Back in Bellevue

I have to say it was quite refreshing to return to cool and rainy Seattle after spending two weeks in warm and sunny Mexico!

Looking back, the trip was an amazing experience. By far the highlight was the people- every one of the locals that I met was very warm and friendly. Marcos and Santos from Xyaat were so passionate about making ecotourism work in their community that it was impossible to not want to do everything you could to help them.

Our group was great- everyone seemed perfect for their roles. Heber laid down all the ground work for us, learning as much as possible about Xyaat and their tours and giving us a great framework to start with. Dan did a great job with the marketing, coming up with some wondeful ideas for Xyaat to implement. Beth had one of the harder roles, making sense of Xyaat’s financial situation and coming up with a business plan that they could implement. And Magdalena brought lots of people together (Xyaat, CTSK, and others) to discuss ways to coordinate their efforts- not an easy task, but it turned out to be very successful.

We presented our final results on Friday to Xyaat, and I think it went really well. There was a lot of information to hand off to Marcos and Santos, but they seemed to really understand what we were telling them, asking lots of good questions. I designed a brochure and a matching simple web page (you can see a draft here), and they seemed very excited about that. We’ll have to help them further so they can get brochures printed and get the web site hosted, but that’s part of the program- we weren’t done when we left Mexico!

It was difficult saying goodbye- our group had worked so hard over three weeks and had really gotten to know each other and the great people here- including Marcos, Santos, and Julia from Xyaat, Manuel, Antonio, Emilio and others from CTSK, and Julio from the UNDP. It felt like a sudden end for all that work, but in fact it’s not over. We will stay in touch with each other and Xyaat going forward, and help them if they have any questions about what we’ve done.

Mexico was beautiful and the people were amazing- I am so glad I was able to participate in the program, and I can’t wait for an excuse to go back!

David

PS- If you’re interested, you can see all of my photos from the trip here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/71357528@N00/collections/72157594588522351/.

Heading back home

It is my last hour in Tulum, and I want to use it to give you a review on our last days of work here. 

We had shifted our final meeting and cross-training day from Thursday to Friday, because of two reasons: It was good to have an additional working day, and I did not have enough to fill a whole day, so it seemed a good idea to have both parts (cross-training and presentation of final results) together. Now we lack a little the “calm down” period, a relaxing last day with hanging around, talking about the project, giving feedback and brainstorming about ways to improve it. We did that last night over dinner a little bit though…

On Wednesday evening, Kate came from the UN Foundation, which we were very much looking forward to in order to gain some more background information on how the project was chosen, what they actually expected from us, what are their objectives behind the World Heritage Alliance, etc. Over time, we continually got more and more of that information.

On Thursday afternoon, Kate and me went to meet Manuel from CTSK and Fernando from RARE to discuss a little the cross-training project as well as overall UNF and RARE cooperation. It was a good meeting that made me modify my presentation and plans for Friday a little. On Thursday, we were most of the day fitting our parts of the presentation together and trying to get it translated, with Heber’s help from back home. We were running late, which is something I really don’t like, but finally all the presentation was put together and until dinner I even managed to translate my part, so I was feeling very relieved then.  Friday was the big day, and my part was the whole morning. We first had a volunteer from GVI here who spent some time discussing how to work with Xyaat on their English and when – now she goes their for at least 6 weeks in June.

Then we had CTSK and Xyaat talk about how they could envision their cooperation for cross-training, and we also had some mentorship from the side of CTSK to show what obstacles CTSK had to overcome and how they managed to do that. Our results of that half-day are quite good I feel – several training days have been agreed upon, with absolutely necessary topics. For example, next week CTSK develops a new tour – the whole process of defining, refining, structuring a tour will be so important for Xyaat to see how it should be done and what you really need to keep in mind. Then in the beginning of April, CTSK designs and prints new marketing brochures, parts of it in cooperation with hotels of the region – this too will give Xyaat a chance to see how to work together with other businesses. 

So, although I feel there were several things that could have been done differently / better, the results still are kind of what we hoped for. Also, as soon as you let people start working together, usually they continue and new ideas appear – so I am glad I achieved my most important objective of fixing some specific dates and areas of internship for Xyaat. Our worry is a bit that we are not sure in how far Xyaat actually can use the suggestions that we gave them in the afternoon. The others of our team were presenting their results, and although some product suggestions are easy to be implemented and they have all the marketing brochures, I am not sure whether they will really get the brochures printed and distributed, and whether they actually analyze their costs and implement the changes that we suggested (and that only would make them survive as a business) seems very questionable to me. I guess it is just so important to do some follow-up, and also to start from our side with just an email or so, asking how they’re doing, whether there is anything we can help with…  

I hope we have done a good job, and I hope our work makes the Xyaat business more viable than it was until now. What I also hope for is to see our feedback implemented in the next programmes (and Kate was so keen on getting our feedback that I have the impression she will take care is will all be taken into account!). As we said, this is still a pioneer programme as it was last June, so we should soak up any experience to make it better with every step we take. 

