José Miguel de Velasco Province

The province of José Miguel de Velasco (always informally referred to as simply "Velasco"), in the upper northeast quadrant of Santa Cruz Department, was part of neighbouring Chiquitos Province until 1880. Named for a former general and four-time president of Bolivia, it is the second-largest province in the department and country.

Apart from some unexplored serranías in the far north (reputed to be the setting for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, The Lost World), most of the region is flat and well watered by several Amazon tributaries, which contribute greatly to its wonderful fertility. For some crops, there are two growing seasons each year. There is a well-traversed series of packed-earth roads connecting the four primary towns in the southern part of the territory, but travel northwards is often as not by river or aeroplane.

This pristine natural environment also accounts for the province's staggering bio-diversity. Bolivia's two crown jewels of nature, Velasco's Parque Nacional Noel Kempff Mercado (3.71 million acres, or 1.5 million hectares) - along with the smaller Parque Nacional y Área de Uso Multiple Amboró (1.06 million acres, or 430,000 hectares) in the western part of Santa Cruz Department - are recognised as having the most diverse animal, bird, insect, mammal, and plant life in the Western Hemisphere, and possibly the entire world. To say the park is a nature-lover's paradise is an understatement. It has to be seen to be believed.

Exterior columns: San Ignacio de Velasco Cathedral

This province is also known as the home to four of the seven major Jesuit mission towns: San Ignacio de Velasco (the provincial capital and its largest town), Santa Ana de Velasco , San Rafael de Velasco , and San Miguel de Velasco , each of which have outstanding churches (that of San Ignacio is now technically a cathedral), meticulously restored and faithful in every detail. Three of them were declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1990. The architecture, art, music, and religious traditions of these settlements have remained fundamentally unchanged for three centuries. These and other missions settled cooperatively by the Jesuits and native tribes between 1691 and 1760 are living legacies of the sole successful communal integration anywhere between Europeans and native Americans.

If you're more attracted to woods and waterways than to grasslands and serranías, and especially if you have a hankering to see the Amazonian rain forest at one extreme and/or slumbering colonial villages at the other, you can't do better than a trip to Velasco.