DEFINITION OF ECOTOURISM

Martha Honey

1)  Involves Travel to Natural Destinations

2)  Minimizes Impact

3)  Builds Environmental Awareness

4)  Provides Direct Financial Benefits for Conservation 

5)  Provides Financial Benefits and Empowerment for Local People 

6)  Respects Local Culture

7)  Supports Human Rights and Democratic Movements

Properly understood then, the emphasis is ecotourism is on a set of principles and how to put them into practice; on what ecotourism stands for and how these standards are being implemented.

Using this definition by Martha Honey of what Ecotourism is; I will re-evaluate my previous experiences of trips through Costa Rica. I will utilize a grading system by means of points, awarded for accomplishing things on this definitive list lowest being a "Soft-Core" grade of F and a high score of a "Hard-Core" grade of A. The ideal grade would be a "Hard-Core" A. 

The grading scale works simply. I will add my points from each excursion and when a sum is less than 50 it will be multiplied by 2 and then rating under a "Soft-Core" criteria. It the grade is greater than 50 it will remain that number out of 100, under a "Hard-Core" criteria. 

I will document the success (or failure) of my tourism here in Costa Rica from what I have learned in class.

ORIGINAL JOURNAL

Limon - July 26, 209

Well this last weekend might have been the most ambitious one since I've been here. For our ecotourism class, our teacher decided it to be a good idea to head down to the Limon province of Costa Rica. We had a very specific agenda, and each day had it's adventures...

Day 1: FRIDAY

We left the school at 1:30. So the journey began, with a 5 hour car ride to Puerto Viejo, howver, it took a little longer because we decided to take a small detour to check out the town of Limon: the coastal city center/export headquarters of Costa Rica. This is also a landing spot where Christopher Columbus landed when he explored the Americas. But enough history, to the stories.

As many might think, or as many do think, all I do is go to beaches and hang out and drink beer and speak some spanish to the locals. It is you people that are going to enjoy this blog post, because it is exciting.

We stayed the night in Puerto Viejo, and that night, I sat out on the porch saying goodbye to the first town that I stumbled across when I was a still so new to Costa Rica. As I pondered what my life would go back to when I returned to the states, I didn't realize what was in store for me the next day.

DAY 2: SATURDAY

Today was interesting. We had plans to meet a guy who lived in a tribe deep in the woods, called the Bri Bri Tribe. We met up with German and headed up into the tropical rainforest for a long hike ahead of us.

As we trudged on through la selva we came across a fallen tree, in which there was no way to head around it. So onward went German, with his Bri Bri instincts pumping through his genes, jumping right into the brush, trying not to hack away too much with his 3 foot machete. I followed, reluctantly. I'd seen enough Discovery channel to know that these forest yield danger. I swallowed my pride and moved on, navigating through deep brush, as the vines tried to hold me back. The ambiance was broken when Nate, the guy behind me yelped a distinctive, "Ow, what the hell?!".

That did it. I finally realized exactly where we were standing. I tried to gather myself as I turned around to see what we were about to deal with, moving away branches and vines, until my thought process was rapidly accelerated with a sharp pain in my arm. Something was stinging me, and I didn't want to stick around to see what the humming noises were. I yelled out like a fire alarm, "THERES WASPS IN HERE!" and managed to slip out a few more-vulgar words as I scurried through the unknown foliage and over came Nate, as we both caught a vine and hit the ground, trying to evacuate the apparent Tropical Fire Wasp nest.

After the attack we managed to trek our way through another route. We nursed our wounds, and I tried to ignore the burning sensation running through my arm, and before we new it, we'd found a viper chillin right on the trail. So we took pictures of it. I let out a sigh of relief because I didn't tough that tree for balance as I walked through the rainforest...

After the snake incident, German showed us how to make tattoos from a funky little fruit he cut out of a tree. We marked ourselves, hoping that the 15 days German told us it would last was actually legitimate.