Magdalena  

Finally – a structure!

The headline says it all… during the first week here, I think that all of us were quite confused about what we are actually supposed to do here, what our output should be, and so on. On top of that, we don’t have something like office hours here, and our office was the lobby for the most part of the time, so it was a bit difficult to coordinate the group of people. However, now we seem to have a bit of a structure and a rough plan on what happens during the next couple of days. Yesterday morning, we had some effective discussions (and at that moment, I was still glad that power went off, because in this way nobody could be distracted by computers and Internet and whatever might be going on). Now we all know what the others have been doing so far, and everybody had the chance to give feedback on the work of the others. Also, we figured out who depends on whom during the next days and in what parts we need to work together closely.

After this session and lunch, everybody now went to their rooms because there was power here until some minutes ago (now it is off as I’m typing), so we can go on putting our work together. (when I wrote this, it was Tuesday afternoon – just could not upload it until now)

We are all very much looking forward to Kate’s arrival on Wednesday afternoon, because she might be able to give us a better global picture of the project as well as some qualified feedback on our work. The biggest problem this time clearly is that there is nobody at the moment clearly owning the project, so that we keep making assumptions about why we’re here and what we’re expected to deliver.  Reviewing the last days, there’s a lot to tell – I think the last time I wrote was Friday. On Saturday, Dustin and me went on a casual fishing-trip with Manuel, which gave us a whole day of talking. We did not go into much detail about the cross-trainings themselves, as most open questions need to be answered either by Xyaat or within a conversation between Xyaat and CTSK, but we got some valuable information about CTSK and Xyaat in general, their history, efforts, problems, contacts, and so on. As to the fun part of this day, I’ve done many things I have never done or seen before: We went fishing with three different supports, and on the way to our spots, literally five minutes after taking off the shore, we ran into a dolphin family (I think it was a mum with two kids) playing around in the water. They were absolutely not afraid of us but stayed where they are, although altogether three tourist boats were watching them, and one woman all the time wanted to jump into the water (thankfully, her guide held her back although she was begging…). It was a great experience, as I had never seen dolphins in the wild! We also saw on our fishing trip a whole bunch of fish – either in the water or on the hook (but we released them back into the water!), for example a ray, which looked quite impressing.At the end, we went snorkelling in the coral reef, which again was new experience for me and I enjoyed it so much! After coming back out of the water, I was just so happy I had seen this fascinating underwater world. So when coming back to Punta Allen (where we took the boat from and also had a late lunch) I was as happy as one can be, especially because the fisher village itself is such a beautiful place as well. Nearly unspoilt by tourists or other exterior influences, it preserves its tiny-fisher-village flair, and the surrounding nature with the whitest sand I’ve ever seen, the coconut trees all over and the clear green and blue water – it all adds together to a place that seems like taken right out from paradise. 

Sunday was our day off, and Barrie and me went to Cobá to see the ruins there. It was a good trip – you can rent bikes there and ride on the nice trails that run through forests, connecting the spread-out ruins. They were really big, Muyil can’t compare to them at all! So this was a really fascinating trip, but I also enjoyed the fact that there was enough time to talk to just one person (as the day before, in a small group with Dustin and Manuel) and really get an insight into another persons thoughts on the project, the communities and our work here. I know five people is not a big team, but still, if we’re all together, you just can’t get too deep into one topic – for whatever reason, I wouldn’t even be able to explain it.   Yesterday, Barrie, David and me went to Senor again. The aim was to get their feedback on the brochure that David had done, but also to take
Barrie out there to let here experience their offer. I was there mainly for translating, but took the opportunity to have a chat about my work with CTSK as well. So during lunch and after the whole tour, we presented the work we had done and got some very valuable feedback from Marcus and
Santos. This time, Julia was there as well (we had asked them to have her participate in this meeting as well, because we found out she is a part of the core-group after our first meeting with Marcus and Santos a week ago). Julia seems to be very shy, but they explained to me that she usually does not interact with the tourists, so this might explain it. While talking about the training opportunities, we found out that actually it is very hard for women to leave their town for something else than bare necessities. It seems to be harder for married women than for singles, but still it is very uncommon. Therefore, we were trying to figure out a step-by-step plan to get Julia’s parents used to the fact that she might be working with Xyaat and also interacting with other people, including receiving training out of town. Marcus and
Santos promised that they would try and convince her parents of letting her participate in the big meeting we’re having with everybody on Friday. This should work, as there is no overnight included and she is going with close friends and even family (Marcus is married to Julia’s sister). If it does not work, then the next steps are way more difficult than we thought… What would be in our mind for the next step, but still needs to be checked upon of course, would be to let Julia participate in a training with CTSK for a short time, such as just two or three days, and let her go together with Marcus or Santos, not on her own. However, this is all dreams at the moment, and we will know on Friday how tough the gender issues in the community really are…
Thanks for staying with me and my explanations again! I hope the things we write about are as interesting to you as they obviously are for us. It is a fascinating environment we are in here, socially as well as in terms of nature, and I really hope we can put together some things that Xyaat can use in the future for their business and that make a difference to them.  
Magdalena

bats and snakes and guano!

