How should Galapagos restrict tourism

As reported by various news sources, the Congress of Ecuador is currently debating a draft amendment to the special law that applies in the Galapagos.   The Galapagos was placed on the UNESCO in 2007 endangered heritage list due to the increased tourism immigration and the introduction of alien species, then removed in 2010. It has been worried that this removal will cause increased tourism without proper focus in conservation if the government of Ecuador and Institutions do not respond.

Galápagos is currently inhabited by 25,000 people, the majority support themselves through tourism.  Many conservation groups believe that 20,000 is the proper population that the Galapagos delicate habitat can support, depite the fact that only 3% of the population is used by man.  In 2011, an estimated 170,000 people visited the Galapagos.  I was among the 170,000.  Unlike the majority of these 170,000 tourists, I was making a second voyage. Every day when I am in the Galapagos, I spend a long time pondering the effects of tourism on this special space as I work with locals to help develop their volunteer organization.

I came to the Galapagos barely knowing anything about them.  In my mind they were a place that was exotic, where Charles Darwin made his theories and, as I had read in a book while traveling, a place that has a constant fight with tourism.  Because of this book, although I knew nothing about the climate and very little about what animals I should have on my list to see,  I knew I wanted to help preserve this place for future generations.  It turns out because I read this book I knew more than most people do. I spent my first month volunteering to conserve the Island.  Often the tasks seemed menial and it was easy to loose sight of what we were aiming to do.  The locals we worked with had a small grasp of English and it was hard for them to explain the importance of what we were doing.  I knew the importance because I first read the book.  I knew the importance of the task we were doing even when we were attaching a satellite dish to a bamboo pole so someone had TV, because this task was showing the people in the community that not all foreigners are an open wallet, that some of us care about the Galapagos, it was spending money locally at farms to encourage people to follow the laws and preserve the enchanted islands and not choose to kill whales or turtles or another unique creature because countries were illegally paying money for these goods.

I often am sad as I keep my constant obsession to read all news related to Galapagos, which is flooded by tour operators, and a constant chime even in the backpacking websites, that to really see the Galapagos, you need to take a multi-day tour.  I would argue that to really see the Galapagos you need to spend the night in the highlands and if you need to take a multi-day tour all your doing is checking a sight off your bucket list and Galápagos doesn’t need you as a tourist.

Galápagos new regulations look to prohibit the award of a package of tourism operation to a single person and establish a 5 year ban on the construction or adaptation of tourist accomodations, while a record is made of operators.  Both of these are good things.  Galapagos needs to understand the current tour operators.  It needs to be clearer what are licensed operators in Galapagos and this information should be more publically available.  Often the information that tourist find is actually 3rd parties that are reselling and not direct tours.  Too the lull will hopefully allow locals to innovate and think of different ways to cap into the tourists dollars.  Galapagos is cluttered with restaurants and gift shops and to some extent hotels with the exact same offerings.  There are plenty of opportunities to create different goods.

If I could make the regulations they would go even further, they would mirror more similarly the regulations that are in place in Bhutan, but I don’t think the key is asking people to spend over a certain daily amount, its attracting the people who really want to understand the Galapagos, not those who happen to have enough money to receive another checkbox. I would propose all boat tours must be accompanied with 2 nights learning about the threats to the Galapagos and conservation efforts.  Galapagos puts great effort to minimize impact of tourists.  Most energy is clean.  I would allow tourists to choose between visiting these facilities or actively conserving the Galapagos.  I think adding this would dissuade people with limited vacation time, force people to spend money locally and give more jobs to locals, as well as encourage people to donate more money to help promote these causes.

Maybe its idealistic, but for me Galapagos is an idealistic place.  I think overall the government has done a great job.  The guides are vigilent about ensuring tourists respect the laws in the Galapagos.  Locals are educated about how unique a place they were blessed to be born in.  Most people I met have the idea of having less kids than their parents because they understand that the population can’t be sustained.  The majority of these 25,000 people, even if they do work in the tourist industry, aren’t getting rich off the 170,000 tourists even though most spend over $5000 on their voyage.  Something has to be done and cutting back the tourist alone will result in the local population looking for other means to support themselves, which may involve illegal activities.  If you cut back on the number of tourists but help ensure that the tourists are truly invested in the Galapagos, you’ll distribute wealth more evenly, which will in turn help the locals be encouraged to participate in activities that promote a more sustainable future.

What are your thoughts?  Have you ever wanted to visit the Galapagos, have you pondered the impact of your voyage?

Week 3: Learn Through Travel

This post is part of BootsnAll’s Indie Travel Challenge 2012.

