11/23/11

Going Local in Chile!

 People enjoying a "mote con huesillo" at San Cristóbal Hill, in Santiago.
© Marcela Torres

By Marcela Torres

Traditional tourism, sitting on a comfortable bus and taking pictures of the main landmarks of a place can certainly be fun and interesting. But there’s nothing better than going in deeper into the local culture of a destination and exploring off the beaten path. At least that’s what I try to do whenever I travel and what my company offers people who sign up for tours with us in Chile.

After years of working for several large inbound tour operators in Chile, first as guides and then in other office roles, my sister Paula and I realized that these companies all offered pretty much the same itineraries and destinations, including the same attractions (wineries, museums, etc.). But people were eager to try something different.

The first thing we learned was that most tourists were annoyed when we took them to a fancy jewelry store at the end of their city tour because they could tell that things were overpriced and they felt a pressure to buy. Now, we were forced to do this by the company, but since we were the ones with the angry customers, before we got to the shop we started asking them whether or not they wanted to go. Most of them said “no” and we learned that they preferred to visit a handicraft market where locals usually get their jewelry and where they could see the artisan at work.

Another thing we learned is that they really wanted to taste local food. So we started taking them to the places where we would go to with our families to have some “mote con huesillo”, for example, a traditional summer drink/dessert made of boiled dried peaches and barley, usually with molasses. Everybody loves it!

Once I had a group of British travelers that was worried because we would be visiting the Chilean-Argentinean border at 2,800 meters (9,186 feet) and they had never been at such altitudes. I told them that Andean peoples chewed coca leaves to avoid altitude sickness but that usually a coca tea would do the trick. Guess what? All they wanted was to taste the coca tea! So the driver and I arranged everything. We prepared a thermos with hot water and bought the coca tea bags. When we were half-way up, we stopped to drink it with the Andes Mountains as a backdrop and everybody enjoyed the moment. And no one got sick!

So, these unique experiences are what we try to offer in Chile. We love to take visitors around Santiago on the subway and they like getting a sense of how Chilean people move throughout the city -even if it’s on a packed train during the rush hour- and doing things that local people do.

With our tours to the countryside and the coast, as well as to other regions in Chile, we take visitors to places that are not usually on the radar for foreign tourists. Trekking with llamas in the Atacama Desert, enjoying a traditional meal cooked in a solar oven in the Elqui Valley, learning to make typical Chilean pastries in the Curacaví Valley, seeing how an artisan works with lapis lazuli and copper or just spending quality time with locals from north to south are all part of our offer.

That’s why we’re so thrilled to be part of The Local Travel Movement. We believe it makes a big difference to get a sense of what it’s like to move around, eat and live in a place like a local. It’s certainly enriching for both hosts and tourists and helps people better understand each other’s culture while also having fun and sharing an unforgettable moment. What more could you expect from a trip? Happy travels!

11/15/11

MyNatour Announces Ecotourism Blog Contest Winners!


By Marcela Torres

The long awaited day has come! MyNatour announced today the three winners of its Ecotourism Blog Contest. “The decision was very tough,” says MyNatour founder Davide Valin, “because we received hundreds of amazing entries from freezing Alaska to the Australian desert and everything in between. All of them had some interesting stories; falling in love on the road, biking as a kamikaze, crossing the cold dry deserts, fishing, sailing, surfing, farming, trekking, volunteering on the reef, getting lost in a metropolitan jungle or in the depth of the rain forest.”

After a period of public voting, the judging panel met up during the World Travel Market (WTM) trade show in London to assess make the final decision based on criteria such as creativity, originality, quality of writing, photography, ability to engage an audience (number of supporters) and, most importantly, the talent to inspire others to conserve nature and promote intercultural understanding.

And so, the final winners are:

“Because of the simple yet profound way the author combines several important aspects of what made this trip such a memorable experience: local encounters, education, and of course the natural beauty of the place.” - Ayako Ezaki


“How carefully they made a choice of the ecotourism experience they wanted to live through, and whether or not the experience was as rich an ecotourism experience as they thought it would be!” - Ethan Gelber



“One of the most important things that we need to do when we go to some places is to get to know the place, learn about the place, learn about how they live, what is their culture, their logic and just follow the local logic.” - Aivar Runkel


The 3 winners will be able to choose out of 6 amazing ecotourism holidays for 2 people, courtesy of WHL.travel. Congratulations to all of them!

11/10/11

WRTD 2011: Tourism can help reduce poverty

Harriet Lamb during the WRTD 2011 opening ceremony at the WTM.
© Marcela Torres

By Marcela Torres

“We have the means and the responsibility to help the local communities of the places that we visit and empower them to overcome poverty,” said Fiona Jeffrey, Chairman of the WTM. She also dedicated some words to the many and often unknown industry champions, highlighting that there’s a growing number of people who are working day to day to protect our culture, defend our destinations, conserving biological diversity and contributing to secure the sustainability of our home, Earth.

The official opening speech for this fifth version of the WRTD was presented by Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation. Lamb remembered that “twenty years ago, when I started talking about paying fair prices to small farmers for their coffee many people laughed at me saying nobody would be willing to pay more to help people sustain their livelihoods. Well, they’re not laughing now!”

Actually the fair-trade movement has expanded throughout the world and more and more consumers are demanding products with a fair-trade certification. And it’s not just about coffee farmers. The concept applies to all kinds of products and trade areas. Lamb said that 50% of consumers in the United Kingdom, for example, are willing to pay more for a product that is certified as fair-trade.

“And the good thing is that it also makes sense for the businesses,” Lamb said. “Think about it. A large supermarket chain that sold some excellent chocolate actually made the connection while talking to us and they realized that if they did not pay their cocoa farmers well enough, those people would run out of business and they wouldn’t have farmers to supply them cocoa beans to produce their chocolate bars. No beans, no bars. It’s that simple!”

That commercial advantage has also been understood by several tourism companies who are not only paying fairly to their suppliers but also –in many cases- have gone a step further and set up foundations to support education, conservation and even tap water community projects throughout the world.

There is much to be achieved still, however, and Fiona Jeffrey made a call to the entire tourism industry to hop on to the responsible tourism wagon: “This is not just a cultish craze or the latest in-vogue trend to be replaced with something else in a year or two. Increasing numbers of consumers are recognizing that the world –or the industry for that matter- cannot go on in the way it has since mass tourism first came into being.”
With more than 300 delegates from all over the world, the World Responsible Tourism Day 2011 was celebrated yesterday at the World Travel Market (WTM) in London, stressing the unique opportunity the tourism industry has in helping reduce poverty throughout the planet.