On Friday I flew as a guest on Spirit Airlines‘ first flight to the Coffee Triangle area of Colombia, to the town of Armenia and have been touring around the region. It turns out this was the first international flight to this airport of any kind, so it was a big deal. The mayor was there, the governor, local TV crews, a brass band, kids singing the national anthems (theirs and ours), and local beauty pageant winners. I can’t say I’ve ever gotten a welcome quite like that before when stepping off an airplane.

This is a beautiful area, with lots of mountains and rolling hills, and the climate is quite pleasant at this altitude of 1,200 to 2,500 meters above sea level. And of course the coffee has been heavenly. No “gas station Colombian” here.

Most of the tourism in this area has been domestic, so I’ve only visited one hotel that meets the standards of Luxury Latin America. It’s a beauty though: Sazagua, pictured here. The other problem is that English proficiency is pretty rare, so it would make sense to hire a guide or set up some kind of organized tour to get the most of your visit unless you speak Spanish. (Our group of writers and Spirit Air people has been using Citurc.)

Snag our RSS stream or subscribe to our newsletter to see when we post the full tour story and hotel review for this region of Colombia.

I was fortunate enough to be on the National Geographic mailing list for review copies of The Darwin Experience by John Van Wyhe and have been reading through it this past week. I have to say there are few things that have landed on my doorstep that are this impressive. This is a book produced with love and care, something that deserves a hallowed place on the library shelf or the coffee table.

This is basically a biography in graphic form, illustrating the man, his voyages, and his work through maps, drawings, and reproductions of mementos. It covers his childhood and university days in Edinburgh (where he was already going bald, apparently), including a pull-out page of his chemistry notes. A page on his time in Cambridge includes a grocer’s bill and an 1828 letter to his cousin.

When he sets off on his historic voyage on The Beagle, things really get interesting. There’s a map of the voyage from 1831-6, a ship’s diagram, a watercolor of the ship, and the story of how captain Fitz Roy talked young Charles into coming along. Much of the middle then looks at individual discoveries and activities, including fossil discoveries, Darwin’s reaction to seeing “savages” in Tierra del Fuego, and then “Galapagos: the True Story.” Again the history comes alive with period drawings, notes from the discoveries, and details on theories that you don’t hear so much about—like Darwin’s realization that today’s Andes Mountains were once part of history’s sea beds.

The remainder of the book moves back and forth between the development of The Origin of Species (and the reaction to it) to his personal life and health. Enclosures include a program from one of his scientific presentations and a French newspaper with a caricature of him swinging from a tree as a monkey.

The Darwin Experience really is an experience, a tactile expression that shows us the man and his work instead of just telling us about it in straight text. It’s a great education that is also pleasurable to read through and explore, page after page.

The Darwin Experience from the National Geographic Store.

Get The Darwin Experience at Amazon.

The Darwin Experience at Barnes & Noble

Each year there’s a lot of anticipation about which hotels in North America will join AAA’s prestigious 5-Diamond list. This is a tough club to join as the physical requirements to meet are daunting and there are a lot of expenses involved, such as having a high staff-to-guest ratio and people who can speak multiple languages.

Three new hotels made the list in Mexico: the St. Regis Punta Mita Resort in Nayarit and two hotels that are walking distance apart on the other coast: Mandarin Oriental Riviera Maya, and Rosewood Mayakoba. Naturally, we have reviewed all three of them already. Follow the links for detailed info.

Who got dropped, you ask? None of them in Mexico actually. The six that lost their ranking are in the U.S.

Christopher Baker was one of the original hotel reviewers for Luxury Latin America, covering most of the luxury Costa Rica hotels for us. His new edition of the Moon Handbook Costa Rica is the seventh edition of this thorough guide and I caught up with him to ask what’s new in the most popular destination in Central America.

Unlike a lot of guidebook writers who are thrown in with no experience, you’ve been covering Costa Rica for a very long time. What has been the most dramatic change since you started writing about the country?

Yes, in fact, I’ve been authoring the Moon Costa Rica guide since 1989. A full two decades. The most remarkable thing has been how Costa Rica’s tourism product has kept evolving as a trend-setter for the rest of the world. First, with generic ecotourism promoting the wilderness and wildlife as a core reason to visit. This sponsored conservation, fueled by the arrival of savvy expatriate entrepreneurs with a conscience and vision. The number of superb wilderness lodges now astounds, many of them doubling as hip boutique hotels with a healthy eco-conscious component. As Costa Rica’s become an ecotourism juggernaut, it has also evolved as a Nirvana for adrenalin seekers. Surfing has boomed. So, too, dozens of components on the adventure theme: from exploring by ATV to ziplining, a forte invented in Costa Rica, and the most prominent of “canopy tour” options that now include dozens of outlets with aerial trams, boardwalks or zipline cables through and between rainforest treetops.