After we finished our first day tour at Xyaat we were invited to checkout another tour operator in the area that has  a bike, bat cave and hanging serpent tour… So, we raced down the road to make it there in time for sunset, because everyone knows bats take off at dusk to haunt the night’s sky. I have to admit I was excited and scared about what this adventure might entail. We got to the tour headquarters and met our guide who is friends with Marcos and Santos from Xyaat. We mounted up on our mountain bikes and headed down the path to the cave. We crossed paths with several hunters with their shotguns and dogs and about 20 minutes later we arrived at the cave at just the right time. The first bats had started to fly out of the cave. We donned our schpeluker’s head lamps and walked into the cave while hundreds of bats flew out of the cave all around our heads and bodies. The wind created by their flapping wings was thrilling as they ignored us to get out of the cave. We were a total of 9 in our group and since it was a bat cave with hanging snakes, flash photography was not allowed. In the first room of the cave we saw a pretty fat boa constrictor about 20 feet away looking for a meal. Our guide told us to turn off our head lamps, which was just crazy scary. So, there we were in the blackness with bats and snakes. We turned our lights on as quickly as possible once the guide directed us to do so. We then moved on to another area of the cave that had a small pond where we saw white blind snakes and white blind fish that appeared to be floating in mid-air because the water was so clear it was practically invisible. Then it got interesting… Our guide said that 5 of us could proceed to the crawl space height corridor where there were for sure to many more hanging serpents. The snakes coil up in small holes in the ceiling of the cave and when the bats fly by they grab them out of the air and eat them. The ceiling kept getting lower and lower the further in the cave we got and the snakes kept getting closer and closer to us as we passed by. The floor of the cave was covered in bat guano and we were all wearing sandals making the squishiness between the toes absolutely gross, but that was the least of our worries. The guide kept telling us to turn off our lights and after a few moments we would turn them back on to find that every snake had caught a bat while the lights were out. For those of you that know the TV show Fear Factor, well this adventure put that cheesy show to shame. When our guide said that we could go back to the entrance

I can’t tell you how fast we crawled out of that space with snakes inches from our heads. Looking back, I can’t believe how insane that tour was, but we all survived and had a beautiful starlit bike ride back to the base. The business side of this craziness is that it might work as an addon tour to the Xyaat tour during the day, just as we did it.  The bat cave operator has a decent business setup and already works well with the guys from Xyaat. If I can promote shark cage encounters in Hawaii, I don’t see why not bat caves with hanging serpents in the Yucatan!

Dan

The last two days were very exciting, so watch out for another long blog! Also, sorry for the small letters in the last one – I try to make it bigger now.

Yesterday, I spent the whole day talking – to start off, Dustin and me met with Manuel from CTSK for breakfast in Tulum. This was basically my first contact with somebody that I would actually be working with closely, so obviously a very important day! During breakfast, we had some casual talk, but actually coming back to the CTSK office, Manuel and I started getting deeper into the topic of how to help the folks from Xyaat and how CTSK could help them. It was soon clear to me that  Manuel is a great guy to have on board of such a project! He was very clear and focused, providing me with an overview of what could be options for internships for Xyaat people in the CTSK office and with their staff. Basically, there are three areas: The guiding and handling of tourists, the office and reservation management, and the marketing and sales part. We were talking for a while about this and also the possibility to discuss their problems with the Ejido with them, so that maybe CTSK could provide their experience of working with three communities. All the people in this area seem to have the same problems…

For lunch, I had arranged a meeting with the folks from Global Vision International in their home base in Tulum. This organization is having volunteers in Tulum for up to 10 weeks, and organizing English classes and environmental projects (mainly concerned with the coral reef and coastal ecosystems). My goal there was to find out about possibilities to cooperate with Xyaat, mainly for teaching them English.It turned out not as easy as thought. Although they seemed very interested in Xyaats tourism activities, they do only have a fixed program for English lessons in Tulum. After the fixed part of the program, there are per group about one or two who then would like to stay in the area and go to some community to do work there. This basically means for us that they are willing to help, but can not provide any guarantee for continued work. Still, the meeting was interesting, as Nicolas (the cultural manager of their project) and Kat (I think she’s the overall manager of this base of GVI) were very interested and had a couple of other ideas for cooperations, which I think will be gladly perceived by Marcus  and  Santos: They are interested in helping them with the environmental education program Xyaat is sponsoring for the schools, and also could help with the distribution of the tourism product (by sending volunteers, and also they work closely with the public tourism information in Tulum). We hope to welcome them for the cross-training day on Thursday next week. My goal is more to set up everything for them, so they can get in touch with the right people and also continue working after we leave – if I do everything for them, all our work would probably be lost after our plane takes off…

