Conservation Tourism

Carbon Emissions Series: Air Travel Efficiency

/ Timothy Chen / 1 Comment

One of the more interesting responsibilities of my current internship here in DC is to peruse news articles and company/NGO reports that relate to corporate social responsibility. Last week, one particular report caught my eye because of its relevance to travel and tourism. Brighter Planet, a sustainability research and reporting company, recently published a white paper on airline efficiency. The paper, titled “Air Travel: Carbon and Energy Efficiency,” struck me as ironic. Air travel is a highly emissions-intensive mode of transportation and seemingly incompatible with sustainability. It accounts for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a large number for a single industry.

Brighter Planet’s report, however, did not seek to justify flying. It instead analyzed a decade’s worth of data on a host of fuel consumption metrics on all major airlines. What the research found was intriguing and useful. The efficiency of a flight that you take is influenced by countless factors, but there are five main “efficiency drivers” that most significantly impact the GHG emissions of a flight: aircraft model, seat density, load factor, freight share, and distance. I’ll do my best to explain each of these briefly. Continue reading →

Kayak Surfing with a Friend

/ Seth Inman / 4 Comments

Today I met Pierre de Chabannes, a young Frenchman interning at the Ponçon’s La Cumplida farm in Matagalpa. A student at a French University, he is working on repairing and improving the current hydroelectric dam/canal system in place at La Cumplida so that the farm can produce enough electricity to supply the surrounding area in Matagalpa.

After showing Pierre around the ecolodge, we decided to go kayaking in the cove. We went out past Morgan’s Rock and then crossed over to the other side of the cove before returning to the coast, where we caught a wave onto shore and tried surfing a couple times. Eager to surf some more, Pierre switched his seat to the back of the kayak (we’d had them in the middle), where he thought it would allow him to control the direction better, as well as prevent the nose of the kayak from plunging into the water and causing a flip (which had happened to both of us already). Controlling the direction was also useful because we had both been pushed parallel to the wave we were riding several times despite out best efforts. When he switched to the back seat, Pierre surfed all the way to shore with little difficulty, so I soon made the same change. Continue reading →

Sri Lankan Frogmouth

/ Michael Muller / 2 Comments

Early yesterday morning, Gourvjit and I met Saleem and Deepthi, a graphic designer who was collecting information about wildlife in the Periyar, for a trek into the forest. Because Gourvjit and I had recently been with Amie and Milo on a path typically followed from the boat landing–which was where we were meeting our guide this morning–to avoid touring the same land we asked the guide to lead us on a different route. He told us there was one which might yield some interesting wildlife sightings, but that the terrain would be a bit more difficult. We took the challenge, of course.

What our guide had neglected to tell us then, but which we soon realized, was that the route he had planned for us to take wasn’t really a ‘route’ at all. That is to say, to make our way we had to cut through 7 ft tall elephant grass and other underbrush, and we followed no well-worn groove in the dirt, or footpath. But in this manner we carved our way up a hillside, conquering some slippery rocks under foot, to a clearing, from which we could see a broad landscape of savannah hills and waterways.

Yet on the way down from the clearing these minor travails were justified as, after tramping through another patch of thick grass, our guide told us to be still while he pointed to what looked like a lump of tree–but with eyes. Deepthi whispered to me that we were seeing a Sri Lankan (or Ceylon) Frogmouth, a nocturnal bird native to the Western Ghats, whose skill at camouflage makes you about as likely to spot it as one of the Periyar’s 50 tigers. I can say very honestly that I have never seen a bird I was so taken with, with its wide-set and perfectly round eyes, and its blocky, brown, and perfectly rigid form. Because the Frogmouth hides in the daytime by keeping still, we were able to get unusually close to it for a good while before it was threatened and flew off to a tree with thicker foliage.

It was a really unique experience to see this bird, and one I’ll not soon forget. Luckily, Deepthi was able to capture some great shots of the bird. Check them out!

