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Important Bolivia Facts You May Not KnowSite Home Page Facts Home Page Bolivia for Kids Home Page Spanish Home Page Our HUGE Bolivia Facts section (located at the top of the navigation list to your left) is filled with fun and interesting facts about Bolivia's history, geography, culture, people, food, traditions and much more. It's got several hundred pages of facts about Bolivia in it! This page is a growing shortlist of some important, interesting Bolivia facts you may not have known about, facts we wanted you to be able to find easily without searching all over the site. You'll also find TONS more facts about Bolivia in our Bolivia Trivia section!
1. The highest navigable lake in the world is found in Bolivia at 3810 meters above sea level (that's 12,382.5 feet above sea level.) That's Lake Titicaca! It takes 6 hours to cross it on a fast hydrofoil. It's also one of the deepest lakes in the world. Lake Titicaca photo gallery. 2. The largest deposit of salt on the planet is also found in Bolivia. The Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni salt beds or salt flats) contain over 64 million tons of salt! Believe it or not what you see in the picture below is SALT! When it rains the water forms a thin layer on top that reflects the entire sky! See my Salar de Uyuni photo gallery.
4. Bolivia is also home to the Cerro Mutún, located in the Department of Santa Cruz. It is the world's largest iron ore mine. President Morales blocked a Brazilian company from exploiting it because they planned to destroy 45 hectares a DAY of Amazonian wood to run the mine. Instead, he gave the contract to Jindal, a company from India which will use natural gas from Bolivia's pipeline, only 12 miles away. 5. Bolivia is located within one of the wettest zones on the planet. We get over 5000 millimeters of rainfall per year. 6. Bolivia contains 40% of ALL animal and plant life in the world (called biological diversity or biodiversity). Our tropical forests and Pantanal wetlands are some of the most biologically abundant ecosystems in the world.
Read about the Pantanal
and
Bolivia's rainforests. 8. And speaking of Beni: Bolivia has over 30 different native indigenous groups and nearly half of them reside in Beni. For example, the Moxos culture, which dates back about 5000 years, once numbered around 8 million! They existed at the same time as the Tiwanakotas and their society was just as advanced. They built over 20,000 hand-made hills all connected by an effective system of aqueducts, channels, and terraces that covers thousands of square miles. The irrigation, cultivation and flood control systems of this hydro-culture rivaled those of Egypt and you can still see them if you visit Beni. Bolivia's native peoples knew how to work with nature, not against her. 9. Bolivia is among the top "mega-diverse" countries on our planet. Together, the mega-diverse countries contain over 70% of all species known to humankind. In plant species Bolivia is the 11th country in the world (over 20,000 plant species). In vertebrate species it is 10th in the world. In bird species it is 7th in the world and in butterfly species it is 4th in the world. See my page on
Bolivian wildlife. 
12. Bolivia is home to the world's one and only known bolivianita mine. Bolivianita is a precious stone or gem that is partially yellow and partially purple. It's produced when citrine and ametrine combine. It is said that hundreds of years ago a beautiful Ayoreo princess named Anahí fell in love with a Spanish conqueror. This angered the members of her tribe so they plotted to kill the Spaniard. Anahí found out and sent him away to safety, but first she gave him a beautiful gem called "tears of violet and honey". The members of her tribe killed Anahí for having given away her love and the gem to a foreigner.
Who wouldn't want to save that?
With so much beauty, nature and wildlife, who wouldn't want to save Bolivia's ecosystems? If you speak Spanish, please join the Green Hearts Project group on Facebook and help us spread the word. Bolivia needs you! Click here to read more about Green Hearts.
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