A recurring theme in my life, and in this blog, has been that the greatest value of travel is gaining new perspectives.

It happened again this September 11, when Ed Defrietas of the Five Borough Bike Club took Yolanda and me along with 7 other bicylers on a ride to Bayonne, New Jersey to see  the monument pictured below.

As soon as I saw it, the single tear drop between the two broken towers moved me more than any other September 11 remembrance   I have seen to date.

Then I noticed this plaque.

Then I walked up and read it.

And not a day has gone by since that I have not thought about it at least once.

We’re still in New York. Life has been even more hectic than usual, and I have not had a chance organize my thoughts about this.  But I did want to share the experience, and would love to read how it strikes you.

I almost never use this blog to pitch Costa Rica Expeditions’ Programs.

Max Waugh’s and William Granados’ photo tour to Costa Rica from March 2-11 is so special that I have made it one of two exceptions. (Our program in which guests help local kids learn English is the other.)

Habitual readers of this blog have already met Max and William in Patty Chang’s account of the trip of a lifetime.  If you missed them you should read about them here and in many more of Patty’s posts.

The dynamic between these two passionate photographers and nature lovers will make the experience infinitely better than merely honing your photographic skills and observing wildlife.

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In November Yolanda and I spent two weeks traveling throughout Costa Rica with my old friend Richard Bangs; fellow board member, Steve Aronson, and Rocio Echeverri, from Amigos de Los Parques; and the folks from Adventures with Purpose/Small World Productions helping  shoot an hour long PBS special.

The show is the ninth. episode of the Emmy Award winning series, Adventures with Purpose.

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In last weeks post I promised to tell you how an ex downhill racer from Canada ended up marrying an ex international road bike racer from Cuba and how I got from talking to Mirley Macqueen and her mother in the Bike Shop parking lot in PEI to lying in a barber chair with a straight razor on my Adam’s apple in Santiago, Cuba.

To do so I have to introduce another character, Danny’s father, Gordon Macqueen. And I use the word character, advisedly. Gordon is an intrepid entrepreneur.  I have been accused of the same disease, but compared to Gordon I’m timid.

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The Hotel Casa Granda is located on the main square in Santiago de Cuba.

Photo:  cubareserva.com

As we approached the hotel after a day of biking, Danny explained that the street is so narrow our bus would be blocking traffic while the luggage was unloaded.  He asked us all to help unloading the luggage so we would be blocking traffic for the least time possible.

I try to not be judgmental when we are on vacation, but I could not help thinking (judgmentally) that in the same situation in Costa Rica I’d of had 10 people lined up on the street handing out welcome cocktails and whisking the luggage into the hotel.  Once again how different Cuba is from Costa Rica—or from anywhere else I have ever been—was about to become very clear to me.

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Now that barbershops in Cuba with 3 or fewer seats have been privatized, I am anxious to see what if anything has changed,. So on our first full day in Cuba (Saturday, March 19, 2011) we headed for the Plaza de Armas to find the two-chair barbershop where I had gotten a shave two years.

In a way it was like a typical small town U.S. barbershop—bunch of retired oldsters gossiping with the barber who would have also been retired if he had not been a barber.

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A slightly different version of this post was published in the April 20 Huffington Post.

When Yolanda and I decided to return to Cuba we had no idea at the time that Cuba would be in the news much more than usual lately.

Especially in the Spanish speaking media Jimmy Carter’s peacemaking visit, the first party congress in 14 years and the 50^th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, with thousands of goose stepping troops marching through Havana, has dominated the news.
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Wow!!!  What a lot of really thoughtful and helpful comments.  I am really touched that so many of you took the time to write them.

There was no way that I could decide on only three winners for the bags of coffee.

Below are excerpts from the comments of the 14 (!) “winners” along with  my responses and questions.  My assistant Judith will be contacting you all to get your physical addresses.

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In late March Wendy Perrin, Conde Nast Traveler’s Director of Consumer News and Digital Community, published her A-to-Z Guide to Traveling with Kids, and asked her readers to do the same, offering a prize for the best one.

Since then she has been published her favorites. Now Wendy has announced the winner along with a compendium of her favorites.  Especially if you are traveling with children, you should be sure to read them.

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In last week’s post I published part of an email from a past guest who felt that the practice in Costa Rica charging visitors higher entrance fees than locals is unfair and bad for the tourism business.  I asked for your thoughts and offered to send a bag of coffee to the person who in my view sent the best response.

