Mission Statement

Ecotourism and Adventure Specialists provides excellent quality services to eco-travelers in Mexico, the Maya World and the Caribbean. Our mission is to redistribute the income generated from ecotourism to local communities, support our national parks and nature preserves and to help people from around the globe to have deep experiences in nature interacting with our culture. We will do all within our power to show you a great time while you learn about our interconnectedness to each other and to the whole world around us!

What’s different about us?

We work in very close contact with different local communities who are our partners & service providers at each location around the region. We actively support conservation organizations whose work is making a difference in and around wilderness areas. We are highly motivated to continue providing the best customer service while preparing and operating responsible tours aimed at supporting education and the viability of Nature Preserves in our region and the effective protection of our cultural patrimony. We have become highly involved with various national and international organizations, grassroots and community-based groups and educational agencies over the years to achieve the goal of offering some of the few real ecotourism adventure opportunities in our region and to make sure that we have not only the most original and innovative tours, well managed management structures and reliability, but also real benefits for our people and our parks...

Through our tours direct help is provided to endangered species, such as the Resplendent Quetzal, the Scalet Macaw and the Howler Monkey! We believe in supporting efforts to dignify and increase the quality of life of our park guards and rangers... It is not unusual for them to join some of our groups and then carry on patrolling and safeguarding our parks... Scientist working at stations in the jungle are happy to see us and our visitors and ocassionally allow us to give them a hand in their studies...

We also make every effort to find creative and productive alternatives to slash and burn agriculture in buffer zone areas... We encourage funding to projects we consider vital to the sustainability and development of tourism and conservation, including agroforestry, handicrafts and the marketing of jungle products... You may learn more about some of the projects we support in our Eco-Projects section.

We have been entrusted with receiving and making trip arrangements for foundations and donor organizations by the very groups and organizations we support. We consider this to be a great opportunity to share our culture, history and geography, while helping bring direct funding and contributions to the preservation of our protected areas, biotopes and national parks.

The private sector is also interested in ecotourism as a means to make their reserves work with dollars and sense. A growing number of private land-owners who posses forests and wilderness areas within their properties have come to us seeking advise and business opportunities in the ecotourism and adventure segments of the tourism industry. We believe that private preserves have a great future in ecotourism, so we have selected a few we think are ready to receive visitors and offer them a fascinating experience!

About our tours

We will take you off-the-beaten-track and show you places few people ever get to see and you won’t easily forget.Through our work we are setting a high standard for ecotourism in our region, which will hopefully contribute to an improvement in park and wilderness area management and a correct or more desirable development of our particular tourism segment in our region... Our ecological & cultural tours and adventures are centered mostly around our parks and our beautiful natural areas and our archaeological treasures, but the most important part for us is that which you take back home with you once our job is done... Renewed experiential awareness about our Earth and the matters that affect us all, such as global warming, illegal trade in endangered species and archaelogical treasures and our shrinking biodiversity are all themes that pop up in conversation on almost every tour. We believe we may empower ourselves because much remains to be done and there is a lot we can all do together!

About our involvement

We are highly involved in ecotourism planning. Everything we bring in we pack out, bringing it back to urban centers to reuse or recycle. Researchers have been able to contribute to local conservation through us, as we have suggested where to go and we have put them in direct contact with rural communities interested in valuable academic cooperation for their projects.

We actively support the rights of indigenous peoples to their reserves and their land, and are responsible for our actions and our interactions with local cultures. We try to have as low a cultural and environmental impact on them and the places we visit, as well as a high positive economic one... On our tours both host communities and travelers become involved with one another and participate in new, creative and friendly ways in which we can all learn from one another to love and protect nature . By coming with us you are helping us make a difference and helping ecotourism be all it can be for our people and our parks.

AFFILIATIONS & BRIEF HISTORY

Our company is a Proud Member of the International Ecotourism Society in Washington DC since 1998. We support the society's vision & goals. Please visit their webpage at www.ecotourism.org

We are also members of the Guatemalan Ecotourism Association www.ecoturismoguatemala.org

Our original company is a fully registered Guatemalan company and on November of 2002 we became a legally registered company in Mexico as well. We are in the process of starting our registration in Costa Rica as well, where we have operated inovative and original ecotourism adventures with partner organizations since 1999. Our growth has occured "organically" & through our own travelers' enthusiasm, support & continued interest in our company & its development. Through our well thought-out expansion we pledge to continue offering not only the best quality of service on each ecotourism adventure we offer in our extended region but also to support our national tourism boards, state authorities and private sectors at each destination where we are present, as they all have great hopes in ecotourism and on the cultural exchanges we promote!