Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 14.34 ( Continued ) Foreign tourists to Isla Taquile wander on small paths and
visit farming villages, pristine beaches, and ancient ruins.
If such a comprehensive immersion into spectacular nature and indigenous cul-
ture can be achieved in the future restored marshlands of Iraq, it could easily
become one of the world's most treasured ecotourism experiences. Time spent
on Isla Taquile remains one of the highlights of any trip to Peru, guaranteed to
generate over-the-top, enthusiastic endorsements by all fortunate enough to have
visited there.
Another, more up-market yet culturally limited form of ecotourism exists on the
48 ha Isla Suasi, which is located close to the border with Bolivia and is thus more
remote than Taquile. Here a long-time private resident has developed a pioneer eco-
tourism industry where customers reside within comfortable, solar-powered, modern
lodgings constructed of local material. The impression from photographs and conver-
sations with travel guides and foreign visitors is of a situation similar in scale to those
offered in Jordan by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN) (see
chapters 7 and 16). Local land management projects including reforestation are appar-
ently underway with seemingly no attempts, however, to integrate this work with the
paying foreign customers à la the Earth Watch model described in chapter 12.
It is Lake Titicaca's Isla de los Uros, often described as “one of the most excep-
tional attractions of Peru” (Escandell-Tur 2003), where the parallels to the Iraqi
marshlands become most overt. The islands are, like those in Iraq, constructed from
plants and wattle, in this case tortora reeds, which are also used to build the traditional
boats called caballitos . Interestingly, when Thor Heyerdahl was looking to find reed
boat builders to help with construction of the Tigris so that he could demonstrate
that ancient Mesopotamians were capable of sailing such crafts from the marshes all
the way to the Red Sea and from there begin the pyramid-building civilization along
the Nile, he had to turn to Lake Titicaca dwellers for help because no one from the
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