Kachi Lodge

Sustainability

At Amazing Escapes, we believe that sustainable tourism, even top-of-the-range, is the best way to raise travelers' awareness of environmental conservation while bringing sound economic development opportunities to isolated communities.

Amazing Escapes made friends with the community of Jirira in 2015 when we chose the community's territory to set up a temporary camp for one of our expeditions. The welcome we received, the kindness and cooperation of the community members, not to mention the beauty of the place, definitely won us over. So it was naturally to them that we turned when we began to imagine Kachi Lodge. It was unthinkable to develop this project without their participation and from the beginning, they were integrated into the operations. Today, some of them hold positions essential to the functioning of Kachi Lodge.

Apart from the privileged relationship with the community, the preservation of the environment has been at the heart of our concerns since the beginning of the project. Before settling on the Salar, we wanted to be sure that we could deploy a building with the least possible impact. We have therefore invested in cutting-edge technologies in both water and energy management systems.

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Although Kachi Lodge is a permanent structure, it remains mobile. The whole lodge is secured on a wooden floor whose pillars are simply standing on the Salar. No anchoring or drilling was done in the salt crust.

The entire lodge is designed to operate on solar energy. The panels are being installed and are already heating the entire water supply. Studies are underway to complete the energy supply with a wind turbine. For water management, a complex system of pumps brings the greywater back into a dirty water tank that is eventually connected to a unique closed-loop filtering system (using reverse osmosis. The system already prevents any discharge of wastewater into the environment and ultimately minimizes water consumption.

Kachi Lodge is committed to guests being warm and every stay feeling perfectly cozy and comfortable. To ensure perfect heating, stoves are installed in each dome: the pellets used to run them are made from the wood leftover.

In each room, an incineration toilet instantly burns all organic matter, leaving only a small ash residue after a few days of use, so there is no black water to discharge or treat.

Waste management is a priority for Kachi Lodge. It is done first of all upstream, by organizing as much as possible the packaging of supplies in recyclable packaging and by putting pressure on our suppliers to do the same.

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Kachi Lodge aims at a 0% plastic policy. No plastic bottles or packaging. Waste sorting is the rule and we hope to be able to set up our own waste treatment structure in the near future.

For the construction and operation of Kachi Lodge, we focus on Bolivian companies and buy as much as possible locally. The wood used for the Kachi Lodge platform is a Bolivian wood with FSC certification.

We highlight Bolivian cultural heritage, for example through collaboration with Nativa restaurant, who's mostly works with Bolivian producers, or by exhibiting the work of Gaston Ugalde, the most famous contemporary Bolivian artist. This cultural heritage is also discovered through activities offered by Kachi Lodge in collaboration with the local community.

We hire local guides whom we train with the help of professionals with years of experience in tourism.

For transportation, we use drivers from Uyuni, whom we once again train to meet the expectations of high-end customers.

Kachi Lodge is aiming at being a model of sustainable tourism development thanks to its environmental approach and its interaction with local communities, through joint development projects, training in tourism-related jobs and exchanges between Kachi Lodge hosts and community members.

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