Sea Kayaking

/ Seth Inman / Leave a comment

Yesterday afternoon Harvey and I tried kayaking around the cove. Since the waters were very calm once we got past the waves, we decided to also paddle out of the cove and even past the literal Morgan’s Rock, a jagged tooth of rock sprouting from the ocean with a couple tufts of grass growing on it here and there. The Rock is actually part of the neighboring cove even though it doesn’t look it from the Ocotal beach (the ecolodge’s). We sat around for several minutes at a time, just feeling the waves lift and lower us on the water. It is an eerie feeling when you are so low in the kayak that you watch a swell block out the horizon and rise above your head, only to carry you up set you back down as it passes you, not truly a wave until it reaches the beach. Even with these peaceful pauses, the speed with which we were able to reach the rock told me that reaching San Juan del Sur by kayak within four hours was easily possible. After making sure that the next day’s weather would be safe, I made plans to set out early in the morning for SJdS with a fishing boat, the Eco I, as an escort.

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Today I left the beach at around 6:50AM. It was high tide, and there were many small waves crashing onto the shore and my kayak as I tried to make my way over to the fishing boat anchored a couple hundred meters out. Once I was properly soaked, I got past the waves and greeted the two fishermen, Jacinto and Alejandro, passing them my backpack after removing my large water bottle and sunglasses. Jacinto checked his phone—it was 7:00AM, time to start. I shoved off the Eco I and started paddling.

The monotony of the trip was broken by scenery and “visits” by animals. A needlefish jumped out of the water a couple yards in front of me; frigate birds would start a dive towards the water and suddenly pull up, their prey apparently swimming for cover; over a dozen butterflies (not all at once) fluttered wildly over the waves of the open ocean–a comical sight. I couldn’t help thinking that if I was only a few miles further off shore, I may attract dolphins. However, despite my motored escort boat I didn’t feel safe kayaking out that far, and my job was to determine the duration of a trip to any of the coves south of Morgan’s Rock. Throughout the trip the coastline was a comforting danger—I could easily see the waves crashing violently into the many rocks protecting the shore, so I always maintained my distance from the coast even though there may be less wind to slow my voyage.

Huge rock formations and green forests provided most of the interesting landscape, although I also passed the well-known surfing beach, Maderas (which I will save more details on for a future post) and the Survivor filming site Playa El Toro. While in the open ocean I took two or three breaks of about a minute each to drink some water and stretch my fingers and shoulders, as well as to rearrange the Buff I had put on my left shoulder to block some of the harsh rays poking through the clouds (one of which, by the way, looked stunningly similar to a hummingbird’s head, with eye detail and everything). Once I entered the San Juan del Sur bay, passing the immense US Navy Hospital Ship on my right, the wind picked up to the point that I had to take several more breaks to loosen my shoulders. I had no idea how long I’d been kayaking, but I was ready to ride a wave onto shore and use my legs for a change. When I was a couple hundred meters from the beach, the fishing boat pulled up behind me and dropped anchor. I went ashore and bought the fishermen and myself a drink and some snacks, then kayaked back to the Eco I and tied my craft to the larger one. From leaving the Eco I at Morgan’s Rock to returning to it from the San Juan del Sur shore, the trip had taken two and a half hours.

Our ride back was much more relaxing, and I asked Jacinto questions about potential and current ocean excursion offerings while Alejandro fished and made a comment every now and then. One fun activity that Jacinto mentioned is diving with an air-hose the way it used to be done with huge brass helmets (except now one simply uses a mouthpiece), so I plan on trying that out as soon as possible.

Kayaking in the sea brought back memories of the last time I had a paddle in my hands: while exploring the blue caves in the cliffs of Koločep, an island off the coast of Dubrovnik, Croatia. Although the Adriatic Sea is radically different from the Pacific Ocean, my arm muscles certainly thought the same of the two experiences.

Water, (bottled) water everywhere…

/ Michael Muller / 2 Comments

Since I arrived in Bangalore airport on June 3, I’ve heard about Baba Ramdev and his highly publicized, nine-day fast. What I learned today was that, while Ramdev was being treated for weakness due to his hunger strike, another, less-publicized hunger striker, Swami Nigamananda, was being treated in the same hospital. Nigamananda had been fasting for nearly four months (114 days!) to protest illegal pollution in the River Ganga, a holy site for practicing Hindus and also a vital source of water for nearly 400 million Indians. He died this morning, the last days of his strike overshadowed by Ramdev’s.

