Flying is bad, right? Nobody with a social conscience should fly halfway round
the world on holiday, spewing carbon into the upper atmosphere.
Well, it depends. If we were all to stop travelling to developing countries
tomorrow, who would suffer? Not just us, but tens, maybe hundreds of
thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on tourism. We’ve spent a
generation trying to persuade people throughout the Third World that if they
protect their local ecosystems, we’ll pay them a rewarding visit. So, do we
walk away from the rainforest ecolodges, community-run safari camps and
conservation dive schools, just because Al Gore tells us to?
This doesn’t give us carte blanche to whizz around the world, but it should
remind us that travel, when organised with care, can be a great force for
good.
PORINI CAMPS, Kenya
African national parks are a good thing. That’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? But
what happens on the other side of the fence? In Kenya, it turns out that the
local Masai people feel excluded and disenfranchised – and their feelings
aren’t exactly boosted by the busloads of tourists who are herded into their
villages to stare at the “colourful” natives. No surprise, then, that the
Masai continue to hunt protected animals, which they regard as a threat
rather than a benefit.
But Jake Grieves-Cook, a white Kenyan, had an idea. Why not open a camp on
Masai-owned land outside the national park, employ local people to build and
run it, and pay them rent? Not only would the tribes reap a real benefit
from tourism, they would also have an incentive to conserve the wildlife.
Visitors, in turn, would experience a genuinely warm welcome and get the run
of a vast area of wilderness.
The result is Amboseli Porini, a small tented camp in the Selenkay
conservancy, a few miles north of Amboseli National Park. Because only 12
visitors a day are allowed in, the animals – elephants, lions, leopards and
cheetahs – remain genuinely wild and unaccustomed to the sight of vehicles.
Grieves-Cook recently opened a second camp, Mara Porini, built in the Ol
Kinyei wildlife conservancy, a vast area of riverine forest, savannah and
rolling hills that overlooks the Masai Mara.
Prices compare favourably with other luxury tented camps. Three nights at
Amboseli, followed by four nights at Mara Porini, start at £1,680pp,
including flights to Nairobi, internal flights, game drives in open 4WDs,
walking safaris with the Masai, all meals and drinks. Book with Africa Sky
(0870 904 0925, www.africasky.co.uk).
GROOTBOS, South Africa
On paper, the Grootbos private nature reserve looks as though it might be too
goodie-goodie to be true. A five-star eco-resort in the Western Cape, it’s
so environmentally friendly that it uproots nonindigenous trees and lectures
its guests about lichens and seaweed.
Dull and worthy? Not when you get there. Barely visible from the road, the
hotel hugs a wooded hillside overlooking the long curve of Walker Bay, a
protected wild beach near the southern tip of the continent. It’s stylish
and comfortable, with cosy cottages hidden among milkwood trees.
The hotel’s ethos is “luxury, conservation and social responsibility”. The
owner has opened a gardening school, the first in South Africa, to train
jobless men from the nearby township, and built four football pitches for
local schoolkids – the children can play only if they turn up with a bag of
rubbish to recycle.
Trained guides – also plucked from local townships – walk guests through the
4,000-acre grounds, pointing out the wildlife and some of the 9,700 plant
species. Even if you have only a passing interest in botany, you’ll be
entranced.
Grootbos isn’t cheap – in high season, you’ll pay £178pp per night (children
from £65) – but the price includes all meals, guided walks and drives, and
riding. Call 00 27 28 384 8000 or visit www.grootbos.com.
Trailfinders (0845 050 5892, www.trailfinders.com)
has flights to Cape Town from Heathrow, from £459.
SHINTA MANI, Cambodia There aren’t many hotels where you can phone room
service and order two live piglets. But then Shinta Mani is no ordinary
hotel. Rising out of the old French quarter of Siem Reap, a short drive from
Angkor Wat, it works with the local community to pluck young people out of
poverty and set them up for a career in the hotel industry. Each year, the
hotel takes 20 disadvantaged youngsters and puts them through its own
hospitality institute.
Guests at Shinta Mani can sponsor a student in exchange for photos and
progress reports, or support local villagers: a donation of £45 buys a
freshwater well, while £40 pays for a pair of porkers that a local family
can raise, then sell on at a profit.
All well and good, but how is the hotel? With all those students running
around, are you in for a Cambodian-style Fawlty Towers experience? Happily
not – the service is outstanding and the facilities include a pool and spa.
