From Mexico to Palestine: Carbon offsets January 10, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Latin America, Mexico, Mexico City, Sustainability, ecotourism , 5comments
Much has been written about the pros and cons of carbon offsets. The idea, if you haven’t been following, is that you pay money to a nonprofit organization to plant trees or invest in renewables or otherwise reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere in an attempt to offset the carbon you’ve generated.
There are many calculators online that help you to figure out how much carbon you’ve generated and where you should donate it. Carbon Footprint is a nice flexible one that lets you calculate individual aspects of your life as opposed to doing a whole audit – both can be good, but since I’m on the road, my lifestyle doesn’t easily fit into many of these calculators. Since my main impact is travel, I figured my mileage and multiplied the air travel by 1.9 to account for the increased impact airplane emissions have (the amount used by Carbon Footprint). It then lets you select from a variety of worthy projects from Kenya to Central America.
Critics compare this system with the Catholic Church’s system of indulgences in Medieval times – a system that allowed people to “buy” forgiveness for their sins by making donations to the Church. They argue that there’s a wide variance among carbon offsetting groups, none of them are regulated and there’s no way to know for sure that the trees you’re paying to plant wouldn’t be planted anyway.
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La Condesa blooms through the chill January 8, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Latin America, Mexico, Mexico City , 17comments
My first 24 hours in Mexico City couldn’t have been more colorful. A cold front has settled in here, as well, with temperatures dipping into the mid-40s, and since there are no heaters, people are huddling over soups and hot coffees in the open-air cafes. Except for a few golden hours yesterday morning, a drizzly grey pall grips the city. Still, the flowers are blooming and a general air of cheerfulness has made headway against the gloom – especially on Wednesday, Dia de los Reyes, a Mexican holiday celebrating the arrival of the Magi to visit the baby Jesus.
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Xilitla’s Las Pozas on the most endangered list November 18, 2009
Posted by Tracy in : Latin America, Mexico , 3commentsThe LA Times has just released its list of most endangered cultural sites in the Americas, and a rare treasure that’s been a longtime favorite is on the list.
(Altug S. Icilensu photo)
Las Pozas, the amazing surrealist garden created by the eccentric English millionaire Edward James in the Mexican jungle near Xilitla, San Luis Potosí, is succumbing to decay and the custodians of the site don’t have the wherewithal to adequately maintain and restore it.
Las Pozas was my destination in a 2007 trip through the magical Huasteca Potosina, and I wrote about it in a piece for the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle, Jungle Wonderland. Here’s a video I created in 2007 together with my cameraman at the time, Altug Icilensu.
Jungle Wonderland
Surrealist garden evokes a strange visionary’s dream
embedded by Embedded Video
For more videos from the Huasteca Potosina, see my multimedia page. And to learn more about Las Pozas and the effort to preserve it, visit Fondo Xilitla, which took charge of the site after my visit with the aim of raising money to protect and restore it.
Here’s the story:
Huasteca1
Huasteca2
Calling my bluff on Los Cabos November 17, 2009
Posted by Tracy in : Latin America, Mexico, Nature tourism, ecotourism, voluntourism , add a comment
(Melissa Gaskill photo)
Eco-travel writer Melissa Gaskill called my bluff on my Los Cabos story last month. “Los Cabos is, unfortunately, an example of the worst kind of development and tourism,” she wrote. “No sense of place, no sensitivity to the landscape, destruction of natural resources, excessive use of water, ultra-luxury developments staffed by underpaid locals… And I’m afraid too many people think that swimming with dolphins is an eco-tourism activity (a misconception we’d do well not to encourage).
Sorry, I love your newsletter, but just had to vent on this one. Baja California is one of my favorite places in the world and my worst nightmare is that the entire peninsula will end up one great big Cabo.”
Truth be told, I have never been to Los Cabos, so I’m not in a position to judge. I wrote that story as part of a series for The Buzz Magazines, in which I interview local travelers about their experiences. I do, however, trust Melissa’s judgment; she’s an excellent Texas author and journalist (here’s her blog and profile), and one whose environmental sensibilities match my own. So I did the only sensible thing: I invited her to write her own piece about Baja California as a guest post, and she kindly obliged.
