Dispatches from the Field & Project Summaries
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 11, part 2 – Rainforest Alliance, Nicaragua
March 26, 2010
On our first day in Granada, Ryan joined a group of Dutch tourists to film their city tour with Oro Travel, while the rest of us set off to interview people at the various hotels that are working with Rainforest Alliance. Since we were staying at the Patio del Malinche, we started there. Set around two small courtyards, the charming 15-room hotel is run by a Spanish couple, Ramón Cirera and Lidia Teixidor, who abandoned their jobs in the insurance industry back home six years ago and came to Nicaragua seeking a change of pace.
Ramón told us that he sees sustainability as a question of respect – not only for the environment but for the country of Nicaragua as a whole. “I believe sustainability in a hotel is intangible,” he said. “Clients notice when a hotel is consistent and tries to do things well. Clients notice that it’s a hotel with soul.” Signs throughout the Patio del Malinche urge guests to reduce water and energy usage, and recycling bins are placed in all guestrooms. The hotel uses local suppliers for virtually all its needs, and employs 14 local residents who have been with the hotel since its opening. This sense of community is an important part of the Patio del Malinche’s appeal. “One of the great satisfactions of this project has been believing that we are part of something that is beginning,” Ramón told us. “In Spain we felt as though we were in a wheel that kept spinning but with no results. Here we are part of something that is being born, something that is useful in the future of Nicaragua.” Lidia is also involved in supporting local artisans by coordinating a local printmaking workshop program and providing a space at the hotel for a women’s handicrafts cooperative to sell its wares.
From the Patio del Malinche we headed a few blocks away to La Gran Francia, a hotel and restaurant located in two colonial houses on either side of the street. The original building is said to date back to 1524, shortly after the founding of Granada. In addition to restoring and maintaining the historic hotel building, La Gran Francia owners and staff work to educate the community about protecting Granada’s natural resources and colonial heritage. Water control measures are in place to avoid waste, and guests are asked to recycle and reduce unnecessary water and energy use. The hotel has also made a large donation to a program that offers free reconstructive surgery for children born with cleft palates and other facial deformities. In addition to being the right thing to do, General Manager Grisele Camille explained, sustainability is just good business. “We have to keep Granada to attract the clients to come back to us,” she said. Grisele herself originally hails from Santa Clara, Cuba, but spent 20 years working at a large international hotel chain in the Seychelles. She left that job and moved to Nicaragua because she wanted to work in a place with heart, where she and her children could reconnect with their Latin roots. “We Latin people have a different way of feeling, and I want my kids to feel it,” she said. “In Granada, you feel it. It’s a very special feeling.”
Our final hotel visit of the day was to the Hotel Plaza Colón, located on the main square of Granada. We were eager to film our interview with General Manager María Isabel Cantón on one of the enormous front balconies overlooking the square, with Granada’s distinctive mustard-yellow cathedral as a backdrop. Unfortunately, we soon realized that the constant traffic on the street below made this idea impossible, so we opted for one of the peaceful interior courtyards instead.
María Isabel told us that corporate social responsibility is very important at the Plaza Colón. The hotel is working with a local school on a variety of projects including facilities improvement, environmental education, recycling, cleaning days, and field trips. One of María Isabel’s pet projects aims to combat one of Granada’s biggest societal problems: the large number of young children who drop out of school and wind up living on the streets, begging and sniffing glue. Rather than giving money to street kids, which only feeds the problem, guests at the Plaza Colón are encouraged to purchase a “Plaza Colón backpack” filled with school supplies that will be donated to a local school, thereby creating a type of financial support and social incentive to keep kids in school.
Another initiative that the Plaza Colón is developing involves helping to clean up Granada’s streets by collecting the manure from the horses who draw the old-fashioned carriages that ply the city’s historic core. The manure will be sold to local farmers as an organic fertilizer. “Doing things sustainably is the only way to do things long-term, but in Nicaragua it’s difficult, because you really have to convince people,” María Isabel told us. Still, she added, “I think Granada is in a very good position because we don’t have the Marriott, Holiday Inn, the big chain hotels like elsewhere in Latin America. Granada right now has the opportunity to start with sustainable tourism on the right foot.”
