The Sacred Valley of Cusco, Peru. Photo courtesy of Jessica Festa

During a trip to Cusco in Peru, I was lucky enough to take an Urban Adventure tour with Intrepid Travel. Their Sacred Valley Tour takes you to the famous area and allows you to have a very local experience – visiting a market, tasting Chicha beer, trying local village activities, and eating typical foods. In fact, Chocla con Queso – a corn on the cob with enormous kernals and topped with cheese and chili sauce – is my new favorite food.

Sacred Valley, or Wilma Mayu as the Incas called it in catchua, is named after its Sacred Valley River. Driving through, you’ll see beautiful mountain landscapes with colorful crops and terrace farming, which the Incas invented due to their high elevation. Because of this, the major crops are corn, potatoes, and quinoa, which come in many varieties and can be sampled on the tour in many ways.

The first stop of the tour was the Pisaq Market, the biggest market in Cusco. People come from hours away on Sundays to attend church and buy and sell goods. Our guide, Hermando, led us around and showed us the different handicrafts, foods, herbs, and spices. We got to sample mana, a local corn-based cereal, and see a demonstration of mineralized colors being used to paint and dye wool. You can also see locals dressed in authentic dress for the Sunday church procession.

Continue reading this post on the Jessie on a Journey blog

This month we were inspired to learn that the residents of a remote Swiss valley community have voted against receiving tens of millions of pounds each in favour of preserving their cultural heritage and environment.

The incredible vote was cast by the valley’s 450 inhabitants in April (2012) after it was discovered that their area was sitting on a goldmine worth at least $1.2 billion.

Whilst some locals were less convinced by the decision, the majority of folk in the Medel Valley voted against the retirement-plans-changing sum of money in favour of regional conservation.

“The money would have been nice,” said 17-year-old Nicole Venzin. “But what sort of future would we have if we ruined the environment?”

Well said, Nicole.

Read the original article on the Much Better Adventures blog

British walkers at the Beyazit homestay explore a new path in Turkey

The first British walkers have returned from exploring over 110 kilometres of the Abraham’s Path segment just opened in Turkey. They stayed in homes that have never before welcomed international visitors and followed the path through remote Kurdish and Arabic villages to the oldest religious sites in the world.

The 105-mile (170-kilometre) walking route has been set up by local people in the region, under the guidance of Abraham’s Path Initiative. It takes the walker to ancient sites, such as the recently excavated Gobekli Tepe, Sogmatar and the Shrine of Jethro and ends in Sanliurfa (Urfa), a town legendary as the birthplace of Abraham and once part of the famous Silk Route on the border of the Roman and Persian empires. On the way it passes through remote rural villages some of which are opening their doors for the first time to western visitors.

The five Britons, from London and Leeds, experienced a way of life little changed since biblical times and the earliest agricultural settlements of man.

“This was a pioneering experience for everyone involved,” said Alison Tanik, the inspiration behind the new path and the village home-stays. Originally from Burton-on-Trent, Alison now lives with her two young children in the Kurdish village of Yuvacali from where she runs a local tourism business to encourage visitors to her adopted homeland.

“We have established home-stays here in Yuvacali but this new walk extends our activities over a much wider area. We are looking forward to hearing how guests and hosts alike responded to the experience.”

See the original article on the UK Friends of Abraham’s Path website

[Editor's note: This impressive slideshow touches on a lot that is at the heart of Local Travel, especially the Local Travel values.]

Welcome to the Marae in Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand. Photo courtesy of Anna Pollock

While I also subscribe to the importance of the journey and, where possible, would prefer to travel slowly and savour the transition from the familiar to the unknown, most times I have to fly.

Then I stop being a traveler and, instead, become a producer of air passenger miles and carbon; a unit of yield as far as the airline is concerned; and a human piece of baggage that doesn’t have the benefit of being placed on a conveyor belt!

…

The biggest tragedy of modern, mass industrial tourism is that it has completely missed the point – the essence of travel is about being changed by our experience of unique places – yet, in our earnest attempts to standardize, homogenize, and render efficient or convenient, we have sucked the life blood, the juice, and, worse still, the mystery out of places.