After lunch we sat together as a team at our current office – the lobby (it’s just so much more comfortable than the conference room!) – and discussed a bit our current work that we were doing. I felt this was really important, because it kind of gave us the working spirit back. Honestly, I had the feeling we were all a bit lost after Heber left, but it seems we’re getting more up to speed the last two days now.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay until the end, because I had arranged to meet Manuel again in the evening – which was when we discussed more details of the internships that they could offer to Xyaat. Manuel made a good point – he told me about different people that had been working with Senor for years, mainly in order to get things with the Ejido straight – so there is a good point in saying that doing one or two seminars in the community is not really what would help set things right. We finally decided to include that in the Cross-Training day, which I guess is a good idea, as people from several communities working with CTSK will participate.   So that was yesterday – a lot of talking…. Today we went on the Forest & Float Tour of CTSK, which was a great experience! Dan, David, Beth and me met with our guide Antonio at 8:30 and headed off to Muyil, about half an hour down the road. We first went to the ruins of Muyil, which was great because I had never seen Mayan ruins before and also they were hidden in the forest just as I imagined it!
Then we had a walk through the forest, slowly moving into the wetlands (the path was made of wood about 20 cm above the ground –we did not get wet J ) and luckily the first time in my life I spotted birds when I was supposed to see them (up to now, on every tour I did that included birdwatching I couldn’t see anything except for green leaves).
From there, we arrived at the lagoon, which had crystal-clear water. After a fruit snack we headed with the boat to the canal in the savannas. The first that we passed was a man-made one (first constructed by the Mayas centuries or even millennia ago – apparently they don’t need to maintain it because the current does it naturally).
After passing the second lagoon, we entered into a natural canal that actually was half savannas, half mangroves (my checklist done – I absolutely wanted to see mangroves on this trip!) and here started probably the best part of the day: We put swimming jackets on, however not in the usual way but like diapers, and jumped into the water – floating down the canal for half an hour. We didn’t have to do anything, just  relaxing, enjoying the green around us, the sun and the refreshing water! It was fascinating, because while in the water you can’t actually see the surroundings, so when then we entered again into the boat and could see we were actually floating in the middle of a seemingly endless green savanna!
After coming back to our starting point at the first lagoon, we had some tasty traditional mayan lunch and then headed for the last part – the cenote. Dan showed me how to snorkel (my last experience was not very good, always had the feeling I could not breathe properly…) which I was very glad about – maybe still going out to the reef on one of the next days? We’ll see…. 
Barrie just arrived, and from just a moment knowing her can tell we will have a great time during the upcoming week! So, we’re soon off to dinner –can’t wait to eat! 
Magdalena 

First few days

After some technical difficulties, I’m now able to post to the blog, so I’ll post a few days’ worth all at once.

We spent most of Sunday getting briefed, and getting psyched.  After a breakfast with Janice where she left us with extra batteries, lots of wisdom, and a power cord for Magdalena, we realized we were on our own.  Luckily we had Heber on hand to tell us newbies about what he’d learned over the past week.  We’re also feeling lucky to have Dustin with us, making sure we bond properly and have a chance to get ready for our mission, and such a great location…

 

Monday we had an early start for Señor, first meeting up with our contact Don Julio in Carillo Puerto, the only town of any size between Tulum and Señor (which is fairly deep in the jungle).  Don Julio works closely with the UN and is coordinating about 70 developmental and environmental projects in the region, so we’re only going to get a fraction of his time over the next two weeks, but we already have a lot of questions for him.  Originally from Spain, Don Julio is highly respected by the Mayans in the region for his work, and we believe that he will help us sort through some of the community politics that Janice and Heber briefed us on.  However, it turns out we’re not going to be able to see him until the evening for dinner, so we head to Señor on our own.

In Señor we are met by Marcos and Santos, who are the force behind Xyaat.  After a quick pit stop in the Xyaat building, we are on the way to the Laguna Azul (Blue Lagoon) on the back of their truck—some of us dangling right off it (Dustin and I decided to be gracious and allow others the more authentic experience, so we sat inside the cab).  After a surprise meeting with some of the leaders in the Ejido who have had tensions with Marcos in the past, we set off for our nature walk.  While everything was explained to us in Spanish, it was surprisingly easy for us to understand and even the non-Spanish speakers needed less translation help than they’d expected.  Marcos took us up a tower for a great view of the lagoon, and told us about the medicinal properties of the local flora.  He’s clearly passionate about the local environment.

 

 

 

 

After our walk, Marcos and Santos take us on another tour in a town about an hour away.  When I’m told that the plan is to take mountain bikes to a cave where we can see bats, snakes, and hang out in really tight enclosed spaces, I’m a little less than thrilled as none of these are on my top-10 list.  But it really was an incredible experience, especially for the brave souls who crawled into the scariest part of the cave and really…interacted with the snakes and bats.  Like Magdalena, I will choose to let those folks explain their adventure in detail.

