this astonishingly beautiful paradise and all of its wonderful people.

Costa Rica earthquake aftermath: return to normalcy slow and painful

10:56 AM, January 29, 2009

Tourists have gotten out of Costa Rica safely but residents and business owners are still reeling in the aftermath of the 6.2-magnitude earthquake that shook the Central American nation Jan. 8, killing at least 23 people and destroying more than 400 homes.

Leland Baxter-Neal, a reporter for the English-language Tico Times, wrote a story for the Wednesday edition of the Miami Herald, in which he described the damage and provided a sense of what transpired that day in a country renown for its remarkable biodiversity and natural splendor.

In an email to me he provided the following tidbits:

--About 1,500 people remain in shelters and seven people who remain missing are presumed dead.

--The government is trying to move families from shelters into homes by offering to pay the first three months' rent, plus deposit, as long as rent doesn't exceed $200. "Which isn't much in the city where I live," Baxter-Neal said. "But I guess that might be reasonable in the little villages where they're trying to resettle people."

--A Chilean agency called Un Techo Para Mi Pais, or A Roof for My Country, has begun a campaign to build 200 temporary houses to get people out of shelters, but needs help raising the $1,000 it will cost to build each house.

"I have actually worked with them, and spent a weekend building a house for a family here," said Baxter-Neal, who has launched a website that features news about Costa Rica and its surrounding region. "It's super simple, no plumbing or electricity built in. But the government said it would build all 200 houses in basically two camps where they would provide the basic services like water, electricity, etc."

--The town of Cinchona is essentially destroyed, its 500 residents displaced. "A small restaurant was buried in a landslide killing at least 10," Baxter-Neal reported. "I spoke yesterday to a man who pulled his wife and daughter from the wreckage of that restaurant. Miraculously they lived. I also spoke with a young man who lost his wife and their two children. The day he buried them would have been the second birthday of the youngest boy. Awfully traumatic. Not an easy interview to do."

--Poas Volcano, a major tourist attraction, has reopened. The owners of the nearby Peace Lodge and its La Paz Waterfall Gardens hope to reopen the hotel "in a few months."

Meanwhile, there are sporadic small quakes, perhaps aftershocks, and citizens, understandably, remain on edge. Hopefully, tourists will continue to support this astonishingly beautiful paradise and all of its wonderful people.

--Pete Thomas

Photos: Top file photo is by Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times. Bottom photo: Mariellos Soto feeds her baby sister, Marjorie, at a temporary camp after being left homeless by the earthquake. Credit: Kent Gilbert/Associated Press

Competencias atléticas en Costa Rica

Pushing it to the limit in Costa Rica

Harrison Taking On 2009 Coastal Challenge

Posted By ELLWOOD SHREVE, THE DAILY NEWS

Posted 1 day ago

For most people a trip to Costa Rica includes lounging on a beautiful beach and taking in the breathtaking scenery.

Chatham resident Renee Harrison will see a lot of scenery in the Central American country soon, but she won't have much relaxation.

Harrison, 50, is preparing to embark on one of the most intense physical challenges of her life by participating in the 2009 Coastal Challenge, which begins Feb. 1.

The course for the six-day run is set along Costa Rica's tropical Pacific coastline with jaunts into the Talamancas, a coastal mountain range, before finishing in Corcovado National Park near the Panama border.

The terrain includes jungle, rain forest and mountain trails, highlands and coastal ranges, beaches, rocky outcroppings and reefs, along with river and estuary crossings.

Harrison planned to compete in this unique race when she turned 50, shortly after taking up running seriously four years ago.

After reading about the race in a running magazine, she said, "I thought, 'That sounds really exciting . . . a challenge I might want to tackle some day.' " She got on the e-mail list for the event and as she saw it draw near each year, she said, "I kept psyching and building myself up for it."

However, even the best-laid plans can go by the wayside.

"This is the year and this is the worst year that I had as far as getting into condition, because I had a lot of obstacles," Harrison said.

She suffered a knee injury while participating in a fitness boot camp earlier this year. She also had kidney surgery.

After getting back into running, she opened a new business -- The Naked Berry restaurant, which got her out of her training regimen again.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Harrison not only decided to enter the event, she is leaning towards taking on the toughest course -- the expedition level, which covers more than 225 kilometres.

Having only begun to train seriously for the race in October, Harrison knows she should probably run the adventure course -- which is shorter and less intense -- because she probably hasn't given herself enough time to build up her mileage.

She also has arthritis in her hip.

"I don't know if my hip could take that many miles a day."

Harrison can start in the expedition course and drop down if she doesn't meet the minimum time requirements.

"I don't think I'll decide that until I get there," she said.

Harrison knows the flat terrain of Chatham-Kent and running in the colder weather are not ideal training conditions for the event.

"This race is really going to challenge me, because every element is going to be a challenge. The heat and running off-road, which I've never done before," she said.

Prior to running, Harrison's had a long-term passion for working out at the gym.

The former hairstylist said her desire to get into running was sparked by a conversation she had with a client, who mentioned she was preparing to walk in her second marathon.

"I, all of sudden, said, 'Geez, maybe I should do a marathon.' "

In January 2005, she started a beginners marathon training program, which she took a short cut on in order to run in her first marathon that May.

She admits starting off too quickly, noting she paid for it later that year when she suffered a stress fracture. She went on to run marathons in Detroit, San Diego, Calif., Disney World in Florida and the famous Boston Marathon.

Where most people might have given up on the grueling 26.2-mile race, Harrison said, "I love challenges and I like to challenge myself. That's what motivates me . . . to attempt these things."

When it comes to running marathons, Harrison said, "it's not the actual race that's the achievement, it's the journey of the training . . . That's where the hard work is."

After attaining a personal-best time of three hours and 57 minutes in a marathon, Harrison continues to strive to improve.

"There's a challenge every day when you set goals for yourself," she said. "That's what keeps me out there."

Article ID# 1402832

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Biodiversity Pays

Biodiversity Pays: Study Shows Shade Trees Shelter Coffee from Ant Damage

Editors please note: Photos and video of the ants in action are available by contacting the authors.

MOSCOW—Damage by leaf-cutting ants is more extensive in coffee-only plantations than in those with shade trees intermixed.

The conclusion: ants avoid coffee when they can, a team of University of Idaho scientists found during studies in Costa Rica.

Proponents of plantations of intermixed coffee and shade trees say they provide better habitat for birds and other wildlife. The University of Idaho study by Edgar H. Varón and colleagues provided further evidence that the increased biodiversity in shaded coffee plantations can provide benefits, the authors say.

The team reported its findings in the latest issue of the journal Agricultural and Forest Entomology.

The evidence is strong that damage to coffee by leaf-cutting ants is greatest in coffee-only plantations, according to Sanford Eigenbrode, a University of Idaho Professor and Chair of the Division of Entomology, who oversaw Varon’s research and studies to earn a doctorate.

“The ants can be significant pests on citrus, coffee and other crops. They are capable of defoliating small trees overnight,” Eigenbrode said.

Individual ants carve a neat arch into a leaf, carrying the piece back to its nest. Workers there grow a specific fungus that thrives on the harvested leaf pieces. The fungus feeds the colony’s queen and her larvae.

“It’s been called nature’s example of agriculture,” said Nilsa Bosque-Pérez, the UI entomology professor who directs an international, interdisciplinary program in graduate education funded by the Integrative Graduate Research and Education Traineeship Program (IGERT) program of the National Science Foundation.

She and Luko Hilje of Costa Rica’s Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center also served as co-authors on the publication.

The IGERT project includes students working in Costa Rica and Idaho to understand how biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture can be complimentary.

In Idaho, for example, a team of doctoral students in the program is studying the interplay of insects from remnants of native Palouse prairie, the original ecosystem covering southeastern Washington State and adjacent Idaho, and cultivated fields.

Varon’s work was part of a larger interdisciplinary team effort assessing the potential role of coffee agroforestry systems for increasing environmental services, including pest management, conservation of biodiversity and hydrological services, Bosque-Pérez said.

In Costa Rican coffee-only plantations, Varon showed 40 percent of the plant material carried back to the ant nest was from coffee trees. In plantations shaded by the poro tree, ants preferred it and harvested less coffee.

In farms with complex shade from multiple tree species, the percentage of coffee leaves carried back to the nest dropped to just one percent.

The ant damage can pose a significant cost in coffee-only plantations grown without shade, although the yields overall in so-called ‘sun coffee’ tend to be higher. The economic analysis of pest control and other costs of sun- vs. shade-grown coffee were not part of the study, Eigenbrode said.