An indigenous person will tell you that the land on which you stand is sacred. Their individual identity is shaped by their relationship with all aspects of the place they call home: the relationship they treasure with their ancestors and, in turn, the relationship those ancestors had with the place. Their presence also changed the place because all beings – whether perceived as sentient or not – are in a dialogue, a dance of vibration. So your presence will also affect this place and, if you are awake, aware and alert, you will let it change you.

Hence my assertion: all travel is local. Despite the act of getting there, all travelers do eventually arrive at a locality and experience its uniqueness.

And if all travel is local, then ideally all hosts should be indigenous in the deepest sense of the word….

Continue reading this article on the Conscious.Travel website

The Earth Day Network has once again taken on the ambitious goal of registering one billion environmentally friendly actions throughout the globe.

Since the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, over 20 million Americans from all walks of life have contributed to major environmental accomplishments, such as pressuring government leaders for the passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and many other groundbreaking environmental laws.

Today, the Earth Day Network is thriving with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. Each year, over 1 billion people participate in Earth Day activities, making it the largest civic observance in the world.

For 2012, the Earth Day Network is again hosting “A Billion Acts of Green®” with the ambitious goal of registering another one billion environmentally friendly actions in preparation for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development happening in Rio de Janeiro in June, 2012 (Rio+20).

At the event, the Earth Day Network plans to show world leaders that people are willing to stand up and be counted for the sake of our planet and the longevity of our species.

The Earth Day Network will also participate in helping to secure political commitment for more sustainable development, assess progress toward internationally agreed commitments and continue to address new and unforeseen challenges.

Continue reading this article at TerraCurve.com on their blog

Slow Travel Berlin presents A Celebration of Creativity, Culture & Cuisine – April 22, 2012, 12pm-6pm

On 22nd April 2012, Slow Travel Berlin will take over Kreuzberg’s 100–year-old covered market hall Markhalle IX for a day of local creativity, culture and cuisine.

The morning will be given over to a selection of free tours that explore the city via a range of interesting themes, including literature, sustainability, street art, architecture, history and running.

From midday, the Markthalle will officially open until 6pm and host a range of activities, workshops and entertainment, including:

• Locavore Food Market with: Soluna, Goldhahn & Sampson, Bitter’velt, Stadtschoenheit, Dickes Bee, B Alive (Raw Food), Suff Weinladen, Culinary Misfits, Sunday Burgers, Wilde Gärtnerei, Prinzessinnengarten…

• Literary Lounge with: SANDjournal, Dialogue Books, Mondo Azul and Shakespeare & Sons (tea and snacks supplied by Hudson’s Café of Kreuzberg), plus various readings and performances…

• Workshops with: Urban Sketching Berlin, Nadelwald (Sewing), Stuart Holt (Film Making), Didges Brew (Didgeridoo), Katrina James (Photography Mentoring), Life Drawing Berlin…

• Plus: Children’s entertainment with Rotonda Teatro, Live Cartoon Drawing with Caffeinated Toothpaste, DJs & Live Music (Spiral Music School, Berlin Pop Choir, Dorothy Of The Day, Sarah Maguire), Crafts, Grinberg Massage, Swishing (clothes swapping) Stall, Free Ideas from Art Connect Berlin – and more surprises on the day…

Entrance to the event and all workshops are free, though donations to performers and workshops are welcome.

Read more about this Slow Travel Berlin event

How to Holiday Ethically in Burma – April 16, 2012,6pm

At 6pm on Monday 16th April, Tourism Concern has organised a event exploring How to Holiday Ethically in Burma. It will be held in the Grand Committee Room at the House of Commons. The meeting will be hosted by the Rt.Hon. Malcolm Wicks MP, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy in Burma. Guest speakers include Anna Roberts (Executive Director at Burma Campaign UK), James Moreton (co-Founder and Director at Panoramic Journeys), Simon Usborne (a features and travel writer at The Independent) and Min Hein (Head of the Activity Committee for the National League for Democracy (Liberated Area) UK).

Tourism Concern, an independent, non-industry based, UK charity that fights exploitation in tourism, supported the calls from Burma’s National League for Democracy (NLD) for a tourism boycott for many years and now promotes the revised position, which entails the need for ongoing awareness of the wider challenges facing the country and how tourism relates to this.