 

 

When we finally rolled back to Carillo Puerto for dinner, we were pretty tired, and some of us were fairly well coated in whatever was on the floor of the cave.  But we met up with Don Julio, and all had a great dinner in town and a nice sleep in Carillo Puerto (until 5:30 am when the birds began to regale us!).

On Tuesday, we met up with Don Julio for breakfast and spent a long time discussing the program with him.  We told him about our concerns about attracting tourists all the way to Señor, especially since the Xyaat folks don’t provide transportation, and discussed possibilities for attracting other types of customers such as university students, school groups, and domestic tourists.  We also talked about long term potential and scale—for example in addition to the short-term needs at Xyaat, we are thinking that it might be more impactful for Xyaat to work with other community-based tour operators in the region to share resources such as transportation and to market themselves more effectively by working collectively.  Don Julio cautioned us to ask Marcos and Santos what they want for their business before making any prescriptions.

After breakfast we went back to Señor for the cultural tour.  There we saw—in the context of people’s real homes—how people lived and some of their traditions.  We saw bee-keeping in hollowed-out logs, heard Mayan storytelling, smelled the herbs in a medicinal garden, touched traditional embroidery and a hammock in the loom, and learned how to make a slingshot out of rope fibers pulled from a plant that looked like a giant aloe vera bush.  Then we came back to Xyaat and had an amazing Mayan feast (dishes that would normally be served at a festival to please the rain god—a chicken stew in a gourd that had been hollowed out and dried, served with a bread that was multiple thick tortillas sandwiched with a pumpkin seed paste between them, preceded by a beautiful salad and followed by two decadent coconut and plantain desserts).  We spoke to Marcos and Santos about how much business they actually wanted–and it turns out they’d only like to have a few tours a week until they can get more help, since they don’t want to give up the rest of their lives just to do this.

  

 

 

Last night we said goodbye to Heber and began to plan our individual activities.  This morning we awoke to discover our conference room had become a construction zone, but we simply relocated to the lobby for the morning and used the wifi to regroup.  Tonight, we plan to do some recon work on competitive products in the marketplace.

First thoughts

We came back from Senor yesterday, and after a shower and long discussions yesterday evening now it’s time to start working on the things we learnt there. I won’t go into detail about the tours we took in Senor, as Janice  told about that before, and I will leave our “add-on” to be told by somebody else (because I did not experience the most important part and am so mad on myself I did not do it! Wait for one of the guys to tell you what there is to experience in this country….) We also had Julio with us for parts of the tour, and it was great getting his insight on everything going on in Senor and Xyaat. Especially valuable to me was his explanation about the political organization of the Ejido, which is the land on which a couple of communities are situated. Not all people in the communities actually have voting rights for the leaders of the Ejido, but only those that own land. The land-ownership and voting right is usually inherited, but only one of the children receives it. Apparently the other children then still have land to farm, but they do not officially own the land they are working on. This political complexity (there’s a bit more to it than what I share here) produces many problems. In our case, one of the leaders of the Ejido is against Marcus, one of the main people in Xyaat (besides Santos and Julia). As Marcus is not owner of land, he can not even go to the Assembly of the Ejido where all major decisions are taken. However, most of the people are actually in favour of Xyaat, because they have seen in the past that the tourism activity generates income for many families. Also, they give a substantial part of their profit to a project of environmental education, which I consider very important (especially if you have seen all the garbage on the side of roads and even hiking paths at the lagoon).  

These conflicts with the Ejido are something we were getting very worried about when Heber first told us about, and we had a long talk on Sunday evening about whether or not we were able to / should help in this issue. Our decision was that we are not responsible for internal conflicts and should not be involved in their resolution, not even try to engage in it. What I still think we could do is to make suggestions to Marcus and Santos– such as having a contract with the Ejido laying down the rules of the game, or also more transparency coming from the side of Xyaat. However, our involvement in internal problems should really not go beyond laying out thoughts during a casual talk…. One more thought to that: It came out during the last days that the situation is not as bad as it first seemed – so we have hope and should not let ourselves take down by these things. 

Sorry for writing a long blog without pictures – that’s because I still have an analogue camera  On Tuesday, after we had our second tour, we sat down for quite a while to talk with Marcus and Santos about what actually their dream is and where they want to go with their tourism activity. It came out that they really don’t want a big thing, and their biggest concern is that they themselves, but also the people in the community they work with, give up their traditional way of living (working in the milpa – their fields). Marcus has not been on his milpa for 2 weeks now, and Santos is currently paying somebody else to care about it for him. This is very worrying, as they see tourism as a way of generating income to a big part of the community without giving up their traditional way of living. They actually would like to have a tour for about three days per week, and the other four days being able to engage in whatever activities they usually have. What they also said is that there might be other people from Senor wanting to work with them later, but at the moment, as it’s just a small group of people, they really want to have a limited amount of tours. This is really important for us to understand – here it is not about generating as much demand as possible, but about generating a very specific and limited amount of demand. I think this conversation was possibly the most important one we had so far…

What we also noticed, and Beth and me were talking about that in the car afterwards, is that the group of people is great, not only because of their expertise, but also because of the different ways of thinking, lifestyles, personalities. One example: Beth needs to force herself to think on a small scale and in very basic and easy parameters – which is what I am good at, which is my way of thinking. Me, on the other hand, I have to force myself to leave any environmental, social and cultural concerns outside for the main part, and to focus on business and tourism operations – which is what Beth and the rest of the team are good at.  

