Eco- Tourism Blog #1

In this first blog about eco-tourism in Costa Rica, I am going to focus just general facts and information about the subject. In the future blogs i will go more indepth as to both the positive and negitive side that tourism is having on Costa Rica. So far in the few days i have been here i have noticed that tourism is a huge industry for the country and i am right in the middle of it. On the first day we took a tour in a bus around San Jose, with a paid tourguide. We got to see many diffrent parts of the city including everything from soccer/football fields, the opra theatre, down town, to the red light district. We experienced everything from neighborhoods with houses that cost in the millions, to areas that we should not end up in unless we are in a "big group". I took it as just dont go. While on this tour i realized that I am a part of this industry. Our tour guide makes a living off of our visites and the bus driver makes a living on driving us around. Tourism support a large portion of population in various diffrent ways.

Ecotourism is the fastest growing sector of the tourism industry the world's largest service industry. I think the reason for this is that people are finally waking up to the fact that things such as deforestation and global warming are happening and are trying to soak up as much of these exotic sights as possible while they are here. To me this is both good and bad. Its in a way sad that people are paying to travel to get a glimpse of these ecosystems before they disapear apposed to helping to stop the deforestation and pollution first hand. On the otherhand some of the money spent on these trips go to preserving the forsets and regions and are also a reason for the country to keep them around for as long as possible.

The tourism industry of Costa Rica Brings in about 1 million tourists per year, which in turn gererates approximately 1 billion dollars a year. Of these million tourists a year, 48.7% are from the United States. People travel from all parts of the world to this little country, but why? Well one of the strongest reasons is the country's amazing biodiversity. Costa Rica offers everything from lush rainforest, to erupting volcanos, to beautiful white sand beaches. All of which i will be visiting and disgussing more in later blogs!!!! As i travel to each of these regions i will be writing about my personal experiences and the impact i feel tourism is having on the country of Costa Rica.