Here’s Melissa’s story about a voluntourism expedition into the wilds of Baja California, a program aimed at saving the endangered sea turtles there, and the spectacular slide show that accompanies it. Enjoy!
Turtle Rescue on the Eco Side of Baja November 17, 2009
Posted by Tracy in : Latin America, Mexico, Nature tourism, Sustainability, ecotourism, voluntourism , 4commentsby Melissa Gaskill
A tent on the sand with a solar-powered light, solar shower hanging nearby, composting toilet behind a gnarled palo blanco tree. Travel doesn’t get much more eco than this.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Organized by Baja Expeditions, one of the oldest outfitters on the Mexican peninsula, and SEE Turtles, a non-profit promoting conservation tourism, this trip includes three days in the Gulf of California and three on Baja’s Pacific coast with a night in La Paz in between. We also take part in a local sea turtle monitoring project that, once a month, puts out nets to catch sea turtles, measuring, tagging and then releasing them. The data helps determine the success of efforts to help these endangered animals.
The first day, the group gathers in the hotel lobby for a quick van ride to Baja Expedition’s office for breakfast, wetsuits, masks and snorkels. Then we load onto a panga, one of the blue-and-white fiberglass boats common along both coasts of Baja. Our route crosses La Paz Bay to Isla Espiritu Santo, an uninhabited mountainous island. A line of white tents along a fingernail of matching sand overlook a gem-blue bay where pelicans, cormorants, and brown and blue-footed boobies crash into the water on a dawn-to-dusk pursuit of fish. Two cooks prepare our meals on a gas stove inside the kitchen tent, using fish straight from the nearby waters, peppers grown north of La Paz, hand-made tortillas, and other fresh, local ingredients.
Greening the barrios in Mexico City October 28, 2009
Posted by Tracy in : Esperanza Project, Latin America, Mexico, Sustainability, Uncategorized , add a commentSaving your garbage is a tough sell in a place where gardening is seen as peasant labor. But that doesn’t stop Dulce María Vega from rolling up her sleeves, going door-to-door and recruiting her neighbors for a grand mission. 
Dulce is the friendly face of sustainability in her neighborhood. With more than 30,000 residents, Lomas de Plateros is one of Mexico City’s largest apartment complexes. When she first teamed up with Noelle Romero of Organi-K, a local environmental group, to establish a pilot Ecobarrios project at the massive complex, people thought she’d lost her senses.
A leap of faith in Guadalajara October 24, 2009
Posted by Tracy in : Esperanza Project, Latin America, Mexico, Nature tourism, ecotourism , 5comments
“This is my office,” he says with a broad smile and a sweep of his arm toward the mirror-like pool in front of him, the basalt formations all around and the forest beyond. We’re in a place he’s dubbed “Naturaleza Mistica” or “Mystical Nature,” where water has carved these crystalline pools into the rocks all around.
It’s a place that invites contemplation, inspiration and renewal. Birdsong ricochets from tree to tree in the stillness of the afternoon; the water drips from pool to pool, and a cricket chirps from a nearby crevice. I can’t imagine a better place for an office. Luis is the founder of Eco-Tours Guadalajara, the area’s first tour company dedicated to outdoor adventure. Now he and his 10-member crew lead adventures in rockclimbing, rappelling, ziplining, mountain biking, scuba diving and canyoneering. Today he leads a group of travel writers, in Guadalajara for the SATW convention, through various degrees of terror and exhilaration on the first three, beginning with a rappel down a 50-foot sheer wall and a clamber up another one, followed by a leap from a cliff on a zipline.
Now we’re following him through a grassy field to a rocky forest as he interprets the geological and biological wonders of this place.
It was a leap of faith that brought Luis to this place in his life. He was an excellent secondary school teacher – so good that he was promoted to school principal. He enjoyed education, and his wife Lucinda taught there, too. But something in Luis kept calling him to the great outdoors, to the wilds of the mountains that encircle Guadalajara.
“Finally I couldn’t take it anymore,” he said. “I needed to be outside, in nature.”