Before I left the U.S., many friends and family members had told me emphatically, don’t drink the water! When I would ask why, they replied as if it was common sense: well, it’s dirty. Some had apocryphal stories about some friend of theirs who had gotten sick after drinking from a tap in India, and I typically left it at that. But Nigamananda’s death raised the question again in my mind: why is water in India dirty? Is this just some immutable fact, some geological curiosity, or is it rather a human-created problem worth addressing?

These questions aren’t easily answered, just as any question posed about a nation as diverse and large as India is not. There are as many reasons why some water is dirty and some is clean, and investment in hi-tech treatment facilities isn’t always the difference (though it’s a start). I’m only recently wading into the dense information surrounding Indian water policy, the role of industrial polluters along India’s rivers in dirtying the water, and what is being thought of to clean up the situation.

Because let’s not forget: if clean tap water can’t be had, besides boiling all water, the alternative for the consumer is…bottled water. In the States, more and more people are coming to an awareness of the destructiveness of bottled water, but in most areas of the U.S. clean tap is readily available and people have a simple choice to make in how they get it. In India, this choice is not so simple.

The availability of clean water is a pressing environmental, health, and national security problem for the resident of India. But it’s also a problem for the traveller. As the number of empty bottles of water in my room mounts, and as the monsoons continue to dump rain on me all day,  I have to think: am I doing everything I can to combat this problem? As I increase the amount of boiled water I drink, I also am inclined to think more broadly. I’ll let you know what I come up with as I investigate the problem further.

In the mean time, here’s a video (by the same women who did ‘The Story of Stuff,’ which I highly recommend, though I sometimes can’t stand her tone) about bottled water v. tap water, with an emphasis on the U.S. India makes a guest appearance about half-way through, though in an unexpected way.

First Two Days at Morgan’s Rock

/ Seth Inman / 1 Comment

Day 1: After dinner, the rain had stopped and it was now pitch black outside, but the wind coming off the ocean made it feel cooler. The refreshing breeze helped me recollect the day’s highlights: Over a million native hardwood trees have been planted here since my father, my brother and I had been camping on this property a decade earlier; some of the guys I remember from then are now working as naturalist guides or kitchen staff; the organic farm is much more extensive, and hundreds of guests have come and gone from their bungalows.

The mind and breeze’s sweeps finished, and now reading, I heard crunching from the corner. At first I didn’t quite register it, and continued reading. When it continued, the interruption made me curious. I slowly stood and leaned around the large wooden column that was blocking my view of the corner in question.

The adolescent opossum and I both froze. It was about the size of a squirrel, and it had a Halloween crab dangling from its mouth. When it looked away I decided that it either couldn’t see me very well or didn’t see me as a threat, so I slowly inched my hand towards the camera that lay on the table up against my knees. Silently cursing the camera’s malfunctions that prevented me from being able to change any settings, including zoom, I turned and took a snapshot. The flash didn’t startle it, so testing my luck further I very slowly stepped over the table and around the column. About six feet away the opossum snapped out of the trance, and ran off with the crab. By chance it ran in a direction where it would have to climb a few steps, slowing it just enough to allow me a last photo as it hurried off.

small possum

Day 2: As a slight drizzle fell through the trees, we sat on wooden benches fixed in the back of a pickup truck on the way to the finca from the lodge. The finca is essentially a farm, of trees and livestock, that is connected to Morgan’s Rock and provides much of its food and maintenance services. After a few minutes it started raining hard, but neither I nor the two guests, a man and woman from Atlanta, minded getting wet after having endured the heat of the past couple days. Bismar, our guide, handed me his radio and cell phone to pass through the rear window to our driver, and I gave up my borrowed camera as well. Just as one of the guests was pulling on her travel poncho, which looked like a translucent red trash bag, Bismar called for a stop. Pointing, he said simply, “sloth,” and we looked up to watch a drenched and sorry-looking two-toed sloth inch its way from one branch to another, fur plastered to its body and spiking up on its head. “They sleep 14 hours a day,” said Bismar, “and only poop once a week.” I added that when they did relieve themselves, they had to do so on the ground. “If I had to climb down my tree every time, I’d probably only do it once a week too,” joked the guest to his wife. A few minutes later we reached the reforestation site, and met the man in charge of equestrian activity, Don Jesus, and started our horseback ride on the road towards the trail. Despite the rain, the horses easily climbed the slope up to the lookout point at the top of the wooded hill.

ocean view