The leaf cutting ants do serve an important environmental function, Bosque-Pérez noted. They are among the most important recyclers of plant material in the Costa Rican lowland humid forests and elsewhere in Central America.

In all, 39 species of ants have evolved that harvest living plants to grow one specific fungus as the only food eaten by their larvae. The adult ants that harvest the plants primarily feed on sap.

In August, Varon was the first graduate of the joint doctoral program between the University of Idaho and Costa Rica’s Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center.

Founded in 2000, this program offers opportunities for doctoral students to take coursework towards their degrees in Idaho, then live and conduct their research on agriculture and natural resources, including sustainable production and biodiversity conservation in the American tropics. So far 15 students have participated and five have earned their degrees through this unique program.

poro and "meadow oak"

... Flora : An Overview ...
by Infocostarica Staff

Most people who haven’t been to the tropics are amazed at this region’s lush vegetation. Green in Costa Rica isn’t the green that’s found in Northern forests. The intensity of the color green is apparent even as one is flying over Costa Rica in an airplane. After being away from the country for four years, I couldn’t believe the deep color that I saw from the small window in the airplane.

Costa Rica’s flora is protected by a large system of national parks, which makes up for at least 20% of the country’s area. Thanks to these extensive protected areas, Costa Rica boasts more than 9,000 species of “higher plants”, and at least 800 species of ferns. There are many more species, some of which are widespread in the country, and some which are limited to an ecosystem or a particular area.

The tropical dry forests, which are rare and don’t contain many plants, have short, stocky trees (not more than 45 feet high). Under these canopy trees, there are smaller species of trees and shrubs with lots of prickly spines. The beauty of this strange forest is clearly illustrated during the dry season (November- March), when meadow oaks and poro trees brag by substituting their leaves with beautiful flowers of all colors. During this season, the beige color of the tree trunks and shrubs contrasts with the pastel-colored flowers, that can be white, orange, purple and pink. Dry forests are much more endangered than the tropical rain forest, because of heavy deforestation in the Northern region of the country, where they are located.

The rainforest is more popular and abundant than the dry forest; it’s being protected by several parks in diverse regions of Costa Rica. Rainforests teem with life, both flora and fauna. Since growth and decomposition are extremely rapid in this ecosystem, competition among species of flora is intense. The trees which make up the canopy or vault ceiling of the rainforest, can grow up to 100 feet tall, in order to absorb 90% of the photosynthesis that goes on in this forest. Canopy trees grow long trunks that only contain branches in its upper area. Underneath these giants, there are thousands of species of smaller trees, like the prehistoric fern-tree, as well as shrubs, vines and bromeliads. However, since the sunlight is blocked by the gigantic trees above, vegetation isn’t as thick as it could be. The key to survival in the rainforest is defined by one word: adaptation. Canopy trees adapt by reaching to the ultimate heights; vines adapt by clinging to trees and working their way up; bromeliads adapt by having “water tanks” where they hold rainwater and decaying matter which is basically their food. This incredibly diverse ecosystem has more than half of all living organisms on Earth; in Costa Rica, there are as many species of flora as in all of Europe!

There are twelve ecosystems in Costa Rica, but apart from the dry forest and tropical rainforest, it’s worth mentioning a zone that is often ignored or unknown to most people- the tidal mangrove swamps. These areas thrive with life because of this nutrient-rich environment. Costa Rica has five species of mangroves, which are defined by botanists as halophytes, or plants that can live in salty conditions. Mangroves grow in the border between the ocean and the land, and they benefit greatly from the silt and volcanic ash that rivers deposit near the ocean’s coast. These nutrients promote the production of algae and other organisms that in turn become food for larger marine organisms. Mangroves are essential for the preservation of species of flora and fauna that only thrive in these unique, salty conditions.

As you can see, flora in Costa Rica is diverse, even for such a small country. This region, which measures as much as the state of West Virginia, is responsible for the preservation of many of the world’s endangered species of flora. Furthermore, it contains species that still haven’t been discovered, and that could lead to great scientific discoveries and to medical breakthroughs. The cure for cancer, AIDS or other diseases could be growing and waiting to be discovered, in one of Costa Rica’s many ecosystems.

Costa Rica offers an extraordinary abundance of flora, including some 9,000-plus species of "higher plants". It has more species than the hole North America and Mexico. Of Heliconias known as "birs of the paradise" there are about 30 different species.

Here the forests and grasslands flare with color, some flamboyantly so, for plants like to advertise the delights and rewards they have to offer including the ultimate bribe-nectar. Begonias, anthuriums, and blood of Christ, named for the red splotches on the underside of their leaves, are common. The vermilion poro tree , pink-and-white meadow oak tree, purple jacaranda, and the cortesa amarilla are trees that all add their seasonal bouquets to the landscape.

Many plants play the game of reproduction in the heat of the tropical night, when they emit their irresistible fragrances designed to attract specific insect species. Other flowering species employ makings on their petals to indicate the exact placing of the rewards insect seek. Many orchids species, for example, are marked with marks and spots like airfields, to show the insects where to land and then where to go. Other orchids display colors invisible to the human eye, but yet clearly perceptible to the insects whose eyes cover the ultraviolet spectrum. And a remarkable holly species that changes sex to have more pollination success, being male one year and the next female. What makes them change sex is not known but it seems to be the success or lack of pollination of the year past.

The epiphytic environment is extremely poor in mineral nutrients, being a kind of nutrient desert. The bromeliads, brilliantly flowering , spiky-leafed air plants up to 1.5 meters across, have developed tanks to hold great quantities of rain water. Known ass "tank-epiphites" they provide trusting places and homes for tiny aquatic animals high above the ground. Costa Rica has more than 2,000 different species of bromeliads, the richest deposit of such in Central America.

All plants depend on light to power the chemical process by which they synthesize their body substances from simple elements. When an old tree falls, the strong, unaccustomed light triggers seeds that have lain dormant, and banana palms and ginger plants, heliconas and cecropias, burst into life and put out big broad leaves and soak up the sun, to their flowers and their fruits.

Jaco

Does Eco-Tourism Matter?

Chris Turner
January 13, 2009 3:50 PM

Field Notes of an Accidental Eco-Tourist: Part I

Costa Rica would probably not be my first choice for the first totally workfree holiday I’ve taken in three years, and the Central Pacific coast wouldn’t be my first choice in Costa Rica. The travel scene in Costa Rica’s Central Pacific region is centred around the town of Jaco, a mostly charmless agglomeration of concrete midrises, interchangeable seafood restaurants, surf shops and "gentlemen’s clubs."

But I had a few blessedly uncluttered weeks in December, the long-range forecast for the Canadian prairie was promising highs in the negative double digits, and I have a relative with a timeshare on a quiet stretch of coast just north of Jaco. And in addition to being hot, gorgeous and all kinds of relaxing, it proved itself an interesting vantage point from which to observe the parallel crises of our day: the unfolding financial collapse and the looming/unfolding climate catastrophe. It was a strange, uneven experience, a bit like shopping at a big-box store just outside the gate to the Garden of Eden.

Herewith, some somewhat random field notes, which I'll deliver in a four-part series.

Part One: Does Eco-Tourism Matter?

I. The Curse Of Knowledge (Tropical Holiday Version)
Being mostly immersed in business-as-usual vacationland for three weeks was a useful reminder that my sense of urgency is not a universal feeling. As someone rarely immersed in the standard sun-seeker’s world, I’d sort of forgotten how little of the climate crisis that I feel every day in my bones is readily apparent to one and all. In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath call this “the curse of knowledge.” It’s a particularly important point for sustainability advocates to keep in mind as we go about persuading the general public that we all need to make immediate and enormous changes to the infrastructure of our lives.

But because of my curse, I had one mantra stuck in the back of my mind throughout my time in Costa Rica, spinning around there in a loop like a club DJ’s ambient refrain: The last time . . . the last time . . . the last time . . . My wife and I talked about it every other day. What if this was the last time – the last chance to play in the surf at Playa Hermosa, the final patio sundowner, the very last time we and the society we live in would have the wherewithal to permit this kind of magnificent escape?

The last time. It seemed both glaringly obvious and ridiculously improbable, something we understood intellectually even though it didn’t quite mesh with the world that filled our senses. Still, if the cost of building a sustainable way of life was the end of tropical vacations, we agreed it would be a small price to pay. But it would be dishonest – not to mention ineffective – to describe it as no kind of loss at all. We are all invested in this unsustainable system, and there are parts of it that each of us cherishes. Perhaps a round of golf in paradise means nothing to you. Maybe your thing is a lifechanging Annapurna trek or a trip to the World Social Forum or a cozy Colombian-made Patagonia fleece you practically live in or the affordable, authentic sushi you practically live on. The sense of loss attached to the prospect of this stuff’s departure would be ultimately much more direct – more visceral – than anything we saw in the pristine jungle, and there might be more urgency to a project predicated on saving it.