After spending an hour or so at the reserve, we headed back down to the road, only seeing a few poison dart frogs, perezozos, and spiders as big as my hand. It had been an interesting day, I thought, as we headed back to Puerto Viejo for lunch.

DAY 2: SUNDAY

Today was quite simple, we did community service in the forest for an organization. I ended planting 80 Palm trees and we all put in a group effort to help plant and reforest the actual rainforest. It was a good day.

This marks the end of my journey in Limon. Like always, there's many stories about how I slept in a bed full of mites, or how the man driving us home drove like a mad man, and even how German made us some delicious tea, made from god know what plants (I loved it). I'd love to elaborate on each and every crazy fruit I ate this weekend, but I don't even know what they were. And the only way to describe the taste of an organic banana picked straight from the plant, but you'll just have to try it someday.

What a weekend.

Critique

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Costa Rica has been a pioneer in nature and ecology tourism orientated towards the use of wildlife areas for quite some time. The country learned how to take advantage of the resources while protecting them at a young stage (Estado de la Nacion, 2004). This is something that I have ben learning over the course of these last three months.  When we critique this particular trip, we find all aspects of a great ecotourism case, the hike on saturday with German, the volunteer work at the Yue, local sodas and Baptisms down in the river. This is why we find so many 10's in this case, because each cultural experience was very educational and pertained to the environment. 

Everything from the destination to food seems to be a high scoring category, but one thing that I believe holds me back from achieving an even better score of an A in the Hard-Core category would definitely be the private transportation we took to get to Limon, especially because we used it so much as well. If this aspect would even be changed to taking a bus, or a biodiesel car, then I believe we would have an almost perfect score in this trip.

Each experience in this trip was great. Spending time on the beach all the way to the indigenous reserves was a fantastic was of seeing all angles of Limon. The opportunity to see the different hotels and how some utilized an ecological method and how some didn't was pretty cool. I really enjoyed the trip last weekend, and I'm really happy that I managed to get a good score on this one.  

EVALUATION:
-----------------------------------

Transport: (private transport) 5
Food: (local soda) 8
Housing: (Yue) 10
Destination: Limon 9
Cultural Experience: 10
Education: 10
Environmental Impact: 10
Division of Labor: 10
Human Rights: 8
Indigenous Involvement: 8

Total Points: 88/100

Ecotourist Impact:
Hard-Core Tourist rating B+

ORIGINAL JOURNAL

Playa Conchal - June 20, 2009

Well this trip might have to be one of my most relaxing ones. However, it didn't start out like that.

You see the plan was, to head to a beach for the weekend, Flamingo. The people organizing this trip had heard alot of good things about this beach apparently and they invited me, so I did some research on the web for a bit and decided to go, why not.

Well, turned out that the hotel we wanted to stay in was having a few problems, and so then somehow we ended up in some other random hotel. This hotel was not good. There was prostitution at every turn and too ass to that, there was a bunch of pasty white guys bringing these girls back home.

Of course, we left.

We then rolled through a small town of Brasilito, which was a tiny little town on the Pacific coast about 15 km from Flamingo. Skepticism filled the atmosphere as we entered this town, because as we headed towards the beach, (after finding more 'comfortable' lodging), we found that it wasn't really anything special. However, we continued walking down the side of the dirt laden coast and managed to stumble across a small little niche tucked away in the crannies of Costa Rica's little Brasilito, (lol no pun intended.)

We spent a day here; and after a hectic morning at the infamous hotel we were at in Flamingo, it made everything worth while. The whole beach was covered in conch shells -hence the name "Playa Conchal". It was beautiful weather and there was a nice little guy on the beach selling Imperials and ceviche. I played soccer and hung out here and felt my worries fade away, as I sunk my shoulders into the luke-warm waters of this hidden paradise.

It was here where I got one of my favorite souvenirs, when a lady on the beach was making hemp bracelets. I asked her if she could possibly make me one, but in the color I wanted and she readily agreed. After a second of two something way cool happened; before I knew it, I was making it, as she showed me how to weave the threads into the right shape. After this she told me, "Esto es en regalo para ti, por que lo hiciste." With a giant smile on my face I thanked her, and headed back through the shells to find another moment to waste.

