In the backcountry of Northeastern Bolivia, the two most important things you need (outside of food and water, of course) to stay alive and sane are 1) shelter and 2) something to amuse yourself. During my three-month stay there, my tent provided both.

Fresh out of college, I came across an opportunity to assist as a field biologist with the research of the world's most critically endangered wild macaw (a huge parrot), the Blue-throated Macaw. This bird inhabits a tiny area in Bolivia's Beni department, in a habitat that is as unique and fascinating as it is brutally challenging. At the egde of the Amazon basin, it is a patchwork of vast marshes and muddy brown rivers, ancient tropical forests and endless sun-baked savanahs. The heat and humdity can be punishing, feuled by an intense equatorial sun which ignites the sky nightly in mind-boggling sunsets. The cement-hard clay ground reflects the heat like an oven, and dissolves into knee-deep suck mud after a rain. The rains themselves are unpredictable, often dumping inches in less than an hour with little warning. The bloated black clouds that produce the rains are dragged across the sky by the howling winds that race unchecked across the open pampas.

Clouds of a different sort, composed of mosquitoes, sandflys, no-see-ums, and biting flys find any square inch of skin not covered with repellant and turn it into a swollen, bleeding mess. The extremely abundant wildlife is a fact of life, and you share your trails with Brocket and Pampas Deer, Puma, Jaguar, Giant Anteaters, wild pigs called Peccaries, Foxes, Ocelots, and a number of extremely toxic snakes. The lakes and rivers concentrate wildlife, and are choked with Caimen, waterbirds, and fish, most notably Piranah. Heaven on Earth to a huge number of plants and animals, but tough conditions for a human.

My job was to monitor the health and whereabouts of several pairs of Blue-throated Macaws, based out of a small cattle ranch only reachable by horseback or bush plane.

As I mentioned, one of the necessities of living in a place like this is to find a shelter, someplace to find cover from the elements and gather yourself for every new day. My sole refuge, the one place that stood up to everything, the wind, rain, sun, mud, bugs, and hostile wildlife, was my tent.

I bought my little Sierra Designs Jupiter from a friend who had already gotten several good years of hard use out of it as an alpine guide, and I put it to the test. More than once, my camp got hit by a passing cloudburst, and my tent never leaked a drop. Even more impressively, it managed this while floating in a good three inches of floodwater (I awoke to find this in the middle of the night, not because of water in my tent, but rather because of the strange sensation that my sleeping bag had become a water bed). The beastly winds that felled trees nearby ruffled my tent, even flexed it down so far it hit my face, but couldn't break it. Squadrons of frustrated mosquitoes tried time and again to find a way inside, but never succeeded. The sun that warped and stretched every other tent and fabric we had could do no harm to my little fortress. Even after three months of uninterrupted use, it still works as well as it did when I bought it, and I still camp with it now, a year later.

The second most useful aspect of my tent was to provide the other key to keeping it together in this environment: something to occupy your mind. In part, my tent was responsible for my favorite nightly game, what I came to know as Beni Whack-a-Mole.

The problem with having an impregnable shelter is that it is a very valuable commodity in the Beni, and I consequently accumulated a lot of "neighbors". By far, the most popular real estate was underneath my tent, and every night I would find any number of lumps in the floor of the tent that betrayed the presence of the critters taking refuge underneath. Generally I am pretty patient with wildlife, but the animals that so wanted to share my tent with me were not the kind I was interested in cuddling with, so they had to be removed, and my game was born.

The game starts with a warning; I gave the tent a good shake, and all contestants were given a chance to leave on their own. Those lumps that remained, however, were strongly encouraged to leave by being repeatedly whapped with a rolled up magazine. I stayed and continued whapping until all the contestants had left and I was able to lay down, which I considered the end of the game. The other researcher on the site with me stood outside and identified the slightly dazed wildlife as they emerged from under the tent, and announced each one to me. The list of animals that came out from under my tent became pretty lengthy, and included enormous tarantulas, centipedes, and cockroaches, land crabs, mice, rats, frogs, toads, one very confused bat, chickens from the nearby ranch, a piglet, lizards, and snakes, including the most notoriously aggressive and well-feared Bolivian viper, the Fer-de-Lance. All were evidently fans of my tent as well, but like I said, not the kind of stuff to share with.

My stay in Bolivia was, at the very least, much more pleasant because of my tent, one that was not even new and has been out of production for a while. If I got all of this out of a used, discontinued tent, I can't wait to see what a new one can do! Way to go Sierra Designs, you make a great tent, and I won't buy anything else!

Click here to see how Sierra Designs was used by Chris Duke and other people in the know.

Blue-throated Macaw

Time to Study

Whack-A-Mole Tent

Wild Amazon Basin