Bolivia Guide
The Amazon
Museo Icticola del Beni
Address: Universidad Técnica del Beni
Opening time: Daily 8am–3pm
The Museo Icticola del Beni is a large room of basic design which houses one of South America's most important collections of aquatic life, preserved in a series of tanks and jars. It contains over 400 samples of the weird and wonderful fish and snakes captured in rivers in Beni and Pando. At the head of the collection is the imposing Piraiba – a huge specimen with numerous, sharp-looking teeth which was caught in Mamoré in 1998. There is also a two-metre-long electric eel that could once deliver a 550-volt electric shock. The atmosphere is somewhat eerie and you have to feel sorry for the fish that don't make front-of-shelf viewing and are instead stacked up in piles behind the rest, but it is well worth a visit. If you're heading on a trip along the Mamoré, the knowledge that all of these creatures lurk in the river's murky depths may make you think twice before dangling your toes off the boat. Go past the entrance to the Kenneth Lee Museum and the university will be signposted on your right. Walk along the main campus road until you see a building decorated with some plastic models of fish to your left.