Crooked Trails: Non-Profit Community-Based Travel, Educational Outreach, Community Development

Tourism is the fastest-growing industry in the world. By the year 2010, the World Tourism Organization predicts that there will be one billion international tourists and more than US$1,500 billion generated in revenue. As tourism increases around the world, the environmental and social impacts of tourism can also be expected to increase. However, tourism's potential for improving environmental conservation and community well-being is nevertheless considerable. Policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and practitioners of tourism must therefore work to create opportunities that center on local communities, promote conservation efforts and link conservation with enterprise development. As a distinct form of tourism differing from traditional nature tourism and adventure travel, ecotourism provides funds for preserving land and water resources and the biodiversity they support.

Join Western Washington University on this remarkable Exploration Seminar into Peru's Cordillera Blanca (White Mountains), the Sacred Valley of the Incas, the Amazon Rainforest and the Central Jungle to explore and investigate the issues of tourism and eco-tourism and its environmental and cultural impacts and its power to help preserve natural area. On this 22 day investigative tour you will visit four very distinct locals, exploring the positive and negative environmental, cultural, social and economic impacts of tourism, visiting sustainable tourism projects in village communities and national parks and reserves and meeting with non governmental organizations that are working in eco-tourism. Your final week will be spent working with tourism and economics students from San Marcos University in Peru in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve in the central jungle on an evaluation of an ecotourism for nature project. Note that this travel program counts for 5 credits.

While exploring these fascinating areas, you'll gain hands-on skills in tourism planning and design, resource management and monitoring and determining the constraints to conservation by working directly with community organizations and non governmental organization. The itinerary includes ample opportunity for cross-cultural learning through informal gatherings with locals in communities we visit, as well as explorations of archaeological, historical and natural areas. We will visit pre-Incan civilization and archeological sites, we will swim, hike and riverboat in the Amazon, observing flora and fauna of the jungle; finally, no trip to Peru is complete without a hike and overnight to Machu Picchu. Several free times for individual exploration are factored in and there will be plenty of opportunity to enjoy nightlife in Lima and Cusco.


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