The speakers will each give a perspective on the current conditions in Burma, whether the tourism boycott was effective and, now that it has been lifted, whether it is ethical to travel to Burma. Pro-democracy groups, includign the NLD, have suggested that some forms of tourism can bring benefits to local people and assist their cause; but that large scale tourism would bring few benefits and continue to support the regime.

If you would like to attend please RSVP online. Numbers are limited and priority will be given to Friends of Tourism Concern.

Read more about this event on Tourism Concern

Some of the fresh produce grown and made around Chilham in some beautiful Kentish farms in the UK. Photo courtesy of Hidden Britain

A lot of hype is placed on Local Travel abroad, but there can be just as many rewards to Local Travel… locally. After all, Get lost! Go local! is also a perfect mantra for a “staycation” and how many people can say they have experienced everything their own nation has to offer? Local travel is about repairing people-to-people connections, so joining forces with other nearby communities is a perfect place to start. Trying locally grown food, uncovering local history and experiencing your own “local” can make you realise how “lost” you already were. If you look around, there are tonnes of different sustainable destinations to be found at home. Just a stone’s throw from your doorstep there are hundreds of fabulous experiences to be had.

Hidden Britain has been working with rural communities in the UK to help them share what they love about where they live. The resulting social enterprises are community owned, are invigorating local economies and empowering communities that were otherwise dependent on agriculture and commuting. The projects have revealed an exciting and hands-on countryside that has so much to offer the modern traveller – from sculpture to mountain biking to food festivals. Rural Britain is overspilling with things to do and landscapes to uncover. Better still, it’s right at your fingertips.

One perfect place to start is Kent, the beautiful Garden of England. Let us awaken your senses with a three-day triangular trip in Kent that could even be used to book-end a continental visit. The trick is to delve beyond television advertisements and dig out your own perfect trip.

Learn bushcraft survival as part of a survival course run in the Elham Valley. Photo courtesy of Hidden Britain

Elham
Hidden Britain worked with Elham to uncover a wealth of arts-and-crafts activities. There are ceramics-painting classes and therapeutic-sculpture workshops for various abilities. There are also day courses to learn quirky new skills like weaving and wool-spinning using naturally sourced materials and dyes. In all cases, you are taught by local people, you use local products and you leave with your own self-made items. Money spent goes directly to the local economies, making changes at the top less formidable.

Working at crafts makes for hungry tummies, but be warned: if you take a foodie to Elham, there may be no leaving. In the outstanding natural beauty of the valley is an abundance of local farms and tea rooms, as well as fresh seafood caught a couple of miles away. You won’t starve. In summer there are seemingly endless days of picnicking and taste testing; in winter, you have hearty roast or a warm cocoa and slab of homemade cake. The choice is yours. There is a regular farmers market from which the preserves and pickles make fantastic – and rather tasty – mementos to take back home. Plus, with a vineyard in the valley, you can’t fall short of the odd tipple.

Chilham
Chilham is yet another crafty destination, one to which friendly locals always welcome you with their traditional brand of Kentish hospitality. There are outdoor art exhibitions, local cider tastings and a rich architectural heritage. There are also opportunities to explore the beautiful local limestone landscapes on horseback or by bicycle. You might come across suspiciously familiar scenes from the sets of Poirot or Miss Marple as you discover the mysteries that your own “local” offers.

A view from Edenbridge in Kent's Eden Valley takes in some traditional hop-drying Oast Houses set in gorgeous green fields. Photo courtesy of Hidden Britain

Eden Valley
Everyone’s ideal adventure is different. The thing is: adventure doesn’t necessarily mean jumping from cliff faces and offroading for 100 miles before tucking into a scary-looking deep-fried delicacy. Some of us just like a secret spot, somewhere we can chill out and forget our cares in a tranquil landscape filled with sounds of birdsong and running water. This is a perfect description of the Eden Valley in Kent, where the river Eden gently meanders along the valley floor, and acres of farmland and woodland are only broken by tiny lanes and a scattering of small villages. You can rest, relax and enjoy the tranquillity in the garden of England.