In other words, a more direct way of ensuring hope for the rainforest might be to ask: is there any hope at all for the timeshares?

II. The View From Eco-Tourism’s Birthplace
If you know Costa Rica from anything other than first-hand experience, this is probably what you know: it is a pioneer in the field of eco-tourism. Costa Rica has long been regarded as a model of sustainable tourism development, a deep-green nation in many senses of the word, beginning with the dense foliage that blankets its rugged terrain. What exactly it is that puts the eco in eco-tourism, however, is less obvious at close range.

Though the brochure image of Costa Rica is often rainforest-themed, the sandy beaches and world-class surf of the Central Pacific has seen considerable development in recent years, including a giant Marriott resort complex further up the coast called Los Suenos, around which were constructed several cliffside enclaves of timeshare townhouses. One of these – a secluded, picturesque spot over a steep hill several kilometres past the Marriott and several more from any non-resort services – was my homebase in Costa Rica. And so whatever else eco-tourism meant, for me it meant constant commuting in a 4WD Suzuki Grand Vitara. This seemed to be a pretty common predicament for the would-be eco-tourist – whether by Grand Vitara or chartered minibus or (in more remote enclaves) rented ATV, eco-tourism in Costa Rica today is largely a commuter affair.

This struck me as symptomatic of a core oversight in the pre-Anthropocene definition of eco-tourism, a trait speaking to a time in the not-too-distant past when sustainability meant little more than careful ecological stewardship. The general argument in favor of eco-tourism (at least versus other types of tourism) is that it is educational, even revelatory; it presumes to teach travelers about the environment and encourages visitors to be respectful of the sensitive natural habitats and social systems that surround their resorts. I had plenty of time on my many commutes around the Jaco area to wonder, though, whether much green knowledge was actually passing osmotically from the rainforest to the resort.

III. So What Is Eco-Tourism, Anyway?
In Costa Rica, eco-tourism is, to begin with, a brand. Every other collection of beachfront villas calls itself an “eco-lodge” or “eco-resort” in Costa Rica, and just about every tourist activity drapes itself in imagery of pristine rainforest canopies and rainbow-beaked toucans. Perhaps the strangest use of the prefix was the collection of outsized timeshare villas next to the Marriott resort’s back nine that called itself “Eco-Golf Estates.” (On the other hand, I saw more toucans and iguanas on the Marriott’s back nine than I did on my tour of the rain-soaked jungle canopy at the Rainmaker Conservation Project, so maybe eco-golf isn’t an oxymoron after all. It was a shorter drive too.)

In any case, the promise of Costa Rican eco-tourism has, in many locales, been boiled down to a single awkward institution: the zipline canopy tour. There seem to be a dozen on offer just in the Jaco area, and I partook of one on a previous visit a few years ago. Each provides about the same experience. The “tour” invariably consists of a series of platforms mounted on towering tree trunks high in the rainforest canopy. These are linked by long steel cables and traversed at high speed by yelping eco-tourists, who dangle from the cables by industrial-grade climbing harnesses like overly safety-conscious Tarzans.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I mostly remember the ride, not the setting. The tree trunks and canopy could’ve been molded plaster and polymer clay populated by animatronic Disney characters for all the tour had to do with visiting a real rainforest. And yet I’m guessing the average annual attendance at any given zipline tour is at or near the total for any given Costa Rican national park, which seems to point to at least one lesson learned from a quarter century of eco-tourist development: Pristine nature is, to many an eco-tourist, a bit of a bore. Lacking in zip(lines), if you’ll pardon the groaner.

IV. But What About Real Eco-Tourism?
On this trip, I skipped the zipline ride for a foot-propelled canopy tour at the Rainmaker Conservation Project near Manuel Antonio National Park, high in the cloud-shrouded mountains a little over an hour south of Jaco. The highway south passed through a mammoth oil-palm plantation, after which we turned off onto a narrow, rutted dirt track that wound past simple homesteads and signs advertising tilapia farms, arriving finally in a clearing at a steep, jungle-covered hill’s base. Visions of scarlet macaws and hooting capuchin monkeys dancing from branch to branch danced in my head. They were soon replaced by the sopping tedium of the rainsoaked hike and the drone of the guide’s nature-doc narrative. In the brief moments that weren’t blurred by pounding rain, we saw a line of leafcutter ants and a millipede and a lot of the same towering green rainforest you can see throughout Costa Rica.

My daughter started to get cold and listless, and my profoundly height-spooked mother started to fret about the altitude we were reaching. The much-ballyhooed highlight of the Rainmaker tour is a vertiginous walk across a series of swaying Indiana Jones rope bridges 250 feet above the jungle floor. The traverse was indeed gutclenchingly awesome, and in the brief moments during the crossing when my attention wasn’t wholly fixed on making sure my suddenly playful little girl didn’t take to hopping or skipping, I stole brief, humbling, exhilirating glimpses of the canopy. It is, to be sure, as monumental a sight as any in nature. Still, it’s the presence Indiana Jones bridge network – another thrillseeker’s rebuke to the true eco-tourist’s pursuits – that makes the tour.

V. So, Like, Whither The Eco-Tourist Sights?
A post-hike lunch is included in the Rainmaker tour, and as we sat on the covered patio with our plates of gallo pinto, we were visited by a rare and magnificent sight: a chestnut-mandibled toucan perched near the top of a tree next to the parking lot. Later, I saw scarlet macaws flying treetop to treetop on the side of the highway near Jaco, and I saw several more toucans on the fringe of a tricky par-four at the Marriott. The golf course was also home to a population of iguanas so big and stubborn and comfortably, permanently resident you could practically walk up and shake hands with them. And our timeshare’s balcony offered a zoo’s worth of sights every day – pelicans and frigatebirds, swinging capuchins and waddling coatimundi, plus each morning’s hummingbird feeding frenzy and multiple nightly performances of Hunting Rituals of the Patio-Dwelling Gecko. All this without even getting into the cocktail-aided visual symphonies of the technicolour sunset over the Pacific each evening.

It pains some sacred part of me to say so, but from the tourist's point of view, the rainforest in Costa Rica doesn't make much of a case – not a visceral one, anyway – for its conservation. My brain's all for Rainmaker Conservation Projects, but I left my heart on the timeshare patio. And I say this as one whose brain does unequivocally know better; as soon as I leave it on idle – behind the wheel of a Grand Vitara, for example – my mind immediately begins to fixate on the sprawling, auto-dependent landscape, the piles of plastic detritus at the roadside, the dwindling supplies of last night's seafood dinner. I can only wonder what the average pseudo-eco-tourist thinks after venturing deep into the jungle to gawp at bugs, only to watch prehistoric lizards hunt the same things on the seventeenth green back at the resort.

Conservation is an absolute good; the less land open to development and the more set aside for healthy biodiversity, the better. But its primary job, the one it does best, is to conserve. But it might not be the best school or the most effective persuasion technique, and it's definitely not a self-evident treatise on ecological philosophy and the innate wisdom of sustainability – not for one and all, anyway, maybe not even for most.

From a sustainability perspective, Costa Rica's Central Pacific coast is a place that probably has more in common with stripmalled suburbia than it does with the rainforest primeval. And there might be only two ways to bring sustainability to a place like it: through its implosion, or through a new language of eco-tourism that can speak to fans of timeshares and ziplines as well as toucans.

I was reminded, during my time in Costa Rica, of an NGO called Seacology I’d read about awhile back. Recognizing that the material needs of the world’s rural poor often meet at cross purposes with ecological goals, Seacology has established a system where it trades local needs for global ones – building new schools for Indonesian villagers, for example, in exchange for the permanent protection of a patch of nearby rainforest.

What might this same arrangement look like on Costa Rica’s Central Pacific? Maybe a small levy on timeshare property taxes and luxury-hotel tariffs and golf course green fees that goes toward expanding the national park system or – better – introducing low-emissions transport options. Maybe an acre-for-acre tradeoff between new tourist developments and green spaces. Something, anyway, that recognizes the value of human ecology and cops to the unavoidable fact that as long as there remains a way to get to perfect tropical sunsets in the midst of harsh northern winter, there will be people keen to do so.

Part Two of “Field Notes Of An Accidental Eco-Tourist” will examine the impact of the housing bubble on the far-flung, second-home-based tourist economy in Costa Rica.