These differences also came out last evening then when we had the so far most effective discussion internally as a group. We were sitting together and just thinking about possible ways of structuring their pricing, organizing transportation, etc. So what we noticed was the various cultures we come from actually help us a lot to see the problem from a variety of angles and going beyond our usual horizon. Until now, I have not really tried to think much in my role, my task that I have here, it has been more an overall getting to know the area, the people, the offer. Today now is the time to start thinking about it – I am doing the cross-training part of the program, and I noticed that there are several people and companies that Xyaat works together with. Also, there are training initiatives in the region. This gives me a good starting point, and I will spend the morning today with studying the various websites we heard about during the last days. Then, in the afternoon, I’ll drop by the CTSK office to meet some of the people there. Unfortunately, Manuel, our main contact, is gone to Mérida today. From tomorrow on then, I hope to be able to start a focused work with them during some days. I am not sure yet how it will all look like in the end, but I think we should focus on a general roadmap for training that can be used by Xyaat, but also for other communities in the long run. Then, I want to give CTSK all the tools that they need to train people – the whole variety of ways how to learn, how to teach, how to hold workshops… some presentation and moderation skills and some examples for teaching material. Then, and this is the most idealistic and strategic part, I want to lay down some options of cooperation between the communities of the region working in tourism.  

I have to say, these are my imaginations now – but I have not even talked to anybody from CTSK yet. So, what I am writing down here may change substantially during the next days, depending on their input and the further discussions we have in our group.   There are probably loads of things that I forgot to tell, which are also important, also going on in my mind…. But that was enough now I guess – will keep you posted on anything happening here – so keep reading! 
Magdalena

It’s official – we’re here!

It’s so great to be here!  So far we’ve spent a total of 4 1/2 hours together and it’s already clear that we have a great team.  Janice and Heber gave us a download over breakfast of their work so far on project recommendations, and after hearing their experiences in Senor we are all very excited to go see it for ourselves.  We spent the last few hours getting our computers configured for the wireless connection here in our conference room, getting set up to blog, getting our Blackberries functioning properly, getting the printer hooked up – and now we’re ready to dive in (and I’m not talking about diving into the beautiful Caribbean that’s within eyeshot of the conference room)!  Now we’re off to lunch and to get the details of Heber’s product recommendations.   

Headed back to Seattle…

Today is my last day in Tulum. The rest of the team has arrived and we’ve spent the morning discussing the program, what Heber and I have learned over the past week and getting everybody up to speed on how to blog! No excuses now.  We have taken over the conference room at the hotel and the view is very nice. The sun has come out for the second wave of the team. Tomorrow they will get to meet Marcos, Santos and Julia in Xyaat. I’m so excited for them. Ok…I have to go catch my shuttle to the airport. Good luck to the rest of the team!

Cheers,

Janice

We’re off to a great start

Hola from Tulum!

Heber and I have spent the past four days in the field with little access to our cell phones let alone our computers. When we were finally able to connect to the internet this morning we realized that we are a bit addicted to our computers. J The staff at the hotel is having a difficult time understanding that we are working. They keep reminding us to go have some fun. J I’m not sure that Heber and I could be happier than sitting in the lobby typing away. Such a relief! It might be more difficult to work if the sun was out but it seems that I brought the rain with me from Seattle. It has rained on and off every day since we arrived.

The program officially began on Monday with a trip to the community of Xyaat in Senor about an hour and a half from Tulum where Heber and I are staying. However, the adventure actually began on Sunday when I picked up the rental car at the
Cancun airport.  The drive to Tulum is usually very easy but with rain coming down in buckets it was a bit scary.  I arrived at the hotel much later than anticipated but was able to find the rest of the crew at one of the restaurants. I finally met Heber in person!
Kate Dodson from the UN Foundation filled me on the past several days that she had spent with the community we were going to be working with and we made plans for our trip to Senor the next day. Senor is a small Mayan community about 30 minutes north of Felipe Carrero Puerto. Carrero Puerto (this is what most people call the town) is roughly 30,000 people and acts as the hub for the many Maya communities in the area. In Senor the all the streets are dirt and the houses range from sticks and palm leaf roofs to concrete block structures, again with palm roofs. There is electricity and many of the people have television in their homes. It is a very strange thing to see the modern TV and the dirt floors in the same house. The people sleep in hammocks and also use them as furniture during the day. They run cloth or plastic sheets along the ceiling directly below the roof peak to catch scorpions which sometimes fall from the ceiling and on to the people!   As with every other Maya group we have met, the young leaders of Xyaat (the community building the tour business) were incredibly passionate and enthusiastic. They speak Maya and Spanish but very little English. Luckily with my broken Spanish and Heber’s translations we had a great time communicating.  Xyaat only offers two tours. A nature tour and a cultural tour. Each tour is very loosely constructed and varies depending on who the customers are and what they want out of the tour. We quickly discovered that one easy fix for these guys would be to help them provide some structure to the products.  