These three Kentish day trips could be grouped together or savoured separately, but the message is clear: get lost, go local and go national. Explore the wonderful scenery and make a local choice locally, where you will find a wealth of experiences you never knew were so nearby. Probably the best thing is that because the experiences are so close to home, you could go again and again, restocking your new favourite ingredients or returning to make your full set of crockery – all sound in the knowledge that your local economy is being improved as you have fun.

Learn more about Hidden Britain

Caiman alligators (their indigenous Guaraní name is yacaré) on a floating island in Los Esteros del Iberá, Argentina. Photo courtesy of Sarah Enelow

My canoe bumped into a floating island, which was a bad thing. Getting too close to an isla flotante meant that the 8-foot caiman alligators on it could step right into my vessel and eviscerate me. I started rowing furiously in the opposite direction, made difficult by the fact that my friend Allison was sitting in the back of the canoe, deliberately rowing toward the island.

“Stop rowing! Abort!” I shouted back at her, my bird-like arms straining to steer us at least two meters away from the island, as we’d been instructed when we rented our canoe. An alligator looked me right in the eye.

“Oh don’t worry, that was just a suggestion,” replied Allison.

“Yeah, a suggestion from a local who still has arms and legs. Besides, I’m in the front of the canoe so I’m the one who’ll get eaten first.”

All things considered, Allison and I were thoroughly enjoying our trip to Los Esteros del Iberá, the remote marshlands of northeast Argentina. We became friends while doing yearlong Fulbright grants, so for the last five months we’d been teaching English elsewhere in the Argentine provinces and this trip was part of our winter break. I originally proposed coming to the marshlands because I wanted to experience an unspoiled, authentic corner of Argentina, which was absurdly rich in natural resources. We rowed along through this natural splendor until I felt a sharp bump under the canoe.

“Did you feel that?” I asked Allison while holding my oar in mid-stroke.

“Yeah, I did…”

“What do you think that was?” I posed, knowing full well that an alligator could capsize our canoe if he wanted to. I shuddered at the thought and peered over the side for other signs of aggressive gators.

Sharing the floating islands of Los Esteros del Iberá, Argentina, are carpinchos (their indigenous Guaraní name is capybara), the world’s largest rodent. Photo courtesy of Sarah Enelow

We rowed out toward the middle of the lagoon and I breathed deeply. Lily pads carpeted the sapphire water, the floating islands were blanketed in green moss, and the sky stretched on forever, reflected mirror-like in the rippling lagoon. All I could hear was the buzzing of dragonfly wings. Now a safe distance from the floating islands, I looked over at one that was filled with alligators, probably nine, I couldn’t quite tell because they were so well camouflaged. Most of them were sunbathing perfectly still, but others were slowly moving about, inching around their mossy patch of land, slipping into the water without splashing a drop, or stretching their jaw muscles, which revealed rows of glistening teeth.

Los Esteros del Iberá owed their majesty and pristine condition in part to the difficulty in reaching them. The nearest real town, called Mercedes, was not at all a major stopover by bus. Visitors typically spent the night in Mercedes, and then took a five-hour bus down a long dirt road to Carlos Pellegrini, the minuscule hamlet that sat right in the marshlands themselves. There was one daily bus from Carlos Pellegrini back to Mercedes, which left at 3am so that people had time to get their business done in town before siesta (going to the bank, seeing a doctor, shopping, etc.).

It may have been a trial to get to Los Esteros del Iberá, but I was particularly thankful for that because it was anything but overrun. Only the most dedicated eco-travelers made their way there, among which were a smattering of biology students studying the caimans, the monkeys, the carpinchos (the world’s largest rodent), or the incredibly diverse bird and plant life.

Allison and I rowed our canoe to shore and walked back to Carlos Pellegrini to have an early dinner. There were a handful of modest cafés, so we picked one at random and sat down to order some gnocchi (a common dish in Northeast Argentina, which has a significant Italian heritage). The owner of the café came over to take our order and we chatted with him in Spanish. There had been two weeks of torrential rain right before our arrival, so the owner told us how difficult it had been to leave the village (that long dirt road flooded easily), get supplies, and keep the damage under control. No one had gotten hurt, but they were out of many staples for several more weeks, for example dough for making empanadas. The owner moved on to a nearby table, where a young man, unshaven in mud-stained clothes, was trying to order with his limited Spanish.

