Our travel agency in since 2005 well established in the village of Samaipata and its beautiful setting in the foothills of the Bolivian Andes.
We will explain how and why we came here.
Back in the year 2000 we, Ben Verhoef and Susanne Lijmbach met in our home country Holland. We both loved travelling; Susanne wanted to return to South America where she spent half a year already and Ben had the wish to go back to Nepal where he had been doing trekkings over several years. We decided to combine both in one year time, from October 2002 until October 2003. The first half year we spent in Asia, India, Nepal and New Zealand and then we crossed to Mexico and travelled down to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.
After this year full of experiences we returned to Holland and found a new job, but the idea to find ourselves a life somewhere else had taken form. Our favourite countries were New Zealand, Laos and Bolivia.
Between those three we choose Bolivia as our new home country because of the language that would be easy to learn and the possibilities to start a business of our own.
In April 2005 we arrived in Bolivia with just two backpacks and a suitcase. During half a year we travelled back and forward through Bolivia to find the best place to settle down.
This time our choice to be made was between Sorata, north of La Paz, Entre Rios in the Tarija area and Samaipata.
Due to the political situation at that time we dropped Sorata as an aoption because of strikes and blockades in the region.
Entre Rios only received about 20-30 foreign tourists a year so that wasn´t a good choice to start a business either. It had to be Samaipata.
We lived in hostals for 4 months. At the end of 2005 we started doing tours with backpackers from the hostal we were staying.
From January 2006 we rented a furnished home. We bought a computer, built our website, designed our brochures and started to receive backpackers from all over Samaipata.
At the end of that year we bought our place. In February 2007 we moved in after the reconstruction of it into an office and home.
Over the years our travel company got well-known.
From 2008 on we organize tours and travels throughout Bolivia for individual travellers and for tour operators from Europe and elsewhere, for which we also organize group tours.
In 2011, we also started offering tours in Peru, as an extension of our services in Bolivia.
In 2015 it was time for a change in the legal business form of our company. Due to the increase of work we decided to found our organization Kaleidoscope Travel S.R.L. A new organization with a new name, but with the same quality and service, and with the same at work for you.
At the time of writing we are a few years down the line. We can rejoice in a constant growth of our activities and we hope to continue them still for a long time.
We hope you got a good impression of the history of Kaleidoscope Travel S.R.L.