Toro Toro National Park tour, Bolivia

Environment

We ensure that packaging on our trip is kept to a minimum and litter is disposed of responsibly.

The beauty of Toro Toro National Park lies partly in its remoteness and our guides strive to conserve its environment by keeping its sites clean, and treating its natural wonders with respect. We use local guides who have been trained to understand the importance of ethical business practise. Touching of stalactites and stalagmites in the caves is strictly forbidden and this practise is increasingly passed on to the locals, resulting in an increased preservation in this area.

We appreciate the local wildlife and enforce a strict policy of not approaching nesting birds or touching any wildlife