A new way of experiencing tourism in Tambopata begins: more playful, sensitive, and connected to the forest. K’erenda Zambrano inaugurates the only Interpretation Center in the region, with its own narrative and exploration routes that invite visitors to discover biodiversity through play. What was born from a love for the forest has now become a different hands-on and educationalexperience. With the support of the Wyss Academy for Nature and Swisscontact, K’erenda shows that conservation can also be felt, learned, and shared.

More than 40 years ago, the place where the K’erenda Homet Private Conservation Area (ACP K’erenda Homet) stands today was not the forest we see now. It was a pasture: an open, transformed space where the Zambrano family chose a different path. To recover the forest, bring it back to life, and conserve it for future generations.

Over time, that dream also became an experience that now allows more people to discover, walk through, and understand the story of this Amazonian territory.

Located just ten minutes from the city of Puerto Maldonado, K’erenda Homet conserves approximately 35 hectares of forest. The area encompasses bodies of water, floodable areas, and high terraces—stable elevated landforms that sit above the river's flood cycle. Within this recovering landscape, the Zambrano family has built a life around conservation, environmental education, research, and ecotourism.

For K’erenda, the new Interpretation Center is a dream come true: a space designed so that children and families can approach the forest in a more playful, hands-on, and personal way. The visit begins at reception, where each person registers, receives a wristband, and enters a circular route of approximately 40 minutes. The route can be taken with a guide or independently, as everything is signposted.

Along the route, visitors find interpretive panels, exploration trails, animal tracks, search kits, and figures that invite them to discover biodiversity through play. The content explains complex topics such as the water cycle, symbiosis, the function of the forest, the regeneration of the area, wildlife, and biodiversity monitoring. There are also spaces to walk, rest, and take photos, such as the small lake at the center and the legendary Ojé tree.

In a region where tourism is often associated only with observing landscapes or wildlife, the center  proposes another way of moving through the forest: interpreting it, understanding it, and feeling part of it it. Along the circuit, visitors can also observe trees, birds, insects, fungi, lichens (organisms formed by fungi and algae), and signs of the forest’s own transformation. The forest itself tells part of the story: decades ago this was cleared land, and its ongoing recovery is visible at every turn.

The K’erenda Homet ACP is open from Wednesday to Sunday and also receives group reservations at other times. In addition, some agencies organize night visits with their own guides to carry out wildlife watching within the area.

K’erenda explains that the goal is for each visitor is to reconnect with the forest, understand its function, and value what it represents for the city. “There is a lot of disconnection between the city and the forest. Many children live in Puerto Maldonado but have never been to the forest,” she explains. “The idea is for each participant to feel that they are part ofsomething larger--part of a forest, of an ecosystem--and that they can recognize its value.”

The ACP is receiving growing interest from photographers, researchers, guides, students, and visitors who see K’erenda Homet as an accessible space, close to the city, where they canengage with, study, and experiencethe forest.

In 2024, the Reto Tambopata co-financing competition was launched as part of the Destino Tambopata program, an initiative promoted by the Wyss Academy for Nature at the University of Bern and Swisscontact. The program seeks to close gaps in Tambopata’s tourism sector and build, together with local entrepreneurs and businesses, a new way of doing tourism where people and nature thrive together.

K’erenda Homet ACP was one of the five winning initiatives of the Reto, which sought to demonstrate that tourism can generate economic opportunities without losing sight of the value of the forest. In this case, the support made it possible to strengthen infrastructure, improve the visitor experience, and open new possibilities to reach broader audiences.

The new Interpretation Center, exploration routes, signage, educational materials, and methodological script inspired by the book Nümberi y el Guardián del Bosque—a children's story about a young girl's journey through the forest—are some of the tangible results made possible through this co-financing.

The process was a learning experience for K’erenda and her family: managing time, resources, suppliers, spaces, and priorities in order to turn ideas into reality.

The case of K’erenda Homet ACP represents something greater than an infrastructure improvement. It is a concrete example that it is possible to generate economic opportunities, strengthen local businesses, and live from the forest without destroying it. It also reminds us that conservation tourism is built over the long term: through constant management, new partnerships, market development, and the persistence to keep showing what is being done in the territory. As K’erenda says, it is not about building today and receiving visitors tomorrow, but about staying attentive to new tools, technology, social media, and the opportunities that allow more people to discover, value, and become interested in this living forest.

The K’erenda Homet Private Conservation Area is located at km 2.7 of the Tambopata–Isuyama road, in the tourist corridor of Puerto Maldonado, Madre de Dios. To learn more about visits, routes, and reservations, find them on Instagram: @kerendahomet.

Text: Claudia Lucero Sánchez