Ed Sanders ’63 stands high above the jungle of southern Belize on one of the catwalks connecting lodge and cabanas at Belize Lodge and Excursions’ Jungle Camp. The camp’s construction was, itself, an exercise in sustainable development, with the building materials salvaged from trees felled by the high winds of Hurricane Iris.

I consider myself a friend of nature, so when I was asked to take a sneak preview of an eco-resort in rural Belize set to open in November, my glee was measurable on the Richter scale. This wasn’t going to be just a walk on the beach. This was an exercise in bravery and environmental consciousness. This was my kind of thing...

I grabbed a map, located the small country of Belize (in Central America just south of Mexico on the Caribbean coast), checked out the weather predictions (temperature and humidity both in the 90s), and packed my bags (insect repellent and sun protection topping the list).

Three airplanes later, I arrived at Belize Lodge and Excursions (BLE) near the small southern town of Punte Gorda.

As I walked up the stone pathway to the thatched-roof hut that was to be my cabana, I savored every weary step. The night was gorgeous and warm. Cicadas serenaded me with night music. As I checked out my new 15- by 15-foot accommodations, however, admiring the lacquered wood floors, the bamboo-lined walls and the gauzy drapes, I suddenly became aware of how close to nature I really was. I could see right through the floorboards under my feet to the dirt below, and the cicadas suddenly sounded uncomfortably close. The mosquitoes were out in force, and my insect spray hadn’t kicked in yet. The sun was long gone, but the steamy heat lingered. Then I discovered my bunkmates: a family of rather large spiders hanging directly above my bed…

Welcome to the world of ecotourism.

The next morning, after trying in vain to wash off the sweat with a cold shower, I set off down the stone path to the lodge and was stopped in my tracks by the sheer beauty of my surroundings. Hungry as I was, I stood for several minutes, looking out across that amazing landscape. The hillside across the road was dotted with thatched roofs, and children were already filling water buckets at one of the village wells. The lakebed, which wouldn’t even be full until after the approaching monsoon season, was already teeming with life, and I could hear birds of all kinds calling to each other. The sun was rising over the flat expanse, heating up fruit and palm trees. A lone, regal ceiba tree rose out of the jungle on the horizon with gracious arms stretching upward.

If this was my scenery for the week, I thought, everything was going to be just fine.

Ecotourism is one of today’s hottest new trends in vacation packages—popular because it’s different, and different because it has ecological conservation at its core. Begun in the 1980s, ecotourism was conceived as a way to expose environmentally conscious tourists to places of natural beauty while preserving swaths of virginal land in their original state.

“There’s no consensus definition, but practitioners would agree, I think, that you’re not only sustaining but proactively trying to restore and enhance the natural habitat,” explains my host, Ed Sanders ’63, who helped found BLE. “In addition though, you must create economic benefits for the local population so that they have an economic incentive to protect the resource that you’re building on. Sustaining the culture is also part of that equation because if you have social disintegration, you’re not going to have a viable destination.”

An intelligent, soft-spoken but jocular man, Sanders came to ecotourism with a desire to leave a legacy for his children and grandchildren. With degrees in economics from Pomona and Yale, he began his professional life in the Office of Management and Budget and later served a stint as staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After a decade and a half in government, however, he switched to the private sector, launching an international business consulting firm sponsored by Sears World Trade. This job introduced him to Belize, where he consulted with the new government—the country had only recently gained its independence from British rule—developing a promotional program for its fledgling tourist industry.

“I got intrigued by small countries because they generally can’t be competitive on merchandise exports, and their best chance of survival is service exports like tourism,” he says.

In order to pursue his growing interest in environmental issues, Sanders founded Eco Tourism International, a Colorado-based firm that conducts feasibility and business plan studies for potential ventures. In 1997, Sanders’ firm was hired by a nature and wildlife photographer named Ken Karas.

A passionate man with a wry sense of humor who spent years travelling from jungle to jungle and peak to peak capturing the world’s wonders in film canisters, Karas came to Sanders with an impossible dream: to save from development the last corridor of lowland tropical forest connecting the mountains to the marine zone of southern Belize—a total of 25,000 virgin acres.

Karas talked of his plans for BLE with the fervor of a tent-revivalist, and Sanders was soon hooked, despite the fact that his own analysis indicated that ecotourism alone could never support the cost of safeguarding so much land. Working together, the two developed a plan to acquire and manage the 12-mile long Golden Stream Corridor Preserve by creating separate for-profit (ecotourism) and non-profit (conservation) projects, supported by a complex mix of commercial financing, grant funding and public-private partnerships.

