A new species of tourists.

AuthorSmith, Geri
PositionNature tourism in the Amazon River Region - Perspectives on the Amazon - Cover Story

NIGHT FELL WITH a chorus of jungle sounds--birds, crickets, howler monkeys, and the rumbling thunder of a tropical rainstorm in the distance. A wooden canoe crept along the banks of a muddy Amazon estuary. Standing in the bow, a lookout scanned the reeds with a flashlight, searching for telltake twin red points of light--alligator eyes. Focusing on one set of glimmering eyes, he plunged an arm into the water, emerging with a three-foot-long gator in his hand.

Three tourists in the canoe--an American and two South Africans--snapped pictures, stroked the gator's tummy and examined its toothy grimace for a few minutes before returning the unharmed creature to the water. Guide Elcio Alves do Nascimento grinned, his mission accomplished: another batch of tourists introduced to the wonders of the Amazon. The next day the group went fishing for razor-toothed "piranha," their boat encircled by curious pink dolphins. After a nature walk through the dense jungle located three hours up the Rio Negro by boat from Manaus, they visited the simple shack of a fisherman to see how the locals, caboclos, live. Back at the rustic jungle lodge, four different kinds of monkeys swung through the trees, some climbing up on visitors' shoulders.

A thousand miles to the south, naturalist Douglas Trent accompanied a group of American bird-watchers on a tour of the fauna-rich Pantanal, the world's largest wetland area, where they photographed hundreds of species of birds, reptiles and small mammals.

And in Rio de Janeiro, travellers convinced there is more to Brazil's tourism capital than Sugar Loaf Mountain and sandy beaches took half-day guided treks through Tijuca Park, the Atlantic coastal rain forest that cuts through the middle of the city. Others shunned the cable cars and climbed Sugar Loaf's rocky face, while still others paid U.S. $50 to jump off the 1,560-foot Pedra Bonita mountain and float down to one of Rio's prettiest beaches on the back of an experienced hand-glider pilot.

All of these travellers are part of an important, new trend called nature tourism or ecological tourism--ecotourism for short. Bored with traditional itineraries that concentrate on city sights and monuments, there travellers are out for an adventure. If they visit the Amazon rain forest, they want to sleep in a hammock or in a floating lodge, not in an air-conditioned hotel room. If they take a riverboat cruise, they want a scientist aboard to explain the animal and plant life they see along the way. Tired of crowded national parks in the more developed countries, they revel in the relative isolation of Latin America's vast nature reserves, toting their fly-fishing equipment for the thrill of catching--and then returning to the water--a species new to them. Determined to enjoy these areas without spoiling them, they take home their memories, not in the form of animal trophies, but on film.

Travel agents began noting an increase in nature-oriented tourism early in the 1980s. But many believe the real boom now underway was sparked by the Amazon forest fires that dominated the news from 1987 on. The record hot temperatures registered during recent northern hemisphere summers rekindled...

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