Chris Turner is the author of The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, a global tour of the state of the art in sustainable living. He lives in Calgary. He keeps a poorly maintained blog and can be reached by email at cturner [at] globeandmail [dot] com.

Photo credit: Ashley Bristowe

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Hi to all eco-tourists! Nice article!

By the way, we are working on NaturCert+, which is our very own blog where we share our news and articles, and where visitors have the opportunity to share their activities and ideas with the rest of the world.

Our aim for NaturCert+, is to develop a public platform that will address a variety of issues related to responsible and/or sustainable travel & tourism and become a daily reading resource for a broad spectrum of visitors.

We aim to give the opportunity to bloggers to contribute and share their content relevant to responsible and/or sustainable travel & tourism on our blog and gain new readers and followers, more visibility and publicity, as well as better promotion while generating added value for the submitted content.

Please contact us on plus@naturcert.com if you are interested.

Posted by: Palko - NaturCert on January 15, 2009 12:30 AM

Ecotourism is more related with the person visiting a place and the activities they make in the places they visit, where flora and fauna are the main attractions.
Costa Rica has many pristine, virgin national parks (Manuel Antonio is the most commercial and small of them all). Right now most counties in Costa Rica will let only develop a part of the properties the rest needs to stay as forest. I wouldnt reccomend the places you visited for Ecotourism, instead I would reccoment the southern Pacific (Corcovado), Northern Caribbean (Tortuguero), Southern Caribbean, Talamanca, Chirripo, etc..

Posted by: Rodrigo Vargas on January 16, 2009 8:59 AM

It is a conundrum or could it be a Catch-22 that you create more of a carbon footprint by visiting faraway places to view nature that is untouched by carbon footprints? For example, I need a vacation but would I spend my time feeling guilty for contributing to the eventual downfall the effects of my travel will have? I don't eat Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab (or I do not buy it in a store or restaurant) because they are threatened, but I want to eat them before they are all gone! We have to learn to manage our enjoyment and conservation at the same time, make it a win-win somehow. This article and I hope soon others are starting to question this. This is the tip of the iceberg so to speak on this topic. Keep up the good work! For any information on how change is happening in Baltimore, MD, go to www.goforchange.com.

Posted by: Debbie Smith on January 19, 2009 9:48 AM

Field Notes of an Accidental Eco-Tourist: Part Two

Chris Turner
January 21, 2009 11:05 AM

The Moai Of Costa Rica’s Central Pacific

(Image credit: Ashley Bristowe)

Click here to read Part I of this four-part series.

On the northern fringe of the Costa Rican beach town of Jaco, there stands at present a cluster of five half-completed high-rise condo towers. Were Jaco big enough to have a pre-existing skyline – were it not, that is, basically a single tourist-retail strip encrusted with the odd eight-story hotel – you could say these new towers were coming to dominate its skyline. The building closest to completion looks a lot like the kind of slapdash poured-concrete apartment tower that dominates the ‘70s-era suburbs of most North American cities.

The caretaker at my timeshare complex informed me that many of the full-time workers in the area were priced out of Jaco in recent years and now commute from the market town of Orotina 45 minutes inland, so these towers are presumably intended for seasonal tourist residents. But they’re situated several hundred metres back from the waterfront on a traffic-dense, desultory access road, surrounded by nothing but vacant lots and other construction sites. Charmless barely does the place justice. I never did a formal count, but figure twenty storeys each, four to six units per storey – presuming the developer builds the whole thing out, that’s at least 400 new residential units on the market sometime in the next year or so, in a town with a population of about 10,000.

I drove by the towers practically every other day during my three weeks on Costa Rica’s Central Pacific coast, and I came to think of them as symbols of a unique strain of hubris, symptoms of a development boom so big and earthshaking that its aftershocks were felt even in the tourist towns of Central America. I wondered whether these wouldn’t become Jaco’s Moai – empty Easter-Island-head representations of a collapsed way of life that permitted credit-happy G8 residents and Costa Rica’s elite along with them to dream of a tourist economy so robust and affluent that a 1970s-style apartment box on an access road could pass as a delicious slice of holiday paradise. And moreover to actually build the things, to draw up contracts and pour concrete and build show suites.

There was stuff like this all over the Costa Rican countryside. On the roads and rutted paths leading to the condo developments around the Marriott Los Suenos resort, the flatbed trucks full of construction workers outnumbered vehicles driven by actual tourists most mornings. On the road in from the main highway, there was a show suite for a proposed St. Regis resort in Costa Rica, whose online press release, dated May 22, 2006, reads in part: “When it opens, St. Regis Resort, Costa Rica will introduce an unrivaled dimension of luxury and bespoke service to Costa Rica.” (The notion of “bespoke service” makes me imagine a gardener trimming back palm branches in an immaculate chalk-stripe three-piece.) The St. Regis show suite was far and away the swankiest structure on that stretch of road, and if you knew where to look up a side lane next to the Marriott golf course, you came eventually to a gate, a guardhouse (manned by the most awesomely bored security guard in the free world) and a pile of turned earth. We referred to it as “The Boondoggle.”

And so on: A half-hour south of Jaco alongside the main highway, there was a new development called “Del Pacifico,” whose website promises “a village by the sea.” The map in the master plan outlines a beachfront resort and golf course, luxury villas, even an airstrip – a complex even more grandiose than the Marriott resort. At present, though, all I could see was a semicircle of outsized structures squatting half-finished next to the busy highway. They were outfitted with bleached-white columns and two-story archways, like the skeleton of a big-box shopping plaza done in the style of an Arabian palace. This, the master plan boasts, will one day be Del Pacifico’s “town center.”

Further along the highway was a small sign posted to a telephone pole. “100farmsforsale.com,” it read. Another website, another swath of flowery marketing blather. (“In this community your dream of becoming a gentleman farmer in Costa Rica will come true. These 100 small farms are surrounded by pristine nature that gives to each property a unique charm of peace and harmony.”) This one struck me as the sort of apotheosis of the form. Judging by the photos on the website, this was a patch of denuded jungle in the remote interior of central Costa Rica. By what deliriously decadent definition was the short-term winter occupant of such a place a “farmer”? And what might it mean – for Costa Rica, certainly, but also for the whole bubble-buoyed social order that had inflated it with this delusion – that we’d come to think of such places as farms?

Still, it’s not surprising that Costa Rica’s developers (often partnered with deep-pocketed Canadians or Americans) have invested so much money into these dodgy schemes. After all, Costa Rica has always looked north for its development cues, and its history is one of the steady, linear progression from pre- to post-industrial, from rough-and-tumble subsistence through plantation farming (first coffee, then bananas and other tropical fruit) to a quarter-century service-sector boom driven by tourism, which now employs about 14 percent of working Costa Ricans.

Tourism has long been the way forward, the path to First World affluence and liberation from a cheap-labor, resource-exploitation economy. Much like subprime-mortgaged, property-flipping American homeowners, the people of Costa Rica assumed that the only directions for this new economy were up and out. More developments, bigger and fancier, slimly profit-margined plantations cut up into lots and sold off at unprecedented prices, truckloads of young men gainfully employed pouring concrete and greeting visitors at the gate with their best professional smiles.

No one has yet suggested that the current downturn might not be a trough in a repeating cycle but the beginning of a drop off a precipice from which there might be no return – or at least no return in a form that would justify all those grandiose vacation-property master plans. There might, however, be at least one kind of silver lining, one funny little irony about the kind of infrastructure we North Americans build to vacation in that we’ve stopped building on the fringes of our own cities: density.

Case in point: those putative Moai on Jaco’s fringe, the five concrete towers waiting for residents. They were built for the sun-worshipping hordes, but functionally speaking they’re just what Jaco will need if it is to transition from single-industry tourist town to something more sustainable. It will need density, permanent local residents and non-tourist service. Charmless, outscaled high-rises are far from ideal, but at least Jaco’s towers could be reconfigured to work within a dense, multi-use community with much less effort than your average McMansioned exurb.

Even the townhouse enclaves around Los Suenos, though currently bereft of basic services, were built to a significantly greater density than most North American suburbs. Were the tourist economy to vanish entirely tomorrow, they could be outfitted with a tidy little strip of shops and services at the back of the beach where the outsized pools and lawns currently are, the hillsides perhaps put into useful cultivation instead of pretty landscaping. Maybe even a fish market. The retrofit, in any case, wouldn’t be too difficult. And certainly they could really use a fish market somewhere in the Jaco area.