It was a new model for ecotourism. The old model—projects that protected only a small parcel of land, usually no more than a hundred acres or so—had the unintended effect of fragmenting the habitat and leaving protected areas vulnerable to environmentally-unfriendly development on surrounding properties. Thus, out of self-interest as well as broader conservation goals, Sanders and Karas decided to take on all 25,000 acres.

One afternoon, I was handed the paddle for a one-person kayak. Alfredo and Santiago helped shoehorn me in, both nodding as I insisted that I could do this—after all, I was an old hand with a canoe. I found out quickly, however, that kayaking is not canoeing, and one stroke on a kayak paddle equals four in a canoe. After turning several revolutions in the water, I finally got myself straight and paddled away from the sagging dock.

As I drifted from the lodge and rounded a bend in the river, I suddenly felt very far away from everything that connected me to civilization. Though I had been promised a glimpse of jaguars and manatees by all the publicity materials, my trip upriver was quiet. Even the howler monkeys seemed to be taking an afternoon nap. Leaves and vines swayed in the lazy air, and the ripples from my tiny kayak brought waterlogged branches up to dance on the river’s surface. I was learning that ecotourism is about appreciating nature for what it is and not looking to be constantly entertained. Finding out what the Golden Stream looks and sounds like on a June afternoon is an education in itself.

Ecotourism is not without its critics. Although reputable purveyors of “eco” projects are motivated by a desire to protect the land, many skeptics worry that the industry will ultimately do more harm than good.

“Many are concerned that ecotourism contains the seeds of its own destruction by threatening to bring too many people to fragile places,” Sanders says. Northern Belize, for instance, with its Maya ruins and Ambergris Caye, now attracts tens of thousands of tourists a year. The long-term effects of that onslaught are difficult for anyone to predict.

Sanders doesn’t expect such an onslaught at BLE when it opens in November—or at any time in the foreseeable future, for that matter.

For one thing, the resort is simply too hard to reach. Located in the Toledo District in southernmost Belize, BLE is accessible only by air or by a single, partially paved road from Belize City. The closest thing to a tourist Mecca in the vicinity is Placencia, a coastal city about 50 miles to the north, pock-marked with a mixed bag of resorts ranging from exclusive fishing lodges to seedy youth hostels.

For another thing, in order to maintain the integrity of the land and its conservation efforts, Sanders and Karas plan to put strict limits on the number of visitors permitted at each lodge, keeping the impact as low as possible.

Then too, BLE isn’t designed to be an ecotourist version of Motel 6. Karas knows he can’t preserve 25,000 acres of untouched land by attracting swarms of people at bargain prices. The answer has to be fewer visitors and high-dollar rates.

“We want to earn a rate of return so we can bring the forest back to where it was before man started screwing with it,” Karas explains. “We’re running it like a business. We’re here to make money, and a lot of that money goes back into the environment.”
Despite the damage inflicted by Hurricane Iris when it blasted through the area in October 2001, severely damaging several buildings and knocking down about 60 percent of the forest canopy as well, two of BLE’s lodges are now almost ready to open, and plans for a third are well under way.

Opening in November will be Indian Creek Lodge—named for the nearby Maya village adjacent to Nim Li Punit, one of the two main Maya ruins in the South—and Jungle Camp, located four or five hours downstream by canoe. A third lodge, located on Moho Caye in the Port Honduras Marine Zone, isn’t scheduled to open until late next year.

Visits to the resort will begin at Indian Creek. Located on a flat expanse of lowland tropical broadleaf forest, the lodge will boast 12 cabanas, two lakes, 16 miles of hiking trails, an aviary for scarlet macaws, and habitats for spider monkeys, oscillated turkeys, and jaguars. The macaws will be reintroduced to the wild, but the jaguars, for reasons of visitor safety, will be limited to a fenced habitat.

Jungle Camp can be reached only by water. To conserve energy and alleviate fuel pollutants on Golden Stream, all guests and workers must arrive by canoe or electric boat. The camp’s lodge and 12 cabanas, all crafted from hardwood salvaged after Hurricane Iris plowed through, are perched on stilts high above the jungle ground and connected to each other by a catwalk to keep people from trampling the precious jungle floor.

Island Lodge, set to open late in 2004, will complete what Karas calls “the trans-habitat experience,” offering a marine habitat and a range of activities, from snorkeling to ocean kayaking.

On Thursday evening at Jungle Camp, I came across a brilliant green snake slithering across my path. It slowed at my approach and I squatted down for a closer look. I couldn’t figure out how it had gotten up onto the platform from so far below. Then almost in answer to my question, it slipped over the edge of the wooden planks and into the branch of a tree. The serpent blended right in—shimmering green scales against vivid green bark.