Its times like these when getting mugged in Costa Rica isn't really that bad anymore.
tysin

Critique
------------------------

This beach trip was similar to other ones that I have had, so we can once again evaluate my mistakes and keep in mind that this was a trip done before this class had ever even started.

Looking at this trip from a cultural experience standpoint, there isn't that much to say besides that there was not really any cultural experience at all. Making the jewelry with woman on the beach may count for something, but it wasn't enough to get the 3 that this trip scored an higher. This goes hand in hand with education, and the thing about this category is that is didn't really strike me as important at the time. Once again, I was more preoccupied with spending time on the beach and getting a tan then I was learning about Playa Conchal. 

Housing also receives a low score because the hotel we stayed at the first night was a failure as far as a morally and eco friendly standpoint. As I recall they were not doing anything to preserve the environment so much as preserving their prostitution. The second night was a better choice, but it didn't raise the grade any higher than it should go. The destination of Playa Conchal was an accident that our group stumbled upon, and even if we didn't, its not necessarily a first choice for people wanting to help preserve national forest or learn about the environment. Its just another place to work on your tan. 

However, after all the negatives, the positives arise and we find a stale-mate between a Soft-Core and Hard-Core rating critique. It depends how you want to look at it.

EVALUATION:
-----------------------------------

Transport: (bus transport) 7
Food: (local soda) 8
Housing: (hotel) 4
Destination: Playa Conchal 5
Cultural Experience: 3
Education: 3
Environmental Impact: 8
Division of Labor: 7
Human Rights: 8
Indigenous Involvement: 6

Total Points: 59/100

Ecotourist Impact:
Hard-Core Tourist rating D-

ORIGINAL JOURNAL

Panama CIty - July 1, 2009

After stepping off the a 10 hour, over-night bus ride through Panama, without any sleep, we finally arrived in Panama City. It was 3:30 in the morning and we grabbed the closest taxi we could, with only a name of a hostel that we found in the Lonely Planet Guide, and our bags.

The turning point of the trip might have been the part where we climbed into a weird taxi, most likely paying more than we needed to. Maybe it was the idea of being up all night, mixed with the feeling of stumbling off a bus with no idea where we were. Or possibly the fact that the only hotel we prepared on our agenda was booked, and again. I'll mention that it is 3:30 am.

We we driving through what seemed the ghettos, with no idea where we would sleep, and an awkward relationship with a taxi driver who didn't seem in the mood to help us out. However, we found ourselves at the foot of Luna's Castle, and according to the guard, there was vacancy. There was hope.

The thing about Luna's Castle is we didn't know one thing about it. We walked into a room that looked like registration and noticed a table in the center of the room. Little did we know we'd eat continental pancakes on that table every morning...
I managed to stroll into a room full of couches, along with a few computers and I managed to find a way to articulate in a strange email to my parents that I was "safe" and that I had arrived to Panama City in one piece. That's about the time I notices a dude laying on the couch next to me, he seemed cozy catching some Z's so i claimed one of my own and found myself in deep sleep...

I'm gonna skip the boring stuff and go right on to what I did, because I feel like people have been wondering for awhile. This Panama trip was more of a dream the whole time. This dream is explainable because it makes sense. Turns out Luna's Castle had it going on, and as I watched the sunrise over the Panamenio Panorama I felt regret slowly fade...

DAY 1:
---------------

Well this might have been my favorite day in Panama. Not because I saw a ship pass through the Panama Canal, or even the view of the entire city that we enjoyed all day. It wasn't the big city feel or the trip to the peninsula. It was our taxista Don Javier. This was my first encounter with a man who spoke Panamenio, a laguage mixed with Spainish, English, and pretty strong influence from the Afro-Caribe. We found him coming down the ally in his 1957 baby blue Station wagon, and his english cap that matched the color of the car. He was the first taxi we saw and so I flagged him down, and took shotgun.