We experienced the Nature Hike first. We headed out to the Laguna Azul about 20 minutes outside of Senor. The road was a bit rough but we made it in one piece. The basic version of the tour is to hike a trail used by many local Maya around the edge of the lagoon and see the flora and fauna. The tour included a stop a an observation tower. this is my third experience with observation towers in Mexico. They always test my faith a bit. 

 

During the hike our guide spent time pointing out indigenous plants and their traditional medicinal uses. We learned to always find “East” by looking at a vine-y plant that always grows toward the morning sun (and it was true, we saw the same thing over and over again…better than a compass!). We saw leaf cutting ants crossing the trail (something I had only seen on National Geographic specials). It was great! At first it seemed that little pieces of bright green leaves were jumping and floating in a line all by themselves. Upon closer inspections you can see the ants marching along. There are 18 types of orchids that usually grow along the path but unfortunately someone had stolen several so we only saw 12. The Xyaat team plans to bring in more orchids from other parts of the jungle to replace what has been lost.

 The tour continued to the cenote (opening in the earth were water is exposed to the surface). However, in this case the cenote is inside the lagoon. To be honest, I really couldn’t tell the difference between the water of the lagoon and the water of the cenote. Our guide explained to us that they know when there is a cenote because there are certain species of fish that only live within the cenote and will not venture in the lagoon water. Also, if you are swimming within the boundary of the cenote and dive down you will feel a different kind of pressure in your ear drums. I took our guide at his word.   We were running late (a major theme here that has to be gotten used to) so we hurried back along the same trail to the truck and headed back into town for lunch and the cultural tour.  We had a traditional lunch of white bean soup, tortillas, and scrambled eggs with some type of green vegetable mixed in. Yum!!! After lunch we began the cultural tour back in thevillage of
Senor. Our first stop found us at the home of Don (term of respect) Cresencio, an elderly Mayan gentlemen who is the one in the village that knows how to work the Heenequen plant. The plant is about 6 feet tall and has long spiky leaves similar to a giant Aloe Vera plant. He hacked off one of the leaves with a rather large machete (visions of Indian Jones came to mind). He then bent the leaf over a board and started scraping the green juicy parts off with the machete until all that was left was long white fibers. Amazing. He then used a traditional leather strap on his leg to role the fiber into rope.   We then headed over several blocks to the house of the traditional medicine man, Don Lucio. He is called a Hmen in Mayan which means something close to priest. He showed us around his botanical garden and explained how he uses the plants to heal the rest of the people in the community. The strangest item we came across was a potato-shaped fruit that grows on trees and has the rough skin of pineapple, but white. When ripe the fruit smells like very stinky cheese. I’m not sure what it is supposed to heal but I do know that Heber had a heck of a time getting the smell off his hands (he was the only one brave enough to touch it). J Lesson learned – don’t touch anything!  

The plant above reminded me of the one from Little Shop of Horrors. It was about 5 feet in length.

We then went to the house of the local storyteller, Don Abundio Yama, who gave us the history of the Caste Wars. Up until the 1930’s the people of the
Yucatan were very independent and barely knew the Mexican government existed. When the government decided they wanted the land they tried to take it from the Maya. The Yucatan Mayans asked the people of
Belize for help and they fought the Mexican government together. There were many Chinese fishermen leaving in the area at the time (who knew?!) and they also helped fight. Many Maya have Chinese ancestors. Don Yama is one of these Chinese Mayans and is highly respected as an historian and has been flown to
Europe to share his stories.

We met with a few more members of the community before returning to the Xyaat office for a review of the day and planning the follow day’s activities.

That evening we joined our friend Don Julio Muerno (representative of COMPACT and a friend of the UN Foundation who is the leader for over 70 projects in the
Yucatan focused on sustainable business including honey making, forestry, fisheries and tourism) for dinner in Carrero Puerto and discussed the challenges faced by the Xyaat community and who the audience would be for this type of product. The challenges are many including location – Xyaat is at least 3 hours from
Cancun, 1 ½ hours from Tulum and 30 minutes from Carrero Puerto. The staff is passionate but untrained and not very business savvy…yet.  

The following day we met with Don Julio for breakfast and a recap of the prior day’s activities. We then all headed back out to Senor to have a brainstorming session with the Xyaat team. We were only supposed to be there until Noon but as things naturally happen we didn’t leave Senor until well after 6.