Because here’s a curious thing about the Central Pacific coast of Costa Rica: though its waters teem with so many fish the pelicans put on feeding displays that could humble your average all-you-can-eat-shrimp buffet; though fishing boats of various sizes trawl up and down the coast relentlessly; though every restaurant for miles specializes in fresh seafood; and even though Playa Herradura (the village adjacent to the Marriott resort) boasts a harbour deep enough to welcome sixty-foot yachts; despite all of this, there is not a single wharf for at least a hundred-mile stretch along this coast where fresh seafood is brought ashore.

It’s as tidy an analogy as you’ll find for the folly of this unsustainable landscape we’ve wrought: in the midst of impossible aquatic abundance, every piece of fish in all the local supermarkets and all but the most discerning local restaurants has been trucked several hours down the highway from the industrial-sized container port near Puntarenas (or further afield). In the rocky shoals to the north and south of Jaco, the lobster are so abundant you can still free dive for them. In Jaco itself, however – a community more or less purpose-built to celebrate the sea’s magnificence – there’s essentially no local seafood.

Perhaps it’ll take a new strain of eco-tourism – one that values the nation’s beaches and rainforests, to be sure, but also its seafood and fresh produce – to point the way, finally, to a truly sustainable Costa Rica.

Part Three of “Field Notes Of An Accidental Eco-Tourist” examines the embryonic sustainable tourist economy in the Costa Rican surfing enclave of Malpais.

Chris Turner is the author of The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, a global tour of the state of the art in sustainable living. He lives in Calgary. He keeps a poorly maintained blog and can be reached by email at cturner [at] globeandmail [dot] com.

Costa Rica might be a better option than the stock market right now.

Rich experiences a bargain in Costa Rica

By Zach Pontz
CNN

(CNN) -- If you consider new experiences and foreign cultures an investment, Costa Rica might be a better option than the stock market right now.

Flights are reasonable -- I paid roughly $370 from Atlanta, Georgia, on short notice -- and if you're smart, so are meals.

Sodas, small roadside stands which have minimal seating but maximum eating capacity, serve traditional dishes such as gallo pinto, a religiously devoured dish of rice, beans and alternating spices, or chicharrones, a typical fried meat dish. Cheap and delicious, they're a great way to dine your way through the country for just a few dollars.

And in Costa Rica, even indulging is cheap: For the most part, top-flight restaurants won't cost you more than $25 a person.

I was able to save some money by traveling with my friend Cristina and her family. But even if you don't know anyone in Costa Rica, you can experience the authentic Costa Rican Tico style without going broke. Just follow me.

South to San Isidro

First thing to do upon arriving in the capital, San Jose, is head south. As in all tourism-driven countries, there are decidedly more expensive and increasingly non-indigenous sections of country, the north being the perpetrator here. For us, San Isidro, a small city in the southern part of the country, was our first stop.

We drove, but if you don't want to shell out a few hundred dollars for gas and the weekly rental of a car, buses are cheap and trustworthy. The quickest route to San Isidro is along the Pan-American Highway, a winding, throttled roadway through mountains and rainforest.

Spinning through the fog and rain, our car pumping along, the silhouette of valleys along cliffs edge on either side of us, I began to ask myself when this trip would level out. As we approached our destination and the pulsing lights of the city in the valley below burgeoned, I had my answer.

San Isidro sits amidst the hills on the edge of Chirripo National Park. What seems like a sluggish little town proves otherwise, as the center of the city is vibrant and rhythmic, bustling with people, shops and a multitude of restaurants. The main square, at the base of the town's largest church, is attractive with its surrounding cafes, markets and stores.

Particularly appealing is the Central market, open every day but Sunday until 5 p.m. The true character -- and cheapest meals -- of San Isidro are uncovered here, where bakeries, food stands and sweet shops act as a culinary history of a people . The empanadas, ceviches and plates of rice and beans -- with their Spanish roots -- were especially tantalizing.

Waterfalls and surf

The next day, we headed off toward the coast, but not before stopping to take a trip through the rainforest on horseback to Nauyaca Waterfalls. For $45, Don Lulo's Nauyaca Waterfalls provides the horse, escort and grub.

I admit I'd never been on a horse before, and the lack of control I felt at first wasn't altogether pleasing. Despite some startling missteps by my horse, Yogi, I felt safe most of the time, and the trip was capped off with an amazing lunch of chicken, beans, rice and batidos, a popular Costa Rican drink consisting of fruit blended in water or milk.

From the falls, we shot to Dominical, a small surf enclave with a rugged unmarked beach. We checked into Tortilla Flats, a hotel that sits 20 feet from the beach. For $20 a night, its location can't be beat, even if its spartan rooms left a bit to be desired.

The town has a bounty of small eateries. With multiple choices, including a sushi restaurant and a Mex-American bar, we chose a small deserted soda to dine in. The open air and scanty seating assured us that this was the place locals -- and thus fine indigenous food -- could be found. We were right.

Wildlife in Manuel Antonio

Last Stop: Manuel Antonio. This resort town sits on the edge of a national park. Frequented by movie stars and everybody else, the main road is lined with fancy hotels and restaurants. But the beauty of the place is that it's not a one-note town. Scattered amongst the resorts are affordable accommodations that don't skirt quality. At Villas El Parque, one such lodging, our room's expansive views of the ocean were enthralling.

A variety of restaurants, from tourist traps to small gastronomic gems, litter the mountainside. El Avion might be of interest, as it's built around an old C-123 that was the sister plane of the one at the center of the 1980s Iran/Contra affair. Salvaged from the San Jose airport in 2000, it now acts not only as a novelty but also as a nightclub.

The park itself is the main draw. Though it is smaller than most other national parks, its assortment of wildlife is astounding. You've got to be quick to catch a glimpse of the endangered squirrel monkey or a colorfully brilliant toucan. If a slow pace is more your style, lovably indolent sloths abound.

I suggest hiring a tour guide. For a minimal fee, their quick vision and knowledge of the park's life forms will no doubt ease any reluctance you might have about not going it alone. For a day's worth of fun, you won't spend more than $25 a person.

For the week, I struggled to spend $300 in this tiny country, ironic when one considers that the English translation, Rich Coast, was coined when Spanish explorers came ashore in the 1500s and found natives wearing gold bands in their ears.

Depending on your budget, anything from zip-line tours to windsurfing and scuba diving to climbing the edge of volcanoes can be accomplished in Costa Rica. The Tico lifestyle is enticing. A relaxed and languid pace reminds you of exactly what life is about -- and how not to go broke trying to discover it.

Where does travel guidebook writer Rick Steves go on vacation?

Rick Steves | Costa Rica makes ideal family vacation spot

Where does travel guidebook writer Rick Steves go on vacation? Even a workaholic can relax in Costa Rica.

By Rick Steves

Tribune Media Services

By Rick Steves

When I travel in Europe, I'm working. So when I take a vacation, I like to go elsewhere. I asked my friend Kurt Kutay, who runs Wildland Adventures, to set up the best possible eight-day Costa Rican vacation for a variety of experiences. This was a rare chance for our entire family to be together for the holidays.

Half of Costa Rica lives in a relatively moderate climate in the central plain. But we stayed where it's muggy to the max. On the west coast, laundry doesn't even dry when hung in the sun. The temperature is the same all year. Our lodge was off the grid, powered by its own generator; there was no air-conditioning, just fans. But for being away from it all, it was perfect. Kayaking up a lazy lagoon, daydreaming through a plush garden of sticky flowers, learning the art of the hammock, munching fresh-baked cookies, enjoying a little personal downtime with tiny lizards — even a workaholic could be thoroughly on vacation here.

It wasn't all relaxation. The adrenaline experience of the trip was doing a zip-line tour — a Costa Rican favorite rarely found in Europe. Platforms built high in the rain forest canopy are laced together by cables, each 100 to 400 yards apart, as high as 200 feet above the ravines. Zipping down the cables gave us modern-day Tarzans the thrill of our dreams. With guides clipping us from one cable to the next, we couldn't have fallen to our deaths if we tried. There were no lessons in nature here, just the smell of burning leather as we pulled down on the cable with our hand brake to slow each landing. Coursing through the trees was thunderclaps of fun.

After zipping, surfing

And, after zipping, there was surfing. There's lots of surfing in Europe, but I had never tried it. In Costa Rica, I decided to take a surfing lesson. At breakfast, a man who surfed throughout his childhood confided in me that he had tried it the day before — he couldn't stand up on the surfboard and was "humbled." Later, my guide taught me the one critical motion for surfing: While lying down on your stomach, arch your back, keeping your hands on the board while your right leg stays back. When the wave comes, quickly snap to your feet, bringing the left leg to the front as you stand.