The thing was, there were five of us. Me and my room mate, two girls from Veritas and an English guy named Oliver. So Javier told us that he would offer a deal. He said he would take us around all the best parts of town for the day at a price of $30, ($6 a person for all you mathematicians out there).

Javier took us all over town. He told me about the history of all the buildings we passed, and what significance they held today. Even though I couldn't seem to recognize the way he spoke, I quickly started to catch on to what he was saying.
He told me eveything I needed to know about how the Canal worked and who used it and when. He was the man.

"Javier la Taxista" he told me, "Cuando mostres esta foto, diga sus amigos que es Javier la Taxista en la foto." as I shot him a nod as I hopped back into the front seat of the car.

He took us all over Panama, and I recommend you look at the photos in my gallery, cause some of them are spectacular...

DAY 2
-------------------------

Today might have been the most day of traveling through the city. We decided to go to a place called Panama Viejo Which was a beautiful area covered in ruins of old Panama. We stayed here searching through old ruins and trying to savor the sun that we heard was so lucky to have been in Panama during those days. I myself managed to take a few "artistic" photos of Panama Viejo, but I guess when you're taking a picture of something so beautiful, its not hard to take a great photo.

We then decided to go into the city to track down an art museum. I asked a woman at the Panama Viejo Museo de Historia where I could find the nearest one and she told me where one could be found. So we hailed a taxi and then made the next big mistake of our trip.

We were in that taxi for about an hour and a half. The driver tried to make his way through the most congested areas of town. Therefore setting us an hour behind in the agenda we never had.

We made it to the art gallery to find out that it was worth all the pain. Because we found ourselves among the work of a very talented artist. Ironically I forget the name. But we spent some time here, relaxing, enjoying the art and as the day slowly faded into twilight (haha I said 'twilight' in my blog) we headed home.

DAY 3
---------------------------
Today was the day that we probably did the best job of wasting. We headed to the Island of Toboga, where we decided to spend the afternoon basking in the sun after a relaxing boat ride to the island. However, after spending 2 months in Costa Rica, you realize how spoiled you are. The thing was that the beaches at this island weren't exactly the ones you wanted to take pictures of and put them on facebook. I guess that's the best way to describe it.

We grabbed a bite to eat here and I bummed a nap on a bench as we waited an hour for our boat to come back.

-----------------

Basically that wraps up my stay in Panama City. I could go on another 5 pages about what it was like trying to cross a border as a "gringo", or I could mention what its like spending 14 hours on a bus, or even what its like to take sleeping pills you bought in a foreign country for $0.21 each. I could even explain what its like living in a hostel, in a room with 9 people I've never met, and things like having a conversation with people from each corner of the world only happen so often. How that only in Panama can you find cigarettes for $0.50 a pack.

However. I realize now that after adventures, words can only travel so far beyond an experience, and maybe some people should experience an adventure for themselves. 

Critique
------------------------

Panama was a crazy week long trip that involved all kinds of ecotourism aspects. I think coming from a negative approach there are not many things I can say that I did wrong. Starting from the beginning of the trip I had been educated about what to do in Panama because of guide books and things that people who had been there before had told me about. As soon as I arrived, the first thing we did was find a hostel, which is a great way to met people from all over the world and educate yourself about the people around you. The first day I was there was pay to enter the Canal Museum, were we watched informational videos about Panama and the Canal and the after that we strolled through the Museum, very educational. 

I did connect with the culture, and Javier the Taxista did everything that I needed in order to grab a great cultural experience, as well as enhance my knowledge of Panama from a native person's perspective. We always ate at local sodas and we always looked for something new to learn the whole time. However, the city is very North Americanized, and because of this, indigenous involvement doesn't get quite as high of a score as needed to grab the Hard-Core B that would get this trip an even better score.

I took buses everywhere and definitely kept the environmental impact to a minimum. These two scores run hand in hand with my usual ecofriendly personality. I think I do a good job of trying to stay away of ecological needs and tourism from the right point of view. 

