Being Ethical in Your Travels

You know all about the Mindful Tourist’s tips on how to be a socially conscious traveler.  The Ethical Traveler is an alliance uniting adventurers, tourists, travel agencies, and outfitters — everyone who loves to travel, and sees travel as a positive force in the world. They believe that all travelers are, in effect, freelance ambassadors. We agree, having written about travelers being representatives of the human race.  Ethical Traveler believes that we all have the ability to join our voices, and to use our economic power to strengthen human rights and protect the environment.

Their “13 Tips for the Accidental Ambassador” offers good advice for how to think about travel and behave toward our fellow humans while traveling:

Read Full Post »

Cruise Ship Waste is Literally Crappy

By now those of you who are regular readers know that we’re not huge fans of cruises.  Yes, there are those that may attempt to address their impact on the environment but while some eco-friendlier policies may be put in place, cruises will never be entirely socially conscious, if only due to the fact that as a “cruiser” you are not emerged in a new culture.  Although come to think of it, maybe “cruisers” themselves count as a culture.  Is there an ethnography on cruisers?

But worse than the culture piece is the environmental impact that cruise ships and their passengers have on the world’s oceans and lands.  Oceana’s white paper, Protect Our Oceans: Stop Cruise Ship Pollution, is an eye-opener in this regard.  Here are just some of the facts reported:

Read Full Post »

Sustainable Tourism at its Finest: Protect the Cinque Terre

With all the reading and research that goes into this blog (don’t laugh, we’re being serious!), it is rare that we come across something that immediately prompts us to start planning a trip complete with dates, travel arrangements, etc.  We read magazines, books, websites, and blogs all touting truly amazing places around the globe so why is it that a certain website has lit a fire under us to travel to Italy in September 2010? 

Read Full Post »

Calling Poverty Tourism by its True Name

With the popularity of Slumdog Millionaire, we began to see more and more articles about poverty or slum tourism.  Since it left a bad taste in our mouth, we did a little research (also known as sitting on our arse and websurfing) here and there but couldn’t bring ourselves to write a post about it… until now.

Hannah Rubenstein’s blog on poverty tourism (or “poorism,” yuck) raises many interesting and important questions.  Hannah lived in Nicaragua recently and at one point was asked to take a group of American tourists to a nearby village, show them one of the typical houses, while introducing the large family that shared the one-room house to the tourist group.  It sounds like it was an awkward few minutes for several reasons, including no “pre-education” for the tourists, very little in the way of integration of the local family into the “tour,” and no preparation for Hannah herself.  It sounded almost like a zoo experience, the last thing anyone involved needs to associate this type of experience with.

Read Full Post »

A Tourist’s Role in Archaeological Ethics

Remember the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan?  This was in spring of 2001, before most people had heard of the Taliban.  We remember it well and were horrified watching video of these incredibly amazing and larger-than-life sculptures that had stood for centuries being blown up by tanks and anti-aircraft weapons.  This is an extreme example of the unethical treatment of archaeological artifacts that are important pieces of our collective human history and culture. 

There are less severe but still serious activities related to antiquities and artifacts that every mindful tourist should be aware of, namely looting and selling. 

We know about this first-hand

Read Full Post »

Playa del Carmen’s Alternative Alltournative

Tubing in a Cenote

While Cancun is more associated with the spring break, beer-swigging crowd (a Ft. Lauderdale south of the border, if you will), its neighboring city of Playa del Carmen is more low-key and offers some unexpected ecotourism and socially conscious tourism experiences.

When we went to Playa in 2000, the company Alltournative was only a year old.  Even so, we had a great time on our tour, combining lunching at a traditional Mayan village, swimming in a cenote (an underground, fresh water cave), ziplining, and visiting the ruins of Cobá, home of the tallest pyramid in the state.  We also did a little shopping, canoeing, rapelling, and rope-ladder climbing.  It was a full day!  (And let’s just say that climbing a rope-ladder looks a lot easier than it is.)  While their offerings have changed slightly, Alltournative has only gotten better over the years.  We know this because our friend Levana took a tour with them in December and it sounded just as juicy as ours. 

Read Full Post »

Can Space Tourism Survive? God, We Hope Not.

The Space Review asks if space tourism can survive the failing economy.  You probably heard about the first layperson in space but apparently this is now a trend among the rich and famous.  If this isn’t the antithesis of socially conscious tourism, we don’t know what is.

The demise of this type of “tourism” or as we like to call it, “ridiculously overt way of overcompensating for your own small package by traveling 3x the speed of sound in an extremely large phallic vehicle,” would be welcome.

(Check out the comments section on the Space Review article – talk about wackos.)

Read Full Post »

3 Ways to Get the Most Out of TripAdvisor

If you’ve used TripAdvisor only to check hotel availability, you’re missing out on a lot of what it offers.  This post is not an advertisement for TripAdvisor; we don’t get paid by anyone to include or exclude their businesses (but if you’re looking to spend some money, call us!).

We just want to share the ways we’ve used TripAdvisor to achieve more socially conscious travel.  

Read Full Post »

Spain’s Volcanic Island of Lanzarote

The UK’s Times Online has a nice story about the late architect Cesar Manrique’s successful attempts to create socially conscious tourism in his home of Lanzarote, a small volcanic island off the coast of Spain. 

“In 1966 he returned to Lanzarote and said: ‘I came with the intention of turning my native island into one of the most beautiful places in the planet, due to the endless possibilities that Lanzarote had to offer.'”

“As a respected artist, he immediately campaigned for new laws to protect the island’s environment and prevent high-rise hotels. He was responsible for restoring ruined treasures as well as creating what are now some of Lanzarote’s leading tourist attractions.”

His own home, Casa Taro de Tahiche, has now been modified to serve as a museum and foundation.  Check out the complete article.

Read Full Post »

“Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven:” The Mindful Tourist Book Review

We have a beef with Amazon.com. After our fun read of Eat, Pray, Love, we were itching to get ahold of another good travel memoir. We did a little browsing on Amazon which recommended we check out Susan Jane Gilman’s “Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven,” their “Amazon Best of the Month for March 2009.”

(Spoiler Alert after the jump.)

Read Full Post »