Local rainforest guides mean expert local knowledge
21 April 2023 (339 visits)At our eco-lodge in the Amazon basin of southeastern Peru, we do everything possible to help protect our tropical rainforest home. For more than thirty years, we have helped to develop conservation-based ecotourism in Peru as a way to encourage our fellow Peruvians to see unspoiled nature as a resource in itself, rather than seeing destruction of the natural world as a means to exploit a range of finite resources.
In our part of Peru, in the pristine forests protected by Tambopata National Reserve and our own Private Conservation Area, local educational programs have ensured that this part of the Amazon basin has been able to flourish. At our eco-lodge, in addition to welcoming travelers from all over the world to stay with us as our guests, we work every day to monitor the forests and guard against illegal activities ranging from poaching to logging and gold prospecting.
The educational programs developed in the nearest jungle town to our lodge, Puerto Maldonado, mean that we are fortunate to be able to employ local people to guide our guests out in the forest, and to work with us at the lodge as valued members of our team.
While some jungle lodges choose to bring in guides and staff from outside the region, at Tambopata Ecolodge we prefer to hire locally. Over the decades, Puerto Maldonado has developed the quality of local guides through its environmentally aware educational system, and this expertise, coupled with the unmatched local knowledge of guides and support staff who have spent their entire lives in this part of Peru, means that we can offer our guests an unrivaled authentic rainforest experience.
To us, ecotourism means more than the essential task of caring for the natural world: it also means ensuring that local communities benefit from tourism and are able to improve their own lives thanks to the travelers we attract to our region through our promotional work.
And, of course, this policy brings direct benefits for those who decide to travel from their home countries and visit us in the Peruvian Amazon. Selected for their easy-going personalities as well as their skills, our guides know our forests like most people around the world know their own neighborhoods. They are knowledgeable about rainforest plants, and they know where to take our guests in the forest to see many of the animals that nature lovers dream of seeing, from the tiniest hummingbirds to giant anacondas, monkeys, caimans, parrots, macaws, and even that most iconic of Amazon apex predators: the jaguar.