 

To be honest, Heber and I were feeling a bit overwhelmed by the challenges faced by this community. They have many obstacles in front of them; the most difficult to overcome may simply be the location. We drove back to the hotel in Tulum that night a bit concerned about how much we could really help these wonderful people.  On Wednesday we drove into the town of
Tulum and visited the office of Community Tours Sian Kaan (CTSK), the same group that we worked with during the first employee program. It was great to see my old friends but better yet they shared some fantastic news!!  

First, they have seen 125% growth in sales since last year’s program. They attribute that growth specifically to the work done by the World Heritage Alliance and Expedia. Secondly, they just found out that they won a very prestigious award for being 1 of the 5 best sustainable programs in
Central America. Along with the award will come a cash prize of $30,000! The good work they can do with that money is unreal. They again said that without our help they would not have won the award. It was so satisfying to hear about their success and see it first hand.

At the CTSK office we met with several presidents of the different groups that make up the cooperative of CTSK. We spoke to them about our work with Xyaat. This group of people enthusiastically supported the program and even offered to allow the manager of Xyaat the opportunity to come work with CTSK for 1-3 months to learn the business, basically an internship. They even talked about perhaps helping to fund the program a bit as the person that does the internship has a family and would need to make a minimum salary so they could continue to eat. I asked at one point how much would be necessary per month…only $600. It is mind-boggling how so little money can have such a positive impact. They are committed to helping because the Xyaat group is Mayan and they are all one community at the end of the day.

Heber and I concluded that we needed to spend more time with the team at Xyaat so we made another visit to them on Thursday, mostly to see the rest of the cultural experiences (traditional broom making, recycled rope making, instrument making and ceremonial scribing). We were lucky to meet a couple from
England, Ian and Faye, who heard about Xyaat and wanted to experience the cultural tour. They joined us during the tour portion of our day.  One of the most endearing parts of the day was when the 62 year old Mayan broom maker insisted on climbing up a huge tree and picking us fresh oranges to eat. I hope I am still climbing trees at 62!

After hearing about the success of CTSK, understanding the level of support CTSK was willing to provide to Xyaat and meeting the English couple Heber and I had our confidence restored. (As a side note, I spoke to the concierge of the hotel we are staying at in Tulum and they did say that while Americans prefer to sit on the beach, the English and Germans ask all the time for cultural experiences).

During one of the stops we saw a very sad site…a young jaguar had been hit by a car and killed. The man who makes instraments found it on the side of the road and brought it back to the community. The Maya were very very sad aboubt the loss. They respect the jaguar and do not hunt them. Also being a very practical people, they were going to try to salvage what they could of the animal. It was very beautiful.

 

[NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: No jaguars were eaten at lunch. Traditional Mayan food includes corn, beans, squash...but no jagaur. A thank you goes out to those who provided feedback. Sorry to have alarmed you. ]

During lunch we ate traditional Mayan food cooked in the ground (technique is called Pibil).

 

 

 

We were also treated to another aspect of the cultural experienc, traditional music and dancing.

 

We spent the rest of the afternoon sharing our thoughts with the Xyaat team and discussed next steps. We did discover that they do not currently have a contract with the ejido (tribe) to use the land. We told the team that is was very important that they secure these rights as soon as possible for as long as possible otherwise they could find themselves out of business before they begin. We later spoke with Don Julio who agreed ed to meet with the ejido. He and Heber will present to the ejido on Monday to help them understand the project and why it is in the interest of the entire community to help make this project succeed.  We also spent time digging into the details on pricing, logistics, etc. Heber spent a great deal of time explaining the need to “productize” their offers so consistency is developed. We explained the role of each of the other participants coming from Expedia and ask the Xyaat team to prepare materials that would help move the project along once the other Expedia team members arrived.  We finished up the day around 5pm (again, we had planned to leave much earlier but when in
Mexico…) and met Don Julio for coffee in Carrero Puerto to share our thoughts on the day. We stopped in Tulum for dinner and got back to the hotel around 10pm and crashed.  We have been sitting in the lobby of the hotel (where the wireless access is) working on the presentation and preparing the blog. We are next to the front desk and I can tell you one thing…the front desk staff of any hotel are simply not paid enough. J I think many folks are cranky as it has been raining every day. Sadly, many of the tourist I’ve seen walk through the lobby do not understand the concept of getting burned even on cloudy days. J  Tomorrow is our personal day and we have decided to visit the ruins of Tulum (I’m checking out an self-guided audio tour that we sell as a Destination Service) and then driving down to road to Punta Allen so Heber can see some of the Sian Kaan biosphere. Tomorrow night the rest of the team flies in and we will spend time in the evening sharing information and a couple of hours on Sunday presenting our learnings before I head to the airport. Luckily Heber is here for a few more days and can help the rest of the team get settled and up to speed quickly.  I will be sad to go but I know that we are doing amazing work here and we are truly making a difference in the lives of these people. I hope anyone reading this will have the opportunity to participate in this program in the future.  Heber promises me that he will share his thoughts on the blog soon. He has been very focused on creating the product presentation.   Adios!