recent study released by the World Tourism Organization, it is expected that Bolivia's tourism industry will rebound again in 2024.

Bolivia has been particularly hard-hit by COVID-19, registering some 555,000 cases since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 with 19,300 people losing their lives to the virus.

To date, Bolivia's Health Ministry says 57.55 % of Bolivians over the age of 16 have received at least one vaccine.