Reflections in the Iberá Lagoon. Photo courtesy of Sarah Enelow

“Hello, caiman milanesa please,” said the young man with confidence, referring to a filet of alligator meat, breaded and fried.
“Excuse me?” replied the owner.
“Caiman, fried, to eat please.”
“I’m sorry, we don’t serve caiman.”
“No?”
“No, they’re endangered.”
“Someone in this village eats alligator, yes?” The young man seemed to think that if he gave the secret password, they would honor him like a local and bring one out on a spit.
“No. This is a nature reserve.”
“But the man who eats alligator, where does he get it?”
“I don’t know anyone who eats caiman.”
“OK, I will try tomorrow,” resigned the young man, who settled for pasta instead.

I looked down and covered my mouth to hide my giggling, partly in amusement but also in awareness that sometimes our idea of an “authentic experience” is terribly divorced from the real thing. It’s possible that the locals were hiding the alligator milanesa because they didn’t want it turning into a commercialized tourist attraction, but then again, maybe it really wasn’t on the menu because these animals really were endangered. Some relentlessly chase that filet of alligator because it’ll become the outlandish anecdote that wows the friends back home, but I would argue that a story about a canoe ride is better when the alligators in the lagoon are alive. There’s a remote chance that they could kill me, but I would rather have the excitement of them hunting me than vice versa.

About the author: Raised in rural Texas, Sarah Enelow currently lives in New York, where she works for a bass luthier. Her travel writing appears on Not For Tourists, The Purple Passport, Travel-Junkie, and WhisperTrail. Read more at enelow.tumblr.com.

In the face of a new Mercedes Benz building on the Spree River in Berlin, how long can the beautiful reggae subculture at YAAM remain?

In Berlin, two buildings face each other on the Spree River: one is a shiny highrise, its mosaic of metallic colours gleaming on the roadside. It is the new Mercedes Benz building that will be constructed by Caimmo. Across the road from it sits a beach club, called YAAM, with a colourful graffiti-style sign and gates flung wide open. Inside, a festive assembly of shacks serving food and drinks encloses an umbrella-filled courtyard which opens onto a Spree-side beach.

Humble spaces like the YAAM club epitomise Berlin’s style and spirit. They put the spotlight on the city’s people: groups of students making nervous forays into the bar, throngs of hip travellers whose nonchalance suppressed the thrill of discovery; the Afro-Caribbean men who work in its stalls; the laid back scenesters who make their second home here, exuding an aura of purposeful calm that is years beyond their real age. By contrast, the Mercedes Benz building, and other new, shiny attractions which resemble it, are mute. Their strikingly modern and high-end designs may catch the eye but they can only hold it for a few seconds. They are no match for the ever shifting tapestry of humanity in YAAM and grassroots hangouts like it.

… They are slowly building another Berlin Wall around the Mitte, a Wall of impersonal modernity which closes its doors to the intimate, ramshackle, anything-goes local lifestyle. …

New highrises with their fortress-like fronts may provide photo opportunities but they lack a visible human presence. They are an artificial construct invented for visitors who are on a ‘Berlin-today, Prague-tomorrow’-style travel itinerary. Step into a venue like YAAM and its living, human theatre will close around you and turn the spotlight on you, expecting you to react and interact. Random, natural venues like these have no beginning or end, they don’t fit neatly into schedules and itineraries. They don’t offer guarantees or consistent standards but they do offer a chance to live and breathe the local culture and learn from it. Isn’t that what travel is supposed to be about?

… What will become of the city once they are all displaced by the sort of tourists who prefer to view things from an uninvolved distance?

Simply put, big, impersonal tours go against the Berlin and other cities’ spirit. They are no way for visitors to find out what the city is all about. Alternative Berlin and its partners within the Local Travel Movement offer a glimpse of what it’s like to actually be a local for a few hours, not just a glimpse of the locals themselves. We and our guides feel that tours should enable a real exchange between visitors and the city so that they leave the city with a memory of what Berlin really is, instead of the censored memories that various agencies have decided to sell them. We believe that that it is better to preserve the local authentic vibe by sharing it with visitors, than by enclosing it within a wall.

Read the complete article on the Alternative Berlin blog