Introduction
I've been writing and updating The New Key to Costa Rica since 1982, when I inherited it from my mother, Jean Wallace. When the book became a best seller in 1989, I was afraid that it might be aiding and abetting the destruction of the natural wonders it was extolling. So, with co-author Anne Becher, and the help of many other people, we developed a system that rated lodgings on their commitment to conservation, to preserving local cultures and fostering local economies. As far as I know, it was the first “green rating” to be published in a guidebook.
A rating system similar to ours was adopted by the Costa Rican government in 1998 and has developed over the years. It is called the Certificación de Sostenibilidad Turística (CST). After the CST became established, I stopped including our Sustainable Ecotourism Survey in the book, because the government system was making people and businesses more aware of sustainable practices and they had a lot more resources than I did.
In the last ten years, the Small Grants Program of the Global Environmental Facility has funded campesino and indigenous conservation organizations all over the world to build their own ecolodges and create trails and other nature tourism attractions within their forest reserves. These destinations represent what I had always wanted to see in Costa Rican tourism: locally-owned lodges that preserve natural resources, provide great adventures, and give visitors a chance to meet real Costa Rican campesino conservationists. Now I feature these lodges in my book. In addition to practicing conservation and sustainable practices, they are owned by community organizations. The lodges that have made the highest ratings on the CST are often owned by non-Costa Ricans. Since the issue of land tenure is crucial all over Latin America, I felt it was important to bring travelers' awareness of this new phenomenon which offers the possibility of supplementing farm income, while providing authentic ecotourism experiences.
The community ecolodges that had been funded by the Small Grants Program banded together in 2001 to form ACTUAR, the Costa Rican Association for Rural Tourism. I have formed an alliance with ACTUAR in which I use the knowledge and reader trust that I have developed over the 26 years that I have written and updated The New Key to Costa Rica, to familiarize tourists with the benefits of community-based tourism. In addition to featuring ACTUAR member destinations in The New Key, ACTUAR and I have collaborated to make this unique form of travel more accessible to visitors.
The first idea was for me to lead groups to visit ACTUAR destinations. I gathered the first “pilot” group together in 2003 and led two other tours in 2004. By the end of 2004, ACTUAR started hiring excellent bilingual naturalist guide/drivers, and I started planning customized itineraries for the many readers and web browsers who contact me for travel planning advice. I am now the North American sales representative for ACTUAR and I answer their 800 number in the US. People who contacted me for travel planning advice have generated over $250,000 in income for ACTUAR over the last year and a half. That income allows ACTUAR to serve as an interface between the communities and tourists, and provides income for ACTUAR members and their families.
I am currently working on the 19th edition of The New Key to Costa Rica, published by Ulysses Press in Berkeley, California. Information from my latest research trip to Costa Rica will appear on this blog.