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 11 – Rainforest Alliance, Nicaragua
March 26, 2010
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fter so many projects in rural and wilderness areas, our first Nicaragua project, in the city of Granada, made for quite a change. We had had a brief introduction to Rainforest Alliance’s Sustainable Tourism Program at the start of the expedition, when we stopped by the main office in San José for a few quick interviews before heading out of town with Ríos Tropicales. That was when we first met Jessica Webb, who had now come to Granada to facilitate our filming over the next couple of days.
The Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Tourism Program provides training, technical assistance, and marketing support for sustainable tourism and hospitality businesses as part of its broader effort to transform the global tourism industry into one that benefits the planet and local communities. In Granada, Rainforest Alliance currently works with five businesses: four hotels (Hotel Patio del Malinche, La Gran Francia, Hotel Plaza Colón, and La Casona de los Estrada) and a tour operator (Oro Travel). The businesses involved in the RA program have adopted a range of sustainability measures including recycling and energy conservation. They employ a high percentage of women, pay salaries that are significantly higher than Nicaragua’s minimum wage, and work with predominantly local employees and suppliers to ensure that the economic benefits of tourism stay within the community. In addition, all of the businesses are involved in local conservation and community projects.
During our visit to the San José office we interviewed Ronald Sanabria, Vice President of Sustainable Tourism. Over the incessant noise of parrots in the trees overhead and the constant passing of trucks on the road outside, Ronald laid out Rainforest Alliance’s vision of sustainable tourism. “We really see sustainable tourism as a set of principles that are applicable no matter what type of tourism you do. It’s not a niche market but a way of doing business, ” he said. “Sometimes it gets confused with ecotourism or nature tourism, but we have seen great examples of urban settings where sustainable tourism is being practiced.”
Now, 10 days after that interview, we were finally about to see some of those success stories for ourselves….
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 10, part 2 – Traveling to Nicaragua
March 25, 2010
After barely making our flight from Palmar Sur we soared back north along Costa Rica’s west coast, passing directly over La Cusinga and the bay of Uvita, followed by endless palm tree plantations (the palm oil is sold as cooking oil). We touched down briefly at the landing strip in Quepos before continuing on to San José’s Pavas Airport, a place we had come to know well by this time. We had never seen it quite like this, however – with driving rain so strong it was coming down sideways, forcing us to hold the airline-issued umbrellas as shields while we waited for permission to make the short walk across the tarmac to the terminal building.
Once inside, we found that the rain was wreaking havoc with Nature Air’s scheduling. With such small planes, all flights were grounded until the weather improved – including our connection to Liberia. We hung around Pavas for an extra hour before finally being allowed to take off. When we finally arrived in Liberia, it took a little while to find our driver, who had gone to have a meal while waiting for our delayed flight. By coincidence, our late arrival did have one benefit – as we exited the terminal we spotted Bibi Santidrián and Tera Dornfeld, two of the researchers from Leatherback Trust, waiting in the arrivals area to pick up co-founder Dr. Frank Paladino. Our brief reunion was like a meeting of old friends.
From Liberia it was a five-hour drive to our next destination, the lovely colonial city of Granada, Nicaragua, where we would be visiting several businesses participating in Rainforest Alliance’s sustainable tourism program. Our driver kindly stopped at a supermarket in Liberia so that we could pick up some food for the road. While we were shopping he discovered a new problem – the vehicle documents needed to cross the border were missing. It took various phone calls and a trip back to the car company’s office near the airport to track them down. Finally – a good two and a half hours late, if not more, by this time – we were on our way.
The border crossing involved standing in lines for passport stamps on both the Costa Rican and the Nicaraguan sides, but otherwise it was uneventful. Darkness fell as we sped up the Nicaraguan highway, past the countless fruitstands lining the roadside. Around 8 p.m. we finally arrived at the Hotel Patio del Malinche in downtown Granada, where Jessica Webb, communications coordinator for the Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Tourism Program, was starting to wonder what had happened to us. By the time we had finished dinner at a the restaurant El Tercer Ojo, one of Jessica’s Granada favorites, our travel-weary bodies were more than ready for bed. Fortunately the courtyard rooms at our hotel were both comfortable and quiet.