As a result, visitor arrivals have continued to surge. Two decades ago, Costa Rica was receiving well below one million visitors a year. It passed that threshold a decade now. Now visitor arrivals exceed two million annually.

Costa Rica slipped a bit in this year’s National Geographic sustainability survey, while other destinations it competes with improved. Is this a case of heightened expectations or is overdevelopment in some areas soiling the country’s eco-friendly travel reputation?

First let me say that it remains a top destination for eco-conscious travelers, and is ranked as such in the National Geographic survey. Moreover, Costa Rica was recently ranked the number one destination in Latin America by the World Economic Forum’s annual travel competitiveness report, which indexes 133 countries according to their business environment and infrastructure; cultural, human, and natural resources; and their regulatory framework.

That said, there are definite reasons for concern with Costa Rica. That has always been the case in the two decades I’ve come to know it in depth. My main concerns are overdevelopment along the Nicoya coast, where an almost obscene amount of condo development (now stalled) has taken place within the past few years. This is Costa Rica’s dry zone, and limited water supply is an ongoing concern. Money talks in Costa Rica, as do family connections. So for many years various administrations basically turned a blind eye to violations of the maritime laws restricting coastal construction.

I take heart that the current Oscar Arias administration seems to have taken a much firmer line in this regard. Many projects have been halted. Many existing buildings that were too close to the high-tide mark have been turned down. On another note, Costa Rica is also dealing more firmly with logging companies (a powerful political lobby), while the huge number of private reforestation projects has resulted in the nation actually reversing the trend of deforestation, and the amount of forested land in Costa Rica is increasing.

3) What are some interesting projects you’ve seen since the last edition in terms of green building, sustainable tourism, or good environmental practices?

Some clear trends stand out. The first is the success of the government’s Certificate of Sustainable Tourism program. The program categorizes and certifies hotels and tour companies according to the degree to which each comply to a model of sustainability. Each entity is graded according to environmental, socio-economic, and other attributes, with 150 variables judged by independent investigators on a level of one to five. They are then awarded one to five “leafs” according to the total score, in much the same way that hotels worldwide are categorized by the well-known “stars” system. CST certification is now so widely recognized and coveted that hoteliers have been provided a real incentive to improve their practices, with an eye to earning the maximum leafs and therefore a competitive advantage. See this blog post of mine for more details. To date, only four hotels in the country have received five leafs. Foreign hoteliers are at the forefront, setting a model for savvy Costa Rican entrepreneurs to follow. More and more hotels are adopting projects that filter and recycle gray water, etc.

For example, Jim Damalas, owner of Hotel Si Como No and Villablanca Cloud Forest Resort & Spa (both are five-leaf winners) has ensured that virtually every aspect of his hotel operations is ecologically sound. Most recently, Jim has integrated an isolated mountain community into an ecological project. The “Santa Juana Mountain Tour” brings tourists to experience rural living first hand, generating income for the community, which now follows ecologically sound farming practices, including reforestation. It’s a win-win all round.

Continued – full interview with Christopher Baker

I’m a little late to the party with this New York Times article that came out October 25, but it’s a really good one that hasn’t lost any relevancy: Bargains in Latin America, Where Luxury Costs Less.

I feel like I wrote half of it myself over the past year, as I’ve been talking to anyone who would listen about the great deals on travel to Latin America. The dollar is still in great shape in a lot of places, the best luxury hotels are going for the price of crappy ones in New York or Paris, and you don’t get socked with those ridiculous fuel surcharges the airlines are profiting from for routes to Europe and Asia.

“In Mexico, some of the best deals are at ultra-luxurious megaresorts along the Riviera Maya, just south of Cancún, like Grand Velas, an all-suites resort and spa, which was just opening as the travel downturn hit. The Banyan Tree Mayakoba, where villas have their own plunge pools, is offering 50 percent off two-night packages with daily breakfast, a massage and dinner for two. Nearby, the Mandarin Oriental has a seven-night Holiday in Mexico deal that includes breakfast, airport transfers, dinner for two and a private yoga class from $354 a night until Dec. 18.

Not interested in the beach? Starting rates at the Four Seasons in Mexico City are $225 a night on weekends, not bad considering that it’s $70 cheaper than the Four Seasons in Austin ($295).”

The article highlights tour and spa deals throughout the Americas, including in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina. This won’t last forever, but you’ve probably got a good 8-9 months left to take advantage of the slump before the stock market rebound and improving company profits start getting people out of their houses and onto a plane again.