Baby Pumas | My Most Popular YouTube Video

In March 2008 I’d only known Marc & Eliana less than a year. In the Fall she’d been to Bolivia to visit Inti Wara Yassi and take veterinary medical supplies to them. She started putting a bug in my ear at the New Year and finally I was able to convince Chris we needed to go somewhere since we hadn’t done anything since our honeymoon in 2002. The most expensive thing would be airplane tickets.

Anyway, we went to Bolivia and you can read all of those posts here (warning, it is on my old blogging style so it takes the pages awhile to load): Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Pt 1, Day 4, Pt 2, Day 5 Day 6.

So, the point of this post is the baby puma video. I get several emails a week from comments on the video, comments ranging from “awww, how cute” to “Where can I buy one?”. It is so popular YouTube even asked me if I wanted to put ads on it! I didn’t bother with that. After we got back from Bolivia I helped Eliana in getting a particular formula sent to IWY so that the kittens would survive. If I recall correctly one of them did not. I’ll have to ask Eliana if she even knows what happened with them and with IWY itself. Last I heard the sanctuary was going to be destroyed for a new road to be built into the town since they were renting the land from the town of Villa Tunari and didn’t own it. Luckily IWY operates another sanctuary in a different area of Bolivia so this isn’t their only operation.

Now for cute pumas!

Eliana is in the background translating for us. A volunteer had been sleeping in that little room with the kittens constantly in order to feed them when they needed.

The next video is not nearly as popular but it is fun anyway because a puma really, really enjoyed my leg. And yes, I was quite nervous.

I’d love to go back to Bolivia sometime and see more of the country, particularly the Uyuni Salt Flat.