LAS CUEVAS.- “Vamos a Puerto Rico!”

Pulling into the fishing village of Las Cuevas, the last outpost in Jaragua National Park before the Bahia de Las Aguilas, the youth have noticed the motorized lanchas tied offshore in the crystalline water and their excitement is suddenly palpable. We’ve all been up since before dawn, and on the rough red road to Las Cuevas, crouched in the beds of two pickup trucks under the oppressive noonday sun, energy levels had begun to plummet.

Now the mixed group of high school and junior high students, organizers and community volunteers from nearby Pedernales is jumping out of the trucks, gravitating immediately to the shade of the trees along the shore and eyeing the lanchas with a mixture of anticipation and fear. The only way to get to the Bahia is by motorboat, and these are small, battered, rustic. The Puerto Rico joke, an allusion to the risks some islanders are willing to take for the prospect of a better life, draws some nervous giggles.

It soon becomes clear that there’s a hitch in the plan – there are lanchas, but the local fishermen who for years have supplemented their incomes by charging visitors a thousand pesos to take them to the Bahia are upset. Recently, a private business has come in and begun offering “Bahia tours” at competitive rates, crowding the locals out of the market. The question is now who will take us to the Bahia – and how much we will pay.

We have a long wait ahead of us while the trip’s organizers negotiate with the fishermen, so I climb onto a low tree branch overhanging the rocky shore next to environmentalist and bird-watching enthusiast Kate Wallace, and ask her about the idea of eco-tourism as an alternative to traditional tourism development.

She says situations like this highlight the major barrier to developing an effective eco-tourism industry in the southwest region of the Dominican Republic. For years, the parks and towns have operated on the assumption that no one but the most adventuresome explorers would visit their secluded beaches and hidden valleys, so there was no need for any kind of infrastructure – for example a reliable lancha service to the Bahia with established rates posted in plain view for visitors who lack the language skills to haggle with the drivers.

“It’s a vicious circle,” Wallace says. “If you don’t have the infrastructure you can’t invite people, and if people don’t come, then you don’t need the infrastructure.”

But, she adds, “I’m operating on the ‘Field of Dreams’ mentality: if you build it, they will come.”

Wallace has lived in the Dominican Republic for 14 years and has spent that time working on various environmental education projects. She originally came to the island as a Peace Corps volunteer and worked in a preschool at her posting site. When her service term was up in 1997, she became involved with a group that was trying to start a birding organization. Someone recommended her to be an assistant guide, and she saw a need for that kind of service, so she moved to Pedernales and decided to stay in the country. The last ten years, she says, have been spent “trying to work with people to have some understanding of the importance of the environment.”

Wallace hopes to build a guest lodge in Puerto Escondido in Sierra de Bahoruco National Park to make it easier for her to facilitate the bird-watching trips she conducts through her touring outfit, Tody Tours. Ideally, she says, the project would be community-run, because it’s benefiting the community. In order for eco-tourism to work, there first needs to be a broad sense of pride in and ownership of the “product,” and a concerted effort to sell it to the right kind of tourist – someone who won’t mind the absence of golf courses, tennis courts and discotheques. Once you’ve convinced the tourists to come, though, Wallace says, it’s up to the community members to help them see everything there is to see, and that will require organization and cooperation.

We’re interrupted by the arrival of several Jaragua National Park guides, who have come to go over the rules of the Bahia with the students. Keeping it clean and free of litter is understandably high on the list – ironic given that their reason for going is to clean up the garbage left there by previous visitors. The contrast highlights another problem with eco-tourism: you can invite people to enjoy the unspoiled beauty of the place, but you can’t always count on them to respect it.

After a brief discussion of the rules, it’s finally time to go. Men are wading in the shallows now, guiding the lanchas to shore so we can load the gear. Fear temporarily grips some of the students, and the organizers have trouble filling the first boat. There is frantic waving and calling out to friends as it pulls away and disappears around the curve of the rocky coast.

The second and third boats are loaded simultaneously; water bottles and sleeping bags and tents and backpacks come aboard until it really does seem as though we’re bound for a long stay in a foreign land. Two village boys have come to see us off; they leap into the water from the sides of the lanchas and swim between them like lean little fish.

The water darkens from pale blue to turquoise as we pull away from land and head east, skimming the coast. At first we pass tall coral cliffs, overhung with vines, crowned with cacti and dotted with tiny caves, now home to seabirds like the pelicans. But soon the land begins to flatten, and a long stretch of white sand is visible ahead: the Bahia de Las Aguilas.

Tiny, brightly-coloured moving dots on the beach materialize into students setting up a temporary eating area in the sparse shade afforded by beach grape trees and cat’s claw bushes. The sand is blinding white, pillowy and soft underfoot, swallowing us up to our ankles as we haul the gear up the beach. The sun is at its peak now and after just ten minutes under its relentless heat, the still, clear water is looking increasingly inviting. As soon as the tents are set up, bathing suits and towels materialize, and everyone heads to the beach, forgetting age and propriety as we plunge gleefully down the sandy slope into the cool water.

Someone has had the foresight to bring snorkeling masks, and twenty feet from shore I spot a stingray gliding along the sand between tufts of weed, a small brown fish resting on its back. An eel rests in the weeds, and schools of large silver fish dart by, avoiding my treading legs. I run out of air long before I run out of amazing things to witness in these secret depths.

As I watch the students splashing in the shallows, the boys building human pyramids and tossing the shrieking girls from their shoulders into the water, I remember something else Kate Wallace told me as we relaxed in the shade in Las Cuevas. “They have to protect this island. The government isn’t going to protect it for them. The developers aren’t going to protect it for them. We’re not going to survive in the world if people don’t become aware of the importance of all the different ecosystems.”

How effective this experience will prove to be in giving the youth a sense of the importance of their surroundings and a desire to protect them remains to be seen. But Wallace is right; they will have to be the stewards of this fragile paradise before it becomes just another sandy beach.

RELATED RESOURCES:

Society for the Conservation and Study of Caribbean Birds

Pedernales Tourism: PedernalesRD