We recently posted a new feature story on touring the Amazon Rainforest region of Ecuador. You read a lot more about jungle tours in Peru and Brazil—partly because they are marketed more heavily—but there is more to Ecuador than the high Andes and the Galapagos.

Our writer explored the area through the unique Sacha Lodge. Read the feature to get the full story, but this is one of those examples of someone with money buying up land to keep it pristine rather than using it for raw materials or farming. Like Pumalin Park in Chile, the 5,000 acres that make up the lodge’s playground are an investment in nature and preservation.

We’ll also have a full review of the lodge itself posted in a couple weeks, along with other additions to our reviews of luxury hotels in Ecuador.

I haven’t yet had the pleasure of flying on NatureAir, but after bumping over one too many lousy roads in Costa Rica, I believe I’ll be making use of their services quite a bit next time I visit.

NatureAir launched in 2000 and has grown to the point of flying 150,000 passengers annually. It has gone from one plane and 17 employees to eight planes and more than 150 employees. In essence, it’s a short-hop airline with 74 daily flights that will get you around Costa Rica or over the border to Panama. Planes can also be chartered for small groups or families. Fares are reasonable, they have a good reputation for avoiding delays (not easy during rainy season), and their safety record is excellent.

What really makes them unique though is the stance of being the world’s first carbon neutral airline. The company says, “NatureAir offsets more than 6,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually and uses carbon credits to help conserve Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, one of the region’s most biologically diverse rainforests.” I’ve said before that Costa Rica’s government and businesses do a better job than anyone in this hemisphere of doing and not just talking when it comes to preserving the environment. It’s nice to see the main domestic airline sticking to that commitment.

For more info see www.natureair.com or call 800-235-9272.

I’ve been catching up on getting through my stacks of magazines this week and found a great article in National Geographic Adventure on the aftermath of the volcano in Chile that erupted in early May of this year. In Fallout on the Fu, the article looks at what the impact could be in a region that depends on tourism to keep the development wolves at bay.

The Palena region of Patagonian Chile has long been a battleground between those who want to keep it in good shape and those who want to rape the land for industry and power generation. As Jimmy Langman discussed in our Pumalin Park feature story, much of the preservation was done by North Face founder Douglas Tompkins buying up lots of land and leaving it intact. (Much as Ted Turner has done in the western U.S.)

Many worry what the future holds if upscale tourists stay away, worried about a land covered by ash, with the wildlife reduced.

Fortunately, it’s not all gloom and doom. Some areas received a few inches of ash, but others barely got dusted. The Fu River, a favorite for rafters and kayakers, is still flowing fine. So if you had plans to head that way, by all means check out the situation with local operators, but don’t cancel based on tales of gloom and doom. The residents and the land could both use your support.

In the process of cleaning off my desk I came upon this article I had ripped out of Conde Nast Traveler on “green hotels,” appropriately called False Advertising. Just as half the products and herbal concoctions in Korea claimed to be “good for health” when I was there, every hotel with an ample PR budget seems to be falling all over itself to say, “We’re green!” Witness the writer’s experience in Costa Rica:

When I asked the manager of one so-called eco-hotel what makes his property green, he responded, “Well, for one thing, all of our rooms have air-conditioning, but mostly I think it’s the ocean view.” The proprietor of a similar establishment, when asked the same question, told me that her assistant manager was a volunteer firefighter in his spare time. Among the massive all-inclusive resorts and water-guzzling golf courses of the gated “Papagayo Eco-Development,” I spoke to reservationists who assured me of strong commitments to the environment on the part of their employers, but when pressed could point to nothing specific.

Unfortunately, it’s only fair for me to admit that the more luxurious a hotel is, the more wasteful it is usually going to be. A budget guesthouse isn’t going to have its own huge generators and the guests are probably not drinking eight plastic bottles of water a day from their always-on minibar. The guests there are going to use their sheets and towels more than one night—often they don’t have a choice! But a big hotel can do other things right when they’re getting $500 a night.

The article notes that Lapa Rios Ecolodge can afford to transport items 230 miles to a recycling center. Orient-Express carted decades worth of trash away from Machu Picchu when it set up operations in Peru and is at the forefront of keeping the area clean because of its Hiram Bingham train and the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge. A big new development I just visited in Honduras is the first one on its bay to recycle all waste water on site and use solar power to heat its hot water. These things cost money.

Some efforts don’t cost money though and are more a matter of attitude, of really caring what happens to the land and the people surrounding the place where tourists are sequestered.

I’ll leave it with this quote from the False Advertising article:

“I think it really boils down to one question: How does a business contribute to the conservation of the local community?” says Ronald Sanabria, of the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance. “If a business—even one in a city—can’t provide you with a concrete response, it’s not practicing ecotourism and there is no substance to any claim that it is. It’s up to the consumer to decide if that’s acceptable.”

We’ve been posting a lot of new hotel reviews lately so I’ve been highlighting those, but time to catch up on some notable travel-related news from Latin America.

It looks like the Yellowstone Club World ownership club is crashing down and splitting up. We’re not sure yet what’s happening to the Tamarindo resort we’ve reviewed on the west coast of Mexico, but if anything it will be more open to outsiders and not less. Personally, it seems safer to own a smaller house outright than own a share in a vacation club with palatial resorts, but it doesn’t seem like the buyers are down to their last dollar anyway…

Are we ready for an environmentally conscious wine? Are we ready to give up the traditional bottle? The company putting out this green Malbec from Argentina hopes so. (Green as in eco-friendly, not Vinho Verde!) I’m skeptical that people will drink wine from a glorified milk carton, but you do have to admit it cuts down a lot of wasteful shipping weight.

When Super Bowl winning quarterback Eli Manning was ready for a wedding and honeymoon, he didn’t go to Disneyland. He got married at One & Only Palmilla in Los Cabos.

Speaking of celebrities and green travel, Leonardo DiCaprio looks to be moving forward with development of the private island he bought in Belize.

International Living reports that 16 new marinas are in the works for Costa Rica. The skeptic in us says half will never get built, but three are already slated to open in 2009. Some will not open without a fight, however, as not everyone is thrilled about the pace of new development, especially for Puerto Viejo in the Limón province of the Caribbean. Plus it’ll be interesting to see what happens to the yacht business if the recession and fuel cost rises continue…