Entertainment - Entertainment News

POSTED: Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008

Students learn tourism done right

Behind the glittering veil of tourism, there's a sometimes ugly reality.

Some tourists pollute the environment they visit, and they often dilute the very culture they come to experience. This summer Western Washington University students Tony Carrigan and Nicole Schierberl went down to Peru to understand what happens when tourism goes wrong and study how to get tourism right.

"I had a pretty bleak outlook on tourism to begin with," says Carrigan, a Western junior. "If it's done wrong it can lead to a lot of problems down the line. It was neat to see it done in good ways."

The students took their cues on good tourism from a Seattle group called Crooked Trails, which paired with Western's recreation department to offer the travel class to the students. The group, started by Western graduates, focuses on the importance of responsible travel and community-based tourism.

The best example of this more authentic style of tourism was when they stayed with a family in a village in the Andes.

"It's a whole different scale than you think a trip would be," Schierberl, a Western senior, says of the stay.

This style of travel provided the students a more intimate and authentic look at Peruvian life than the average stay in a hotel.

"Being community based...it's not about pleasing a tourist," Carrigan says. "It's more like having a guest."

It also helps communities maintain their integrity. People live their lives as normal, rather than doing what they think tourists want to see. And they maintain their jobs for the most part, rather than having everyone switch into tourism positions to the detriment of local industry.

"Having been on this, it's kind of sad in some ways," Schierberl says. "I won't be able to go on (trips without) feeling more responsible for travel in the future because I can see the impact and what's wrong."

During their month-long trip, the students got to see the wild diversity of the Peruvian landscape, from coast to desert to mountains to jungle.

"It was amazing," Schierberl says. "It's hard to explain in words what the experience was like. It was a month packed full of everything you can imagine."

Though the big draw for people heading to Peru is often the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, Carrigan and Schierberl say their best memories are the times they spent with people.

"You go to Peru and everyone is like, 'Go to Machu Picchu.' It was amazing, but it wasn't the highlight," Schierberl says. "I don't think of a specific spot. I think of specific people, which in the end is more important than saying I hiked Machu Picchu."