Nine of you responded. With one exception all the responses were very well thought out and insightful.

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Tommy suggested that we “give the Costa Rica Expedition guest an opportunity to make the recommendation in the moment, while still entranced by the magic of Costa Rica, and the quality of Costa Rica Expeditions.”  Great idea.  Since it will take a little time to implement, and I was going to Tortuguero anyway this weekend to get Video for a first anniversary update of the Words Adventure, I asked some of the guests at the lodge to allow us to record their impressions of the experience.  At some point we’ll be loading the videos on You Tube and asking for your comment

For now, please help me think through a question that Max posed.  “Would you go so far as to offer greater incentives to your past guests for referrals?” I’ve dealt with other tour operators that will offer ‘5% off your next tour for every successful referral…’ Given the sheer volume of referrals you’re already getting perhaps this is too drastic a step, but a more substantial incentive could prompt your customers to be more active in marketing on your behalf.”

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They are both worthwhile, they are both difficult, and they are both routinely lied about.

This post is about sustainability and lies.

I got inspired to write about this topic by the sign below that I saw in a hotel bathroom the weekend before last.

Next to the toilet there was one of those pretty little covered metal garbage cans that I always knock over when I try to use the foot pedal that opens the cover.  Presumably the feminine hygiene products, etc.  were to be deposited in it.

After reading the sign I got to wondering whether the way the feminine hygiene products, etc.  were disposed of after they were deposited in the garbage can was any kinder to the environment than flushing them down the toilet.  No one at the hotel knew.

It turns out that the real reason the hotel did not want feminine hygiene products  etc. put in the toilet is that they blocked the septic system and caused flooding.  That seemed to me to be necessary and sufficient reason to not put feminine hygiene products, etc.  in the toilets without having to mention the much-invoked environment.

This kind of increasingly ubiquitous lie about sustainability is usually more thoughtless than intentional.  Since everybody else does it, we reflexively cite the environment as a reason to do things.  In many cases our purpose is much more to show the world that we are environmental good guys than to actually influence behavior.

Take, “Please consider the environment before printing this email.”  Has anyone ever forgone a hard copy that they really needed for environmental considerations?  If you don’t really need a hard copy aren’t there more compelling reasons for not bothering to print it than the environment.

There is another kind of being sustainable lie that is much more damaging—the lie that being sustainable is good marketing.  I am most familiar with this lie in travel, but I have seen it crop up in many other fields as well.

This second type of sustainability lie is particularly insidious because initially being sustainable can be good marketing, but (read this slowly) marketing through sustainability is not sustainable.

It‘s not as complicated as it sounds.  Here’s how it works:

• The real market for sustainability is the media, not the ultimate consumer.
• The media loves interesting stories about sustainability.
• Businesses that are able to create these types of stories get in the media.
• Businesses that get positive stories in the media get customers.
• The fact that some sustainable businesses have lots of customers creates the illusion that the customers are choosing theses business because they are sustainable, when they are actually choosing them because they are in the media.
• These businesses are held up as poster children for sustainability is good marketing.
• This induces other businesses to adopt sustainable practices to get more customers only to find that the media has no interest in the second businesses who are doing the same things that they (the media) already featured.
• To get ink you have to come up with a new sexy way to be sustainable.
• Before long new sexy ways to be sustainable are more expensive to implement than the benefits from the media exposure.
• This inflationary sustainability spiral leads to lying about sustainable practice, AKA green washing.
• At least for a while the media, hungry for feel good sustainability stories is not inclined to delve too deeply.
• Then, when the media loses interest in feel good sustainability stories, because they’ve, “been done,” they turn to green-washing exposés, which give sustainability a bad name.

And that’s why marketing sustainability is not sustainable.

This brings me to the other thing that being faithful to your spouse and being sustainable have in common:  The more you do them and the less you talk about them the better.

If you talk about being faithful to your spouse people will think of John Edwards and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

If you talk about being sustainable people will wonder what kind of car you drive.

When you read or hear testimonials from a business that are all raves, do you believe that you are getting the whole picture?

I know I don’t.

Therefore, for the past few months Ramy Deeb and our team of developers have been working on a Website designed to receive and publish ALL the feedback we get from guests.  It’s in a unique form that lets you select only the feedback – raves or complaints — that YOU want to look at.

We believe that will be most useful to prospective guests and past guests — and will facilitate our learning from the feedback.  Indeed, it strikes us as something new in how testimonials are reported in the world – but let’s see what you think.

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