Back in my cabana, I stepped onto the balcony to watch the sun duck behind the arching ceiba tree in the distance. Worshipped by the Maya people, the ceiba is graceful and immensely tall, rising above the forest canopy, mostly trunk with a few sweeping limbs at the top and thick rambling roots emerging from the soil at the bottom. In the diminishing light, I glanced over at a palm tree to find a two-foot-long gray iguana perched in the highest branch about 15 feet from my fingertips. The spiny lizard gazed back at me apathetically.

In a playful mood, I opted for a friendly chat. The iguana maintained its torpid stare as I talked, only nodding its head at my inquiries into its well-being and the health of its family. I think maybe it was trying to sense my intentions, which, after a few minutes of conversation, it seemed to decide were silly but harmless.

Before BLE arrived, Sanders says, the dominant industries in the area were citrus farms, which paid workers a pittance, and Maya “milpa” farming, known for its slash-and-burn techniques. Today, BLE employs more than 150 people, mostly Mayas who live within 10 miles of Indian Creek, making the project the largest and, according to Karas, the highest-paying employer in the district.

Along with construction, agricultural and service jobs, BLE hires local Mayas to serve as interpretive guides for hikes and excursions. One afternoon, Pedro, a local Maya farmer, led us through BLE’s Boden Creek Trail to teach us about medicinal and edible plants.

A thousand years ago, at the height of the Maya civilization, Belize was home to millions of Mayas. Today the English-speaking nation has a mere 250,000 residents—a mixture of Creole, Indian, British, European Mennonite, Chinese, Arab, North American and Maya, only a few of whom speak the remaining Maya dialects, including Q’echqi’ and Mopan, once spoken widely in southern Belize.

“I put myself as a tourguide because I don’t want to lose my culture,” says Pedro.
BLE pays for its guides to be trained by the Belize Tourism Board not only to provide a better educational experience for guests, but also to rejuvenate the Maya cultural traditions and to vest the local villagers with an interest in restoring them.

Since becoming a tour guide for BLE, Pedro says he’s learned a great deal more about Maya planting and building techniques. He explains how twisting a particular vine makes a rope that holds fast and how harvesting bay-leaf palm fronds during a full moon, when the sap runs, makes for a longer-lasting thatched roof for a house.

“Right now a lot of us are feeling—like with those vines that I showed you—that we have a teacher for it, but nobody’s learning this,” says Pedro. “With our harp music, our marimba, nobody’s learning it. When the old have died, everything will be gone. That’s why I concentrate on doing this. Otherwise what do I have to show my children and grandchildren?”

Even at a nearby Maya ruin called Lubantuun, our 20-year-old guide, Catarino, laments that young Mayas today don’t value their cultural heritage. “Our people leave for school and jobs, then when they come back they refuse to speak the Maya language or wear the traditional dress,” he says. “If we continue this way, in 100 years our language will disappear. We will disappear.”

The local Mayas’ passion for preserving their own ways of life seems to have had a deep effect upon Sanders, who speaks fervently about the need to achieve a careful balance and to encourage a healthy sense of respect in introducing tourism to the local cultures.

Unlike mainstream tourism with commercial cruiselines that march guests through staged shopping centers that stand in for “local flavor” at contracted ports, ecotourism projects try to introduce tourists to more authentic and natural locales. And while he is pleased that smaller projects have succeeded in conserving small plots of pristine land and its inhabitants, he believes ecotourism must widen its reach if it is to do any real good.

“In a sense, Pedro is a real tribute to eco-tourism,” says Sanders. “How you help to arm people so that they’re not being bullied into giving up their land and their culture—that’s the real challenge.”

On the last day of my trip, I took a short walk through a village to snap some pictures. As I walked up a dirt path, two little girls emerged from a concrete house topped with a thatched roof. They both had on brightly colored dresses trimmed with lace, and were smiling broadly behind half-eaten mangoes as juice dribbled down their forearms.

I smiled and asked if it was okay to walk along their path. They giggled and led me to the house to meet their mother, who was standing in the doorway. Another woman sat on a box cradling a baby in her lap. We chatted in broken English for a few minutes, then the girls each gleefully handed me a mango and pointed to a nearby tree, with branches drooping to the ground from the weight of the harvest.

“You have a mango tree right outside your front door?” I asked. “You must live in paradise.”

In my memory, their smiles and the sweetness of that mango flow together. That, I think, may be the real fruit of ecotourism.