EVALUATION:
-----------------------------------

Transport: (bus transport) 7
Food: (local sodas) 8
Housing: (hostel) 7
Destination: Panama City 7
Cultural Experience: 7
Education: 10
Environmental Impact: 8
Division of Labor: 7
Human Rights: 8
Indigenous Involvement: 6

Total Points: 73/100

Ecotourist Impact:
Hard-Core Tourist rating C

ORIGINAL JOURNAL

Cahuita - June 27, 2009

Starting my trip to Panama, I found myself lost. It's actually a funny story. The plan was supposed to be: head to a town by the name of Puerto Viejo at 6 in the morning Saturday the 27th. Easy enough right? No. The interesting thing about the Costa Rican bus system is that yes, it will take you to where you need to go, however, you never actually know when you get there. So long story short, I found myself in a small town by the name of Cahuita. (marked it on the map.)

The day we arrived was the day we started looking for a place to stay. Its funny how you find yourself in the middle of a place that you have no clue where on a map it even is. Since we had planned to get off the bus in a completely different city things has turned out to be more of an adventure I guess. At any rate, we found a small hostel hidden away in the niches of the rainforest about 100 meters from the beach. It was nice place for what i'm used to, let's be honest, anywhere with a shower is pretty nice to come by, regardless if its hot water or not. Also the beds had mosquito nets, way cool.

After we found our beds, we headed to the beach. We weren't planning on going to any beaches in Panama, so we decided to get as much time in with the Caribbean sun as we could. However, we had no clue what the beach at this random town even looked like. Turns out Cahuita National Park is actually a beautiful place, and yes; the Caribbean Sun had come out to play all day long.

We spent the day at the beach above and it was probably the most relaxing day i've had since I've come to Costa Rica. I chased around sand crabs all day and dove into some crystal clear blue waves to keep cool. Even though the water in this part of Costa Rica is so warm that jumping into it doesn't exactly keep you cool for too long. After finding a few coconuts to snack on and wave or two body surf, we headed in to nap a bit and then go out on the town.

The nightlife at this town was actually half decent. Ok, I guess that sounds a little bad. I meant to say that I had a fun night with my roommate keith. We met some random dudes to speak a little bit of spanish with, (even though speaking it after a few drinks its tricky hah. We got some nachos and then I watched the soccer game from my stool in the bar, trying to make my 2$ beer last as long as it could.

Moving on from Cahuita wasn't so tough, because I had been wanting to go to Panama for quite some time. So we jumped on a bus an headed down to Sixuola.

Critique
------------------------

The total numbers of visitors to Costa Rica's national parks has almost double since 1990, and you can add me to that statistic, because going to Cahuita puts me right into that category, (Estado de la Nacion Informe 10, 2004). I have an awkward group of numbers in the evaluation of Cahuita ranging from 3 to 10. The three is because on this trip, I have no urge to learn about the park, I merely just wanted to enjoy the sun and see the beach. However the location makes up for it, and I also get points for donating to the park as well I would say. Cultural Experience runs a lower number as well because I didn't really have a cultural experience besides spending a night in the town and eating some delicious Caribbean food at a local soda.  

Housing received a heathy 8 points because I could tell that the woman running the small hotel we stayed at was being environmentally savvy. She used energy saving lights and she would leave bananas hanging outside in a tree to feed some of the birds that came around. She also had a local man working for her, and she suggested to give a donation to the park. Human rights gets a perfect score because as I learned in class, the beach is run and operated by the Cahuita community. This brings high scoring for human rights as well as division of labor, because there was also a woman working the stand at the national park. I could not see any division of labor what-so-ever during my stay. 

EVALUATION:
-----------------------------------

Transport: (bus transport) 7
Food: (local soda) 7
Housing: (Eco hotel) 8
Destination: Cahuita 10
Cultural Experience: 5
Education: 3
Environmental Impact: 8
Division of Labor: 8
Human Rights: 10
Indigenous Involvement: 7

Total Points: 71/100

Ecotourist Impact:
Hard-Core Tourist rating C-