At first, the lunge muscle in my left leg was just not working, and my arms weren't strong enough to throw my body up. I failed and failed again. I'd come close and then tumble. The board spun disobediently away from me, dragging me toward the shore like a small boy deserving a spanking. Then my guide critiqued my technique. Don't stop at the knees, don't think face down, and pretend your head is going up first. Your head should rocket up in one motion, springing the body off the board. Forget the right leg — it stays behind.

Suddenly the water was smooth and quiet. It was the calm before the next wave. My coach said this was it, and gave me a strong push. I pulled my head back, seeing the entire front of the board as I arched up. Then, in one motion, I pushed everything up. My left leg landed just right — immediately under my body, and, like a weightlifter struggling for a personal best, I straightened up.

Suddenly I was rushing before a foamy cauldron, as the wave charged toward the shore. I was standing high above the noisy rush, playing with my control, and traversing the wave to extend the ride. Then I crouched, as if racing, before the tunnel of a giant wave engulfed me, even though I was on the baby slope of a harmless three-footer. The ride seemed longer than it actually was, but that 15 seconds of surfer exhilaration was worth all the prior flips and flops.

Then the last morning finally arrived. I spent the hour before our departure face down on a massage table. Wistfully, I strapped my wristwatch back on, and we headed for the lodge's airstrip. There was no rush, as this was the first time in our lives the plane would wait for us. My daughter said she wanted to take flying lessons. My son marveled at how he hadn't held a cell phone in his hand for a week. My wife tidied up her list of 30 or so different birds she had spotted. I reflected on how travel refreshes our bodies, minds and souls — and then redirected my thoughts to a land where the flora and fauna is more ... European.

Edmonds-based Rick Steves writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. His syndicated column runs weekly at seattletimes.com/travel. His TV special "Rick Steves' Iran" will air in mid-January on PBS stations.

Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company

I.C.E.

I.C.E., Costa Rica's Largest Telecommunications Operator, Awards Airspan Networks a $12.5 Million WiMAX Contract

I.C.E. Has Undertaken a Substantial Residential and Business Subscriber Expansion of Next-Generation Advanced Services in the Country With Airspan's WiMAX Products
January 20, 2009: 08:00 AM ET

Airspan Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: AIRN), a leading provider of WiMAX-based broadband wireless access networks, announced today that I.C.E. (El Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad) of Costa Rica, the country's main telecommunications operator, has awarded Airspan Networks a follow-on order worth approximately $12.5 million through its local partner, Datatell (Datatell 3000 de Costa Rica), for a network expansion and the deployment of several tens of thousands of CPEs (customer premises equipment).

The network, operating in the 3.5 GHz band, is made up of Airspan WiMAX Forum® Certified HiperMAX base stations and a combination of ProST outdoor installed CPEs and EasyST self-install desktop units. Together, the equipment will compose a large WiMAX network offering a broad range of next-generation applications.

"Airspan is excited to continue to supply I.C.E. with solutions for their WiMAX network. We have been working closely with Datatell to ensure that I.C.E. receives the best comprehensive solution, not only for the actual WiMAX equipment, but also for network installation, management and maintenance as well as radio planning. We look forward to an on-going strong relationship with the company and to continuing to help them quickly achieve their growth objectives," stated Amit Ancikovsky, Airspan's Vice President and General Manager, Americas.

Eric Stonestrom, Airspan's President and Chief Executive Officer, added, "Incumbent carriers such as I.C.E. continue to select Airspan to solve their broadband connectivity needs. We are helping these operators quickly deploy field-proven networks whether overcoming challenging terrain, serving diverse demographics, or providing a quick return on aggressive business models." Stonestrom continued, "Despite the challenging economic times, the business case for wireless broadband connectivity around the world remains compelling. Airspan's combination of strong customer focus and award-winning products continue to create value for our customers."

About Airspan Networks Inc.

Airspan is a leading WiMAX pure player and the solution-provider of choice for some of the world's largest WiMAX deployments. Developing leading-edge technology for broadband access and IP-telephony, Airspan continues to supply operators around the world with best-of-breed solutions. With direct sales offices throughout Asia, EMEA and the Americas, a worldwide network of resellers and agents, and partnership alliances with major OEMs, Airspan boasts over 100 commercial WiMAX deployments worldwide. www.airspan.com.

Peru

For Peruvians, Baskets for the U.S. Market Bring a New Way of Life

By ROXANA POPESCU

Published: January 19, 2009age

Roxana Popescu for The New York Times

Angela Pacaya teased apart a palm branch to get at the fiber inside.

Roxana Popescu for The New York Times

Enlarge This Image

Noam Shany, in Atalaya, Peru, came up with the idea of a basket-making venture after seeing local designs at a tourist lodge.

SAN ANTONIO DE PINTUYACU, Peru — Women in this remote Amazon village can weave fibers from the branch of the chambira palm tree into practically anything they need — fishing nets, hammocks, purses, skirts and dental floss.

But for the last year they have put their hopes in baskets, weaving hundreds to build inventory for export to the United States. Their first international buyers are the San Diego Natural History Museum and San Diego Zoo, and they plan to sell to other museums and home décor purveyors like the Field Museum in Chicago and eventually Cost Plus.

The circuitous route these baskets have taken from the jungle to American store shelves started with a bird watcher’s passion for natural habitats, passed through a regional government whose policies have become increasingly more conservationist, and, supporters say, should end with better lives for the weavers and their communities.

The enterprise is one of many ventures here in the Amazon aimed at “productive conservation,” which advocates say will save the rain forest by transforming it into a renewable economic resource for local people — just as some eco-tourism lodges and other ventures in places like Africa and Southeast Asia have tried to do.

The greatest challenge has been convincing residents of the communities along the river, who until now largely supported themselves by chopping down palm branches and fishing, that conservation is in their best interest.

The government of Loreto, Peru’s densely forested and least populous region, organized the basket project, which is financed by grants from two nonprofit groups, Nature and Culture International and the Moore Foundation.

“Having the government take such a role in a market-based approach is quite novel,” Amy Rosenthal, deputy director for projects at the Amazon Conservation Association, a nonprofit group that works in southern Peru and northern Bolivia, said when told of the program.

She said the state of Amazonas in Brazil has tried a similar conservation-exploitation program. “It sounds like a well-thought-out program and something that could be wildly successful,” she said.

But the program in Peru is not without challengers. Iván Vásquez, president of the Loreto region, said he had made some enemies for supporting conservation in a region where fishing and logging have been the primary sources of revenue for decades and where oil and gas are seen as the next frontiers.

He called himself “the Quixote of the Amazon.”

“We are part of nature. When we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves,” Mr. Vásquez said.

He said big logging operations, not small farmers, continue to pose the greatest deforestation threat.

The changes in Loreto may correspond to a broader shift in Peru’s attitude toward conservation. Last spring, motivated by the signing of a free-trade agreement with the United States, the country set up an environment ministry, which has already started to focus on deforestation.

The basket project is the brainchild of Noam Shany, an Israeli agronomist and entrepreneur. A bird-watching trip in 2005 led him to a remote village on the Tahuayo River, an Amazon tributary. There, he said, he noticed striking local baskets for sale in a tourist lodge.

Mr. Shany, who had previously sold artificial plants to Wal-Mart and cacti to nurseries in California and Australia, decided to put his retail experience to an environmental use.

In 2006 he helped found Procrel, a biodiversity program that has worked with the regional government to establish three vast protected reserves. The basket program is one of several conservation initiatives intended to help indigenous peoples benefit from the conservation efforts.

Pitching Peruvian handicrafts to retailers in the United States was easy. “These baskets represent so much more than simply a basket,” said Nancy Stevens, manager of retail and wholesale operations for the San Diego Natural History Museum.

“When I began to hear their story,” she said, “from a local project into a story of sustainability, where they’re being developed as a responsible use of the natural resources of this Amazon region — it just clicked so beautifully with the mission of this museum.”

Pitching an international enterprise to the villagers was almost as easy. Mr. Shany turned a somewhat haphazard local craft — women making a few baskets, selling them in a local shop, then making a few more — into something more like mass production, with higher returns to the producers.

Artisans get $10 to $12 for each basket, which sells for $40 in the United States. About a third of that goes into shipping and distribution, and the rest is retailer profit, meaning the company that distributes the baskets gets a little more per unit than each maker. Mr. Shany and Procrel receive nothing.

The artisan’s cut may not seem substantial, Mr. Shany said, but it is more than double previous monthly earnings. Two years ago, households in this region earned as little as $30 a month selling fish and palm frond roofing at city markets, he said. Today, experienced weavers can earn up to $100 a month.

