THE BIRTH OF ECOTOURISM IN SOUTHERN COSTA RICA,

THE LAND OF SMALL HOTELS AND BIG PARKS

Visitors Are Looking for Something Different — by Jack Ewing

In 1982 the Costa Rican government began work on the coastal highway from Dominical toward the south. At the same time, there was talk of building a bridge across the Barú River and bringing electricity into the area. The prospect of new infrastructure got me to thinking about tourism and the future of Dominical and Hacienda Barú. The words “Ecotourism” and “Ecological Tourism” never entered my mind. In fact, they were not even part of the English language at that time. The closest thing to them was “Nature Based Tourism,” but even that term was seldom heard. It was thought of as a specialty type of tourism that appealed to a few oddball tree huggers. Bird Watching, of course, had been around for a long time, but ecotourism as we know it today didn’t exist.

At that time Hacienda Barú was primarily a cattle ranch where we also raised rice and cacao. As the property had three kilometers of beach frontage, the partners had always assumed that it would one day be developed for tourism. The promise of improved access and services to the zone seemed to make that possibility a little more real. At the time, my concept of tourism was pretty limited. The image that came to mind was one of hotels and other tourist businesses lining the beach, Acapulco style. To me, this meant cutting down the forest, filling in the mangrove estuary and replacing those natural areas with concrete structures. “I don’t think I could bear to see that happen,” I told my wife Diane. “I would have to move away from Hacienda Barú before the development began.”

Several days after uttering those words, I was riding my horse along the edge of the mangrove, on my way to a pasture to check on a group of cattle. Upon approaching a large strangler fig tree, its branches laden with ripe fruit, I first heard and then saw a group of white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus,) jumping from branch to branch, gobbling up the small red figs as fast as they could stuff them in their mouths, dropping half in the process. Half a dozen chestnut-mandibled toucans (Ramphastos swansonii) were scattered among the leafy fronds, snatching mouthfuls of fruit in their enormous beaks, tossing back their heads and swallowing the figs whole. In the lower branches was a lone male coati (Nasua narica,) meticulously picking and eating the small round fruits one by one. Just watching him, I could imagine how delicious they must be. I knew that after their feast, all of these birds and animals would move out into the mangrove and bordering forest. Later in the day they would defecate and, in this manner, disperse fig seeds mixed with their droppings. Some of the seeds would fall to the ground, but many would find their way into the cracks and crevices of trees where germination would take place, and a new strangler fig would begin its long life cycle. After a while I rode on, marveling at the sight I had just witnessed.

The pasture and the group of grazing cattle I had come to see soon came into view. Riding through the herd, I found myself thinking about Mother Nature rather than paying attention to the cattle. A thought struck me: Why can’t we build cabins in places like this pasture, where the forest is already gone? Why not conserve the mangroves, wet lands and rainforests and bring tourists here to see the birds and the animals? Surely there are other people in the world who enjoy nature as much as I do.

I had just glimpsed a vision of what would one day be called Ecological Tourism. I was later to learn that many other people in Costa Rica were having similar thoughts and visions. A concept was starting to germinate in people’s minds. It seemed like people with similar ideas gravitated toward one another; we met; we talked; we exchanged ideas. The concept grew and gained more adherents. Eventually it ripened, like the fruits on the strangler fig, until it was ready to pick. Some of us began putting the concept into practice. At Hacienda Barú the stimulus to do so came from some friends of friends who were visiting from Switzerland. One day Diane and I, our friends Beatrice and Martin and their two friends all went hiking through the rainforest. For five hours we had a great time exploring the wonders of the most diverse habitat on the face of the planet. When we returned to the house, one of the visiting Swiss friends asked me how much they owed us for the tour. “You don’t owe me anything,” I replied. “I do this because I enjoy it. It isn’t a business.”

“You must accept something,” she insisted. “We don’t have anything like this in our country. We have traveled to many places, always looking for something different. Usually we just find the same old thing, pretty beaches, pretty palm trees and pretty hotels. An experience like we had today really is different. I have never seen anything like it.” She stuffed two twenty dollar bills in my shirt pocket, kissed me on both cheeks, said “Thank you so much!” and waved good-bye. Little did she know what she had just started in motion.

I decided that if our Swiss visitors would pay for a walk in the jungle, there must be others. We began offering a six hour hiking tour we called “The Rainforest Experience.” As I remember, we sold about $300 worth of tours that first year, 1987. The following year we sold that many tours in the month of January alone. That trend continued for five years, and then the growth rate settled down to a 35% to 40% yearly increase for a few more years. Eventually, it leveled off at about 15% annual growth. In the years that followed, our offering of tours expanded until today it includes three kinds of canopy tours, two hiking tours, two camping tours, two birding tours and seven kilometers of self-guided trails. Other ecological tourism destinations have had similar experiences. The time for ecotourism in Costa Rica has obviously arrived.

In the year 1984 the word “Ecotourism” was coined by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN.) Six years later the International Ecotourism Society was founded. Today many countries have their own national ecological tourism organizations. Costa Rica has the Camara Nacional de Ecotourismo (CANECO.) There are hundreds of web sites that in some way promote nature based tourism. Just like the Swiss woman said, lots of people are looking for something different.

I once heard the southern zone of Costa Rica called the “Land of Small Hotels and Big Parks.” I have come to believe that most of the people who live here share the desire to live in a place like that, where nature takes top priority. I have always believed that the people who live in a place make it what it is. The southern zone is in the initial stages of tourist development. It is rapidly gaining a reputation for great natural beauty and biodiversity. It is up to those of us who live here to protect those natural treasures that make our region so attractive to visitors. Ecological tourism and bird watching in Costa Rica are already extremely popular activities. This region has the potential to become the epitome of nature based tourism. The Swiss woman was right. People really do want something different. They are looking for the “Land of Small Hotels and Big Parks.”