Sustainable Travel

Sustainable travel is the only way to travel.

It’s very important to us to travel in a sustainable and socially responsible way. Sustainable travel includes raising awareness about ethical wildlife tourism, caring for the environment, and supporting the local people and economy. Sustainable travel should be the only way we travel, here’s why.

Thailand’s Alternative Community Based Tourism

Those who haven’t visited Thailand, and even some of those who have, might think of its tourism industry as being synonymous with full moon parties and massage parlours, but there’s another kind of tourism which is all about exploring the real Thailand. It’s about meeting communities of Thai people, learning about their life and culture, and respecting the environment.

Community based tourism, which is often described as “travelling like a local,” has been going on in Thailand for decades, but is still not as well known as it should be. Community based tourism seeks to uplift local communities by providing them with a sustainable way to support themselves while providing a rich, cultural experience for travellers.

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Macademia nuts drying out

Getting My Nut Butter Fix: Valhalla Macadamia Nut Farm in Antigua

You know when I was a kid, I never ate peanut butter. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with it, actually I don’t even recall knowing it existed until the age of thirteen. That seems pretty crazy to most of you, right? Peanut butter isn’t big in England like it is in the States, and mainly it’s just wasn’t something that my family were all that keen on. When I was thirteen however, I had my first peanut butter and jam sandwich – and I was hooked.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that it’s not just peanut butter that I need a regular fix of, it’s all kinds of nut butters. Oh yes. Delicious, creamy, nutty, sticky nut butters. If I was going to run a business, it would definitely be selling homemade, organic, one-ingredient nut and seed butters – that’s another story though. With my nut butter obsession right out in the open now, you can imagine how crazy excited I was when I read that not only is there a macadamia nut farm in Antigua, but they also sell jars of macadamia nut butter!

Needless to say, top of my travel to-do list in Antigua was a visit to the Valhalla Macadamia Nut Farm.

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Guatemalan cooking class vegetarian pepian

What I Learned from a Guatemalan Cooking Class

I learned two things from our Guatemalan cooking class: number one is that making tortillas isn’t as easy as it looks and I suck at it, and number two is that the traditional Guatemalan dish of Pepian can be made vegetarian even though not everyone says it can.

We headed to a small town just down the road from where we were house sitting to meet an old Guatemalan farmer whose wife and daughters were going to teach us to cook. We went through the gate into their courtyard area where a long row of women were sorting coffee beans and dogs were sleeping in the sun.

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Why You Should Only Visit Panajachel in the Morning

When we docked in Panajachel, the main town in Lake Atitlan, early on a Saturday morning, our first impressions were that actually it wasn’t as crowded as we’d expected. We hadn’t planned on staying in the town but after a night on Jaibalito, which was lovely but rural, we decided we’d be better off staying in Pana so that we could take the bus directly from there back to Antigua the following morning.

We were wrong.

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What Vegetarian and Vegan Travellers Eat on the Road

As vegetarian – and even more so as vegan – travellers, the one question we often get asked is what do you actually eat? For a non-vegetarian traveller, the idea of finding food which doesn’t come with meat included while on the road can seem like an impossible task. There’s no doubt that it requires a bit of extra effort to find good vegetarian and vegan food while travelling, but it’s wholly possible and when you’re actually looking out for it, it’s much easier.

I asked five travel bloggers who have vegetarian, vegan or raw diets what they eat in order to keep healthy on a typical day while travelling.

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What I Learned From a Coffee Finca in Panama

Ever since I first set foot in Central America, I’ve wanted to go to a coffee finca. In Costa Rica, we never found the right time and in Nicaragua, we were never in the right place.

In Panama, we found ourselves in Boquete, a small town in the green mountain highlands famed for growing the finest coffee in the world. As well as industrial growers, there are many small, independent coffee growers in Boquete and it’s not uncommon to see locals and expats growing coffee in their own back gardens. My travels are powered by coffee and I can never start writing without a black coffee, so it was time to find out exactly how it gets from bean to cup.

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Budget Travel is Eco-Friendly – Here’s Why

If there’s one thing that us travel bloggers hate to admit, it’s that our lifestyle can be very harmful to the earth. But travelling on a budget can help with that problem.

There’s a real catch twenty-two for travellers: while we are travelling to see the world’s natural beauty and immerse ourselves in local culture, travelling so frequently can have a very negative effect on the natural and cultural environment. As fellow travel blogger Shing from the Culture Map pointed out in a thoughtful blog comment to me, taking steps to minimise our footprint and making eco-friendly choices as often as possible, especially for those of us who travel so much, is essential for protecting our beautiful planet.

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When I Met the Man Who Built His Own Paradise

In a dockside bar in Bocas del Toro, a silver-haired Belgian man, once a lawyer on Wall Street, told us how he escaped, disconnected and built his own island paradise in Panama.

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An Abudance of Wildlife: The Importance of Eco-Design

Sloths climbing tree trunks, howler monkeys foraging in the branches, agoutis running under the cabins, toucans flying overhead, red-eyed tree frogs laying their eggs by the pond at night, and an olingo passing silently through the darkness.

We’ve been travelling in Costa Rica for six months now and we have never stayed in a place so alive with wildlife as La Kukula Lodge. As we witnessed yet another troop of howler monkeys scouring the trees above our balcony, we realised the important role eco-design played in allowing the lodge to exist in harmony with the jungle.

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Vegan Caribbean Cooking Class in Costa Rica (+ Recipe)

I had heard rumours that Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast had the best cooking in the whole of Costa Rica. As it turns out, the rumours were true.

On our very first night in Puerto Viejo, we fell into an empty soda where a local Afro-Caribbean woman cooked us a traditional meal like nothing else we’d tasted in Costa Rica. Rice and beans stewed in coconut milk, fried plantain fritters, and a flavourful veggie sauce warmed our bellies. We were hooked, I had to learn how to cook like that.

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A Thousand Turtles Nesting: An Arribada in Ostional, Costa Rica

A woman was running wildly down the beach beating a big plastic bottle with a driftwood stick. We stared at her in dismay.

The fierce yet slender woman swung the stick around her head like a lasso, and in a frenzy, the large black vultures that had been skipping along the sands scattered. She saw us staring and came over. “They’re trying to get the baby turtles,” she said breathlessly. “You’re staying with us, right? At the turtle lodge? I’m Luis’ wife.”

6 mins read