Over time, urban Peruvian employees of the program have brought a new vocabulary to the river communities. Visiting every few weeks, they encourage the weavers to respect deadlines, quality control and inventory requests. On one such recent trip, Mr. Shany delivered a pep talk to his newest recruits.

“These stores don’t buy one hundred baskets,” he said. “One hundred is nothing. Two hundred is nothing. They buy a thousand, ten thousand. You’re all going to need to work together.”

Since the program started, Mr. Shany said, the weavers had not been able to meet demand. “We can’t keep up with the orders,” he wrote in a recent e-mail message. “We are training more ladies to increase production and also to involve more people.”

Ms. Rosenthal said that there were considerable difficulties with any start-up operation like this, not the least of which is falling discretionary spending of all kinds by American consumers as the recession in the United States deepens.

Other than that, “quality assurance is probably their biggest challenge for selling something retail in the U.S.,” she said. But if successful, the arrangement “can bring them much better profits and a much better source of income than in local terms.”

Still, Trevor Stevenson, executive co-director of the Amazon Alliance, a nonprofit group that focuses on indigenous populations, said it was vital for communities to diversify their income and not count exclusively on crafts, which can be volatile, particularly in times like these.

One challenge has been teaching the river communities to shift from consumption to conservation on a large scale.

“Here, today is today,” Mr. Shany said. “Tomorrow is another day. It’s an immediate mentality, so replanting, and not cutting the tree in the first place, is really revolutionary.”

Eblis Chavez, from San Antonio de Pintuyacu, a village of Iquito Indians that is two days by motorboat from the nearest city, said residents had been slowly won over.

“We hesitated a bit originally,” Mr. Chavez said, “but it makes much more sense to preserve the trees.”

A year ago, villagers here walked for hours to find irapay palms, whose fronds are used for the ubiquitous thatched roofs sold at markets, because they had chopped all the trees closer to them. They carried the loads on their backs. “We were slaves of the irapay,” Mr. Chavez said.

Since last January, villagers have planted chambira groves 10 minutes away, where young fibers used for basket weaving are ready for harvest every six months.

“I’m pleased with this reforestation project, which will remain for my children,” said Angela Pacaya, who heads the artisan cooperative.

The baskets are bringing staples, and stability. “Already, there’s more money changing hands. Already we’re buying more from the bodegas. Rice, sugar, soap,” said Erika Catashunga, of Esperanza, another village, speaking by communal telephone.

Ms. Catashunga, 25, is now at the forefront of another venture. She has just received the first business license granted to a basket weaver with Procrel, establishing her as the manager of a nine-village empresa comunal, or communal enterprise. Its name is Mi Esperanza, or My Hope.

Growing up, she never imagined she would manage a global business. “Not even in my dreams,” she said.

Honeymoon Hotspots

It is always good to see Costa Rica in the list of honeymoon hotspots.

The Honeymoon Hotspots: Where You Need To Go

January 17th, 2009 • Related • Filed Under

Filed Under: Overseas real estate

Tags: Founders • Honeymoon Couples • Low Seasons

Michael Cottam, one of the founders of TheBigDay, offers advice on how to go about choosing where to go on your honeymoon.

So you’re engaged…congratulations! One of the most fun parts about getting married is planning that honeymoon trip of a lifetime. And if you haven’t even narrowed it down to a country, much less an island or a resort, don’t worry-many (if not most!) honeymoon couples are in the same boat.

Some couples start by leafing through travel or bridal magazines and looking for pictures that are appealing and romantic-you can do this, but you’re more likely to settle on the best-MARKETED destination rather than the best destination for your wants, needs, and style.

The following are questions you should ask yourself-it’ll help you figure out what your options are, and help you ask better questions of your travel agent…which will help you plan that perfect honeymoon.

When are you going?

Every destination has its high and low seasons-and this is typically a combination of weather and the times of the year that their tourists typically take vacations. Some destinations, such as Hawaii, have very little variance in their weather year-round; others, like the Caribbean have a definite hurricane season. Yet it’s important to know that the Caribbean is a very big place-and different parts have different hurricane seasons, and some parts of the western Caribbean really aren’t hurricane prone at all. Other destinations–such as Central America and Southeast Asia-have rainy or monsoon seasons. You really need to know the specific destination in order to have a feel for whether or not their “green” season is too “green” (rainy!) for you.

Also, ask yourself if you’re willing to delay the start of your honeymoon a couple of weeks or months. Summer months are very popular for weddings, as it tends to be easier for family and friends to get to the wedding; plus, if you’re having an outdoor wedding, the odds of good weather are more in your favor. However, this also tends to be the expensive (and sometimes more crowded) season for many honeymoon destinations. Giving yourself a month off after the wedding before leaving on your honeymoon can give you time to relax and wind down from the wedding, write your thank-you notes, and take advantage of the lower prices of what’s known as the “shoulder season” (between high and low season).

Travel time/vacation time

How much time off work are you going to take? And how much of it are you willing to spend on an airplane?

If you’re going on an African safari, you’re going to consume about a day and a half traveling each way from the U.S. This is fine if you’re going to be there a couple of weeks, but if those days are coming off your total of 7 days on vacation, you might consider someplace closer. And distance isn’t the only factor: how many stopovers is it going to take to get where you’re going? If you’ve got to land on a main island, then wait around for 4 to 6 hours for the “island hopper” flight to take you out to your remote private island retreat, that’s going to consume your vacation time too.

A great option, if it’s available, is a red-eye flight, where you sleep on the plane and wake up at your destination, saving a day of vacation time.

Language

This is less of a problem than you might think. Unless you’re backpacking around some exotic country, you’re going to find people in restaurants, hotels, and the activity vendors all speak English. One bit of advice: try to learn a few words and phrases in the local language, as you’ll find you’re treated differently if you begin conversations with “hello” in their language, and show you’re willing to make the effort to get along in their country.

Cost

The big question! First, some statistics: the average U.S. couple spends about $3700 for their honeymoon package…and this doesn’t included expenditures once they’re at their destination. When considering a resort that’s NOT all-inclusive, take some time to research the area and find out what meals cost, what a snorkel trip costs, what taxis cost, etc. Tourist bureau sites are a good place to start.

Costs of excursions and meals can easily add up to much more than your airfare and hotel, and you need to be realistic and prepared for this. Consider staying at multiple hotels on your honeymoon-perhaps one or two nights at someplace really nice to start, then a more moderate property with perhaps less of a view for the remainder.

People, people, people

There are a number of important considerations here. First off, who else is going to be at your resort? Are most of the guests at the resort in your age group? Are they young and adventurous, or older and mostly interested in golf? Does the resort market to families-are you going to find a ton of kids splashing around in the pool when you’re trying to have a romantic, relaxing time? Is the bar going to be lively, with your kind of music? Are you going to feel right at home, or a bit out of place?

Next, let’s talk about density: do you prefer to be in the middle of the action, with lots of other happy honeymooners all around, or quieter and more secluded? Think about whether you want to be in a hotel with 400 rooms, or a resort with 40 private villas…the experience will be very different. And do you want to be waited on hand and foot, or left alone to explore by yourselves? Do you want to shop, maybe pick up souvenirs or local style clothes, or maybe some artwork? Maybe you want a mix: in Hawaii, popular combinations would include a few nights in the heart of Waikiki combined with a few nights on the North Shore…on Maui, perhaps a split between the Lahaina/Kaanapali area and the secluded Hana coast.

Finally, how much do you want to learn about the locals, their language, food, and culture? Generally, at the all-inclusive resorts, you’ll find yourselves with other tourists, separated from the local style. If you want to immerse yourselves in the local environment, perhaps consider a smaller hotel, farther from the main tourist areas.

History and culture

Do you enjoy visiting ancient ruins…centuries-old cathedrals…seeing native villages? The beauty of the art, architecture, and history of Greece, Italy, Scotland and Ireland, or Mayan civilizations can make for a fabulous honeymoon experience.

Europe is an obvious destination, but think also about the Mayans and Aztecs in Latin America…Buddhist temples in Bali and Thailand… Angkor Wat in Cambodia…Buddhist and Hindu temples in India. China is becoming a much more popular destination as well: consider visiting the Great Wall and seeing the Terracotta Warriors.

Accommodations

How sensitive are you to humidity and temperature? This can determine not only the destination, but also the choice of resort, as not all A/C systems are created equal. How close do you want to be to nature? I’ve stayed at fabulous safari lodges in Africa that didn’t even have complete walls…just mosquito nets to protect you at night. For some, this is a dream come true-for others it might be a nightmare.

