Voluntourists say hi, hi birdie
Irene Sax reports.
| More 'Front Burner' articles in this issue |
| Food, Eatalian-style |
| Yellowfin seviche on rye |
| Rhône rising |
| Virtual dining |
| A chef weighs Elements |
| Instant India |
| Sad good-bye |
Cayo District, Belize—With its blue skies, bluer waters, and nonstop Piña Coladas, the Caribbean has always been a feel-good destination. But for travelers who go there knowing they can help the environment, the vacation can feel even better.
Guests at the Casa del Caballo Blanco, an eco-friendly resort on a hilltop in Belize, spend a part of their time voluntouring at the Casa Avian Support Alliance, an on-property facility for healing and releasing injured birds. There they help to build and set up cages for creatures brought to the site. They build nature trails and maintain the cages and large hospital area where birds are treated. And they work in the gardens and fruit orchard, harvesting and preparing food for the birds.
Both the eco-lodge and rehab center are the creation of Vance and Jodi Bente, who first landed in Belize on their honeymoon four years ago. Avid birdwatchers, with 10 pet birds in residence in their home near San Francisco, the Bentes so loved Belize that they returned to buy a 23 acre hillside farm. There they designed a facility to be as green as possible, with six hilltop casitas positioned to use natural sunlight and capture the breezes. Palm-thatched roofs help keep the rooms cool in summer and dry in the rainy season. To restore them to a natural habitat and bring back local wildlife, 15 of the 23 acres that were cleared for farming when the Bentes took over are now being planted with 900 trees and indigenous plants.
It's not all cleaning cages, however. Visitors normally spend part of their time either birding on foot or on horseback, visiting Mayan sites such as the Tikal National Park in Guatemala, tubing through caves on a local river, and, like one recent visitor, trekking with a guide to find orchids in their natural habitat. Meals, all made with local foods, draw on the country's cultural mix, which includes Mayans, Hispanics, Creoles, and even Brits (Belize, Central America's only English-speaking country, used to be called British Honduras.) At breakfast guests drink Guatemalan coffee and eat bacon and eggs with fry-jacks, Belize's version of fry bread. Lunch often consists of sandwiches on the trail. Dinner in the breeze-swept dining room might be chicken with rice and stew beans or Mayan pibil, pork pit-roasted with limes and peppers in banana leaves. Always tortillas. And at the end of the day there's local beer and, probably, travel poster perfect Piña Coladas.
For more info: www.casacaballoblanco.com.
