Tarija is the center of Bolivia’s wine region close to the border to Argentina. We thought it would be great to stop by and test some of the regional wines.

We arrived early in the morning when all hostels were still closed and ended up ringing the bell at Hostel Casa Blanca. It turned out to be a happy accident: The young owner Luis is a local who opened the hostel only 6 month ago and hopes to develop a hostel & tour guide business. His sister runs a bakery out of the hostel´s kitchen and the attached café. Since Luis and his right hand Leonor speak English they could give us a lot of information about Tarija, the surrounding area and the local wine culture. We wanted to do some exploring and Luis decided to take us and two other guests from Poland and the UK on an improvised day trip. We drove through the vineyards of Campo de Solana, Casa Real and Kohlberg, did some wine and singani testing and had great food at the local winery Casa Vieja in La Conception, searchd for fossils in a beautiful valley near Chodoca and ended the day with wine and local goat cheese back at the hostel.