Green Dreams: Travels in Central America

Rating:
Summary: Candid portrait of eco travel in Latin America
Review: Mainstream media usually gives Latin America a raw deal. News articles zero in on violent crime, political uprisings and natural disasters, while tourism features tout escapism from cruise ship extravaganza to Fantasy Island-wannabes.

Rarely are environmental issues discussed, let alone ecotourism initiatives. However, this situation is improving. Case in point is the publication of Green Dreams, (Oakland: Lonely Planet, 1998, 278 pages, $13) by Stephen Benz.

This new volume in Lonely Planet's Journeys series provides narratives from the authors travels in the Amazon, Chiapas, Honduras' Mosquitia, Guatemala and Honduras. Despite the chapters about his adventures in South America and Mexico, the book is unwittingly subtitled, "Travels in Central America."

The chapters are arranged chronologically, detailing the authors first forays into "ecotourism" by traveling to Iquitos, Peru's port on the great Amazon River. He has been told he can survive as a stringer if he writes unusual travel pieces.

"Not much money, but a quick and easy by-line, and it paid enough cash to keep you going for a spell without having to resort to the even older stand-by of giving English lessons," he explains in the opening chapter.

A year later he headed to Honduras, another political hot spot, in search of journalistic opportunities. But instead of covering the war, he finds himself wanting to explore the country's wilderness.

"Here it was, the object of my quest, the Rio Platano. I should have felt exhilarated, but in fact, I felt vaguely disappointed; I had no idea why, exhaustion perhaps," he writes, adding, "Or perhaps the biosphere had become in my mind something so fantastic, a place so sublime that reality was bound to seem anticlimactic."

Benz's observations are candid and thoughtful. He recounts other adventures in Costa Rica, and a trilogy of chapters about the "Mundo Maya" - a megaproject tourism scam that exploits the indigenous peoples.

On his journeys - seemingly random in choice - he meets up with an incredible cast of characters perfectly detailed and familiar to anyone who has spent time traveling in Latin America. Here are his meetings with journalists with fat travel expenses, government lackeys, ugly tourists, and dare devil bus drivers.

His epilogue recounts some of his adventures on the internet, trying to touch base and keep track of places he grew to love, if not on his first journey, then in memory.

Thanks to the author's candor, Green Dreams redefines the travel narrative and paints a realistic picture of what green travelers can expect south of the U.S. border.

Ron Mader is the host of the Eco Travels in Latin America website. He travels extensively in the U.S. Mexico borderlands and is the author of the new guidebook, Mexico: Adventures in Nature (John Muir Publications, 1998).

Rating:
Summary: Starts promising, lacks focus
Review: The book starts developing a very attractive argument about ecotourism, but fails to get the point across. The author has very interesting experiences, tells them, and then fails to connect the dots to a good conclusion.