So after 11 years in public education, he and Lucinda left their jobs and founded Eco-Tours, taking their teaching skills to a new audience. Now their pupils learn to overcome their fears and bond with the natural world around them.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning. Luis approached local tourism officials for support, but they were skeptical.
“Ecotourism in Jalisco? There’s no demand for it,” he was told. But he persevered, and now business is booming. His is one of four ecotourism companies in the Guadalajara area.
“We have one of the most spectacular sites in the country for ecotourism – excellent walls for climbing, beautiful landscapes, amazing canyons, and all just 45 minutes from Guadalajara,” he says. “This place is a natural for ecotourism.”
Click here to take the photo tour
Contact Luis and his crew at promociones@eco-toursguadalajara.com or call (011) (52-33) 13 68 93 11. The Spanish-only website is at www.eco-toursguadalajara.com but Luis is conversant in English.
Mexico City Ecological Park: A wilderness restored October 22, 2009
Posted by Tracy in : Esperanza Project, Latin America, Mexico, Nature tourism, Sustainability, ecotourism , 3comments
- Dahlias were first cultivated here by the Aztecs.
This could be any other forest on the outskirts of any other city, I think to myself as the path curves through a grassy field, past a burst of orange sunflowers and into the shade of a mossy oak grove. Then Guadalupe stops and gestures for us to take a seat on the cool boulders in the clearing.
“Close your eyes,” she says. “Breathe deeply. Feel the peace that is in this place.”
Far in the distance, the murmur of traffic dissolves into the timeless rustle of the wind in the trees.
I do feel the peace; but my mind is straying back to what Guadalupe has just told me about this place, and it defies imagining.
Just two decades ago, this ferny hillside was virtually indistinguishable from the city below. And had it not been for Ajusco’s position as one of the most important aquifer recharge zones in Central Mexico, and a political drama that is still playing out to this day, it would have remained that way.
- Nature is a classroom for Guadalupe Nuñez.
Bite of El Diente, and Tips for Climbers October 7, 2009
Posted by Tracy in : Adventure, Latin America, Mexico, Nature tourism, ecotourism , add a commentMost climbers tackle their art with a passion that could only be called contagious. I exposed myself to that particular virus this spring, carried by veteran rock climber/writer/attorney Jamie McNally, and I suppose that’s why, as I prepare for a week in Guadalajara, I’m packing my climbing gear.
One of the menu of outings offered by the Society of American Travel Writers in its pre-conference lineup was “Eco-Adventure in El Diente,” and with a name like that, how could I resist? Especially with the excellent training provided by Jamie, who nearly killed me in my first exposure to rock climbing this spring. It wasn’t until I went online today and googled it that I realized that where he failed in May, he may have succeeded in October.
El Diente (The Tooth) is about to bite me…
My account of my May adventure will appear in the Dallas Morning News this fall (posthumously, perhaps) so I asked Jamie to provide a few tips for beginners as I prepare to punish myself on the cliffs of El Diente. (El Diente pic compliments of Marc and Kristi, who climbed there a year ago and made it sound like a piece of cake in their excellent blog… Thanks, guys!)
OK, so after reading Marc and Kristi, and after going through Jamie’s tips (below, for the very brave), I’m feeling better about the climb. Honestly, it’s the mountain biking that I’m kind of freaked out about. I’ll keep you posted – if I’m not in traction.
Read on for Jamie’s excellent tips. And if the climbing bug bites you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Los Cabos: The Call of the Baja Coast October 5, 2009
Posted by Tracy in : Latin America, Mexico , 3commentsPilar McNear wanted to do something really special for her 40th birthday. So she and her husband Jeff pulled out all the stops and invited 12 other couples to join them in Los Cabos, the spectacular resort town that lies at the tip of the Baja Penninsula.
The fiesta was, by all accounts, a huge success. Swimming with dolphins, jet skiing at Playa Médano, snorkeling at Playa Santa María, partying at Cabo Wabo and a dinner cruise at sunset were just a few of the highlights. Check out the story, and tips on planning your own Cabo getaway, in this month’sThe Buzz Magazines.
Here’s the slide show, compliments of Wendy Yu, one of the invitees.