Have you ever studied or taken classes on a trip? What did you study, and perhaps more importantly, what did you learn while on that trip? What would you like to learn on your travels this year?

I love taking classes and studying on trips.  Its a great way to slow down and get immersed and no matter what the class I am taking is, I am really looking to learn more about the culture I am visiting.  Each time I end up being fascinated by my teachers life.  I took a cooking class in Udaipur, India once and in addition to being able to cook a full cook book of Indian food after the 4 hours, I learned the fascinating story of a brahman women who after her husband died couldn’t leave the house for a year and then had to get creative to sneak jobs to survive since it was forbidden to women of her caste to work.

 

When I took Spanish classes in Xela, Guatemala, all I really wanted to do was understand enough Spanish to communicate random stories that I heard or was trying to tell so I could understand cultures better.    My real goal in the class was to be able to tell a joke in Spanish by the end.  Now I keep speaking Spanish every day and am obsessed with the expressions.

 

Its been a while since I’ve actually taken formal classes and maybe that’s because I finally learned that travel is not a race for me where I need to check off countries or sites, all I really want to do is learn a little more about what makes other people tick and what makes me tick too.  I finally learned to relax and be comfortable doing nothing at all.

What will I learn this year on my travels or what would I want to learn?  Hmm…well this year is going to be different.  I have no plans to visit new places, I just want to revisit the old ones.  I plan to make my 3rd and 4th trips back to Galapagos and continue working with  Hacienda Esperanza to introduce new sustainable technologies, so I hope to learn as much as possible about different technologies.  I hope the volunteers that come help me to learn things from each one of their life decisions that brings them to Galapagos.

Also, this year I want to learn to travel at home better.  I get so excited about different cultures but I want to get excited for whats going on in my home and what there is to see.  I spent 5 years traveling for work and am just now learning that I should see things other than restaurants and hotels when I am in small cities in the US.  I am excited at the chance to show off the US this year to some travel buddies and introduce culture shock and give them a more worldly perspective.

The last thing I hope to learn this year or continue to learn is to take risks.  Its so easy to think that everyone is going to rob you or everyone is lying. If you always think that you will never meet anyone at all.  So far I guess I have been lucky,  I have never been robbed (well not while abroad) and despite how improbable it seems sometimes, generally people have told me the truth(I am not completely naive; I dont listen to touts). I hope this year continues to teach me that trusting people has great rewards.  I am excited to look at this after a year and see what I actually have learned…hopefully not that I am an idiot for trusting people!

Indie Travel: A Defintion

This post is part of BootsnAll’s Indie Travel Challenge 2012.

Week two’s topic: Indie Travel: What do you think? 

Are you an indie traveler? What do you think makes someone an indie traveler?

What do I think makes someone an indie traveler?  I think its funny that when I started writing this out of instinct I wrote “India” rather than “Indie.”  This is probably because I write India a lot more than I write Indie, but actually India Travel works with my definition of Indie Travel.  I don’t think you can travel to India without being somewhat independent, even if you are doing it as a packaged deal. 

Going to India, at least for anyone that isn’t Indian, is experiencing a culture way different than your own.  When you first arrive you are bombarded with people at the airport and everything even smells differently than home.  The people have different cultural norms, people are still divided by sexes on buses and in lines. And when you go to buy something like train tickets, you’ll experience a difference in personal space and often have someone trying to read your personal  documents from over your shoulder.  At every  turn you’ll see someone begging and understand what competition to survive is.  If you can travel to India, and don’t immediately go running and screaming home, in my book you are an Indie Traveller.  Actually, if you go anywhere and see things that are different than home or things dont go as planned and you don’t go running and screaming home, you have successfully performed Indie Travel.  

An Indie traveller also doesn’t make excuses of why not travel.  Most of my friend’s don’t get me, my constant urge to see new places and different cultures is bizarre to them.  They look at me often when I have returned from a trip and say “I wish I could travel like you, but I have…(insert: dog, not enough money, a mortgage, too much going on with my job).”  Being an Indie Traveller is finding time to travel.  Its realizing you dont need money or a lot of time to travel.  Any free weekend can be spent treking out to the woods.  In a year of traveling abroad, I have spent less than I would have spent in the US.  Its realizing that you are going to meet awesome people, if none of your friends at homes schedules coincide with yours or are interested in seeing the places you want to see.

 

India was when I started being an Indie Traveler.  Its the first country I travelled solo.  It’s the first time I relied completely on myself to make the decisions of whether following some strange tuk tuk driver was the adventure I wanted to have that day.  I would never change the places I visited or the experiences I had.  The great thing is that its never to late to become an Indie Traveler.  The world is always there to explore and adventures are always ready to be had.