Doubles start at £40, room-only, in high season. Book direct on 00 855 63
761998 or at www.shintamani.com;
or go for a 10-day tour of Cambodia, with five nights at Shinta Mani and
three nights in Phnom Penh; from £1,595pp, including flights via Bangkok,
private driver and guide, with Audley Travel (01993 838160, www.audleytravel.com).
ZEAVOLA, Ko Phi Phi, Thailand
When the tsunami swept over Thailand’s Andaman coast two years ago, one of the
worst-affected islands was Ko Phi Phi. In the weeks after the disaster,
there was talk that tourism there was finished. The islanders had other
ideas.
A sparkling example of Phi Phi’s resurgence can be seen in Zeavola, a
sumptuous little all-suite hotel on a white-sand beach, an hour’s speedboat
ride from Phuket. Guests stay in villas built in the style of a traditional
southern Thai village and dine at a breeze-cooled seafront restaurant.
Since it opened last year, Zeavola has worked with a local school in the
village of Baan Laem Tong, making a donation for each night a guest stays.
Badly hit by the tsunami, and short of public funding, the school has been
repaired and now has a new classroom and a playground.
Guests can visit the school, a five-minute walk from the resort. A week’s
accommodation, including flights and private transfers, starts at £1,099pp
with Travelmood (0870 066 4556, www.travelmood.com).
KAPAWI, Ecuador
If you want to get away from it all, you can’t get much further than Kapawi,
an ecolodge in a remote patch of virgin rainforest in southeast Ecuador.
Built on a lagoon in the Pastaza River, a tributary of the Amazon, it’s a
10-day walk from the nearest town. You arrive by air and spend your days
unwinding, listening to the sounds of the jungle and hiking or canoeing in
the forest.
This is one of the most biodiverse areas on earth, with more than 540 bird and
10,000 plant species. It also has a chance of escaping the claws of the oil
and logging companies that have ravaged much of Ecuador. That’s because,
thanks to Kapawi, the indigenous Achuar people are now profiting from
tourism. As well as staffing the lodge, they receive £10,000 a month in rent
from its owners – who, in 2011, will hand over the property to the villagers.
You stay in simple but comfortable thatched wooden houses, built on stilts.
Four nights, full-board, at Kapawi with three nights, B&B, in Quito
start at £1,685pp, including flights, transfers and excursions, with Last
Frontiers (01296 653000, www.lastfrontiers.com).
GULUDO BEACH LODGE, Mozambique
If you ask upmarket hoteliers why they seem to want to cut themselves off from
local communities, they’ll sigh and trot out the same tired excuses: guests
want privacy, service is paramount and, frankly, it’s easier to import staff
than train locals.
Amy Carter and her partner, Neal Allcock, ignored conventional wisdom and
built a small, exclusive beach lodge in Mozambique, run on fair-trade
principles: alleviating poverty, protecting the local environment and giving
work to the local people.
The lodge is Guludo, a collection of nine tented bandas on the sugary
sands of Quirimbas National Park. You are encouraged to visit people’s homes
and play in a daily football match against a village team. Local women offer
traditional muciro face masks, while Amy, a marine biologist, takes
guests diving and teaches them about the seas.
Six nights, full-board, at Guludo, with a night at Pemba, start at £1,998pp,
including flights, with Okavango Tours and Safaris (020 8343 3283, www.okavango.com).
TIAMO, Bahamas
As you’re loafing in your hammock in the Bahamas, listening to the breeze
rustle the palm trees and the sea slap on the beach, you probably don’t want
to know about your “black water waste”. Suffice it to say that at Tiamo, a
tiny eco-resort on the island of South Andros, it’s being taken care of.
Tiamo is a model of self-sufficiency, run entirely on solar power and
generating no pollution. It has a dozen wooden bungalows on the beach – no
televisions, no air-con. Behind the scenes, it does a lot of clever things
with water filtering and organic compost.
The hotel also does good work in the community – donating staff and materials
for clean-up projects, and teaching local schoolchildren about the benefits
of ecotourism and turtle protection.
In high season, a night here costs £173pp, including all meals, guided
snorkelling and nature tours. Book direct on 00 1 242 357 2489 or at www.tiamoresorts.com.
Fly to Nassau from Heathrow with British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com);
from £693.