How important is your living space in your hotel room? Do you feel claustrophobic easily? Do you like to lounge around in the morning, have breakfast in bed, or do you like to get up and out there exploring the island? Is a spa on-property important to you? Is a view of the ocean from your room important to you…enough to justify the higher price?

Also think about how you typically spend your day on vacation. If you go back and forth from the room to the beach, the pool, the restaurant, you might want a place with ground-level villas rather than have to get on and off elevators all the time. If you’re going to spend most of your days out exploring the island, this might not matter so much.

Nightlife

Are you going to want to go out dancing/clubbing? Or maybe see some native dances or performances? If you’re going to Hawaii, and you ARE looking for nightlife, you’ll probably want to think about Oahu or maybe Maui.

For Mexico, you should be thinking about Cancun or Cabo, rather than some of the more isolated resort areas. If you’re considering the Caribbean, the answer to this question might affect the island or region you choose as well. Music: what do you want to hear on your honeymoon? Mariachi bands, steel drums, reggae, or Hawaiian hula…what appeals to you?

Food!

How adventurous of an eater are you? How about your fiancé? Do you like to try the local food, try many different restaurants? Often resorts will have very good American and European menus, but for authentic local cuisine you’ll have to venture outside the resort.

All-inclusives and cruises often make fabulous food very affordable; if you’re not at an all-inclusive resort, the on-property restaurants are often pretty pricey compared to outside restaurants, and tend to be less authentic with respect to local/native cuisine. If your chosen resort is in or near a reasonably large town or tourist area, you may have lots of choice for dinner; if you’re secluded and isolated, it’s possible that you have no choice but to dine at the resort (and pay their prices, if it’s not included!).

In areas like Fiji and Tahiti, you’ll often find that while the resort isn’t officially all-inclusive, they do have a “meal plan” which covers food and sometimes drinks. Sometimes these plans cover just breakfast and dinner, which leaves you the option of trying the local cuisine and eating relatively inexpensively for lunch.

Adventure!

How about a safari in Kenya or Botswana? Or hiking in the Andes…maybe a trip to Macchu Pichu? Or a week on a rented sailboat in the Caribbean? How about touring Australia on a Harley? Maybe trek through the jungles of Costa Rica, observing monkeys and exotic birds? If these appeal to you, first thing you need to do is make sure they also appeal to your spouse! These kinds of trips create memories of a lifetime, and can be very affordable as well. Often, couples will want to combine an “adventure” trip with a few days relaxing at a beach resort-these kinds of combination packages can be put together for you by a knowledgeable travel agent, and give you the best of both worlds.

Watersports

Do you and your fiancé scuba dive (or do you want to learn)? You’ll find that pretty much every tropical destination has diving and snorkeling available. Some will have scuba courses offered by the resorts, while other resorts will have partnered with local dive companies. If you love to snorkel, make sure your travel agent knows, so they can recommend resorts where the wave conditions tend to be good and there are good snorkeling reefs nearby so that there’s something besides just sand to look at. In general, a great surfing beach won’t be a great snorkeling beach!

Are you interested in going deep-sea fishing? It’s important to know what the fishing is like where you’re going. For instance, while you can take a guided fishing trip from any one of the Hawaiian islands, your chances of actually doing some CATCHING as well as fishing are substantially better on the Big Island!

Additionally, it’s important to talk to your travel agent about what kinds of watersports you want to enjoy. If you’re interested in jetskiing and parasailing, you’ll want to be in one place; if you want to kayak with the turtles, snorkel around the reef, you’ll want to be elsewhere. It’s also useful to know how far it is from your hotel to the best spots for your activities-you won’t want to spend two hours a day roundtripping from your hotel to your activities.

The destinations

Here’s a quick look at some of the more popular destinations, and what they’re known for.

Fiji- great scuba and snorkeling, very friendly people, mostly villa-style beach bungalow accommodations in widely-separated resorts. Moderately expensive to very expensive. About 9 hours flying time from Los Angeles.

Hawaii- beautiful weather all year round, close to mainland U.S., amazing array of watersports and adventure activities. Not as much of a cultural transition for mainland Americans as many other destinations. Most hotels have 200-400 rooms; hotel density along beaches can be high. Excellent choice for a destination wedding, as prices are very reasonable for high quality and service. Inexpensive to moderately expensive.

Tahiti- great scuba and snorkeling, famous for overwater bungalows and phenomenal views. Resorts tend to be fairly far apart; very secluded and private. Expensive to very expensive; food, drinks, and activities can be very expensive as well. About 8 hours flying time from Los Angeles.

Mexico- Cancun/Cozumel nearly fully recovered from the past summer’s hurricanes, and much rebuilding has resulted in many upgraded resorts. High density of resorts on beaches in places like Cancun and Cabo. Great diving, watersports; some areas close to Mayan ruins. Recently, all-inclusive resorts have become common, and there are some terrific bargains to be had, especially at the moderate to more expensive resorts. A new trend we’re seeing is combining the traditional beach vacation with a few days inland at one of Mexico’s colonial cities, exploring the history and culture of old Mexico. Easy access from the U.S. Inexpensive to moderately expensive.

Caribbean- known for prevalence of all-inclusive resorts, especially in Jamaica. Huge range of cultures, styles, food, music. Great watersports and scenery, and not too long in the air from major U.S. cities. Cruises are a very popular way to explore multiple islands and countries in the Caribbean at a modest cost. Inexpensive to very expensive.

Europe - history, architecture, and great food and wine are big draws here. Airfare is less than you might expect, often sub-$500 per person roundtrip. Less of a beach resort destination, although areas of Italy, France, and Greece on the Mediterranean can provide the sun & surf element. Castles in Ireland and self-drive B&B vacations throughout the UK are popular, as are villa stays in France and Italy. In Greece, the Cyclades islands are very popular: Santorini with its submerged volcano, black sandy beach, and breathtaking sunsets…Mykonos with its blue-domed churches, whitewashed houses and beaches…and Naxos, the largest island with golden sandy beaches, clear turquoise waters, and the medieval capital of Hora. Honeymooners often combine stays on these islands with a visit to Athens. Many cruise options are available, allowing easy exploration of a number of Mediterranean ports in one vacation. Moderately expensive to very expensive.

Costa Rica & Belize - becoming very popular as eco-tourism destinations, these countries offer terrific beach resorts, watersports, diving and snorkeling, combined with jungle exploration and eco-adventures. Treetop resorts becoming popular here as well; and like Mexico, there are a number of Mayan ruins accessible in Belize. Belize also is famous for its barrier reef, and the scuba diving hotspot known as The Blue Hole. Relatively short flight from mainland U.S., combined with great value for the dollar at many resorts makes these two countries very hot for honeymooners.

Australia & New Zealand - enormous variety of things to do for the adventurous types, from Ayers Rock to the Great Barrier reef, Sydney and its renowned Opera House, Surfers Paradise. New Zealand has everything from geysers in Rotorua to jet-boating; hiking and skiing amongst tremendous scenery, and of course the famous Maori hospitality. We often suggest combining a trip to either of these countries with a stopover in Fiji or Tahiti as well. Long flight times (15 hours+ from Los Angeles) mean you’ll probably want to stay 2 weeks at the very least. Moderately expensive to expensive.

The Seychelles, Maldives, and Mauritius are all fabulous honeymoon destinations, although because of the flying time from the U.S. (around 30 hours), they’re more commonly visited by Europeans. Truly spectacular diving and scenery, great food and culture, and very friendly people. Hotels are much more spread out than Hawaii or Mexico-more like Fiji or Tahiti. Private island resorts are common, as in Fiji and Tahiti. Seychelles and Mauritius trips are commonly combined with a week or so in Africa on safari. Expensive to very expensive, even without the airfare (roughly $1500 to $2000 per person roundtrip from the U.S.).

Southeast Asia - combines terrific beach resorts with extraordinary culture and historical sites to explore. A relatively long flight from the U.S. (up to 20 hours depending on routing), but a tremendous value once you’re there. Thailand, Bali, China, Vietnam and Cambodia are all becoming very popular. Very inexpensive without the airfare; inexpensive to moderate with airfare.

Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile are becoming more popular, and offer a great opportunity to experience culture, wilderness and traditional beach resorts all in one vacation. The Amazon is a huge draw, of course, but also the culture and experiences to be had in Rio and Buenos Aires make for a very memorable and exotic honeymoon. The Inca city of Machu Picchu is certainly one of the most beautiful and enigmatic ancient sites in the world, perched in the Andes at over 9,000 feet in elevantion. Moderately expensive to very expensive.



By: Jared Moran