Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2011 we first passed through the Panama Canal from the Atlantic side to the Pacific Ocean
and then headed north up the coast from Panama to Costa Rica.
Every day we either went ashore to hike in the forests or snorkeled in the sea or zipped
around the islands in a zodiac motor boat. To find pristine areas, our ship followed an itin-
erary of protected parks—national parks, private parks, regional parks.
The ship carries only sixty passengers and offers no room service, no casinos, no night-
time entertainment and no television in the cabins. That doesn't mean we suffered at
all. The meals were extraordinary and the company amiable. We were also pleasantly ex-
hausted from the day's excursions. Above all, we were surrounded by nature, exuberant
nature.
We also could have booked into an “ecolodge” in the middle of a jungle and taken
excursions hiking through Costa Rica's rainforests, climbing around its volcanoes. Altern-
ately we could have chosen to get drenched white-water rafting in its rivers, surfing on
the Pacific Coast or simply relaxing on its beaches. The country advertises itself as “Costa
Rica—No Artificial Ingredients.”
It's not that simple, but as a slogan, it's not entirely wrong. What is missing is the ups
and downs in Costa Rica's recent history that not only gave birth to ecotourism but created
a counter-movement that gave Costa Rica the highest rate of deforestation in the entire
Western Hemisphere for nearly two decades.
• • •
Ecotourism may sound like a squishy, feel-good concept, yet there are new international
guidelines defining what it means to be a responsible, sustainable tourist company or des-
tination. Those guidelines were recently hammered out by the Global Sustainable Tour-
ism Council made up of representatives from United Nations agencies, private companies
and environmentalists. I took along that list of guidelines.
Isabel Salas was our expedition leader. A biologist trained at the University of Costa
Rica, she has the air of a female Indiana Jones, a no-nonsense curiosity about the natural
world of her native Costa Rica and a gentle sense of humor. Her professional specialty is
the social and sexual life of the howler monkey, the swift dark simian with a small gorilla
face and a voice from the grave.
Our guides were as much a part of the ecotourism phenomenon as the landscape.
They fulfilled the requirements to employ locals in high positions and provide visitors with
knowledge about natural surroundings, local culture and cultural heritage. (This was the
opposite of our Royal Caribbean trip, where they offered seminars on shopping for dia-
monds and other jewelry and nothing about Mexico or Belize where we docked.)
Four of the five naturalist guides were Costa Rican—the fifth was from Panama. They
were scientists and locals; they could see the flash of a bird's wing in the thickest forest,
Search WWH ::
Custom Search