Central America has long been in the forefront of eco-tourism, but much of the focus has not been on Guatemala, but some of its neighbors to the south.

Our man on the scene, Al Argueta, says it’s time to add Laguna Lodge on Lake Atitlan to the list of eco-friendly resorts that are also pampering enough to be considered luxe.

“The rooms themselves are made from materials that include volcanic stone, palm wood and adobe bricks made on site. Like the restaurant, they open up completely to the lake and enjoy wonderful views.”

The restaurant is vegetarian, but so good that you won’t care if you’re a carnivore. The bulbs may be a little dim and you may may a few small sacrifices, but the lake will thank you.

“The need for environmentally sustainable accommodations has been made abundantly clear with the recent proliferation of algal blooms on Guatemala’s most beautiful lake. Caused by phosphates from untreated waste water and agricultural fertilizer running into the lake, the first appearance of Lake Atitlan’s cyanobacteria dates to the 1970s but is only now getting the attention it deserves.”

See our full review of Laguna Lodge.

When I was at the Luxury Travel Expo last month I had the pleasure of hearing a short presentation from Kim MacQuarrie, a Peru travel expert and author of the book Last Days of the Incas. A few lucky souls will get to spend far more time with him this year actually traveling through Peru: he is leading a tour with Geographic Expeditions that is centered on this history of the Incas.

We now have a lively and informative interview with Kim MacQuarrie posted in our interviews section. He talks about the research that went into his book, the upcoming tours, Incan architecture, and his favorite hotel in the country. As someone who lived with a recently-contacted tribe of indigenous Amazonians and has since covered many parts of Peru that few people ever visit, he knows this fascinating country inside-out.

“One tends to think of Peru in terms of Cuzco, the Incas, and Machu Picchu. But of course, there is much, much more. Around 60% of Peru is tropical rainforest, and large portions of that are virtually unexplored regions. In fact, there are still a handful of uncontacted tribes that roam there.

The long strip of desert on the coast is as dry as the surface of the Moon, with virtually no rainfall whatsoever. The ruins of thousands of years of ancient civilizations are buried there—pyramids, monuments, fortresses, tombs. Pretty incredible, really. In fact, so many pyramids and tombs have been discovered in Peru in the last 20-30 years that people more and more are referring to Peru as the “Egypt of the Americas.” One ancient city that was discovered as recently as 2001 is nearly five thousand years old—the oldest city in the Americas. As old as the Step Pyramids in Egypt.”

See our full Last Days of the Incas interview here.

When we can, we try to tap into travel writers who are living abroad and can give us the inside scoop. Often these writers, such as guidebook author and Buenos Aires resident Bridget Gleeson, have the connections and the eavesdropping ability to figure out which hotels aren’t on the international radar—but should be.

Take the Tigre Delta weekend escape La Becasina. You probably won’t read about this in any “hot list” or “top 10 hotels in…” article in a magazine for another year or two, but our eyes on the ground tell us this is a place worth checking into when you want to get out of Buenos Aires, but not too far out.

“La Becasina is the very picture of sophistication—attracting mostly couples to its 15 private cabins—with an expert barman and waitstaff that serve multiple courses to guests seated at intimate tables for two. It’s all about leisure and luxury here, so you don’t have to worry about checking out of your room after breakfast: most guests spend the whole weekend at the lodge, checking in on Saturday morning and staying through early evening on Sunday.”

This is a place where you check your worries at the door, a nature escape not far from the big city. See our full review of Becasina Delta Lodge.

Other top hotels in Argentina

As I mentioned in an earlier post specific to Latin America, I attended the Luxury Travel Expo last week and got to hear what people in the industry had to say about the state of upscale travel in late 2009.

They were more upbeat than I expected, especially since travel to Europe has fallen off a cliff and the convention/incentive market is having a terrible year. And of course there are too many new hotels and too many new cruise ships for any of them to be much more than half full without major discounting. (Tough for them, good for you. There are some amazing deals on sites like LuxuryLink.com.)

Besides the obvious search for value though, lots of other interesting luxury travel trends came out that I thought were newsworthy.

1) More family travel
It used to be that “luxury” and “family travel” didn’t mix much, but that has changed in a big way. People are having kids later, they’re having fewer of them, and the grandparents often have more money than the parents do. I started noticing this shift a couple years ago when I’d go to a Four Seasons and find the pool packed with kids, but this has extended to safaris, soft adventure trips, and nature excursions. African safari operator Micato said in a panel discussion that their family travel bookings had gone from 10% to 35% in eight years. This bodes well for villa rental places and small-ship cruises, but not so well for cookie-cutter hotels that think connecting rooms are going to be enough to serve this demand.

2) Deeper travel experiences
It used to be that bragging about shopping in Paris or Milan was what you did to impress the neighbors. Now it’s more likely to be that you visited some place they’ve never even heard of or you did something worth talking about on your vacation. Adventure travel is way up, volunteer travel is way up, and travel to former pariah destinations is way up—to places like Colombia, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Luxury travelers are becoming more like backpackers—wanting to mingle with real people and get authentic experiences instead of just being sheltered away in an artificial world.

3) Rising influence of green hotels and travel
Have you been paying more attention to the environmental practices of the hotels where you stay? If so you’re not alone. Tour operators are finding that guests are becoming steadily more demanding about how “green” the hotels are where they stay and are no longer looking at “luxury” and “eco-friendly” as being different things. Since Costa Rica is considered the birthplace of eco-tourism and a large portion of trips to Latin America are by nature lovers, parts of the Americas are perceived as being in better shape than many other parts of the world in this regard.

What has changed in what you are looking for when you travel now? What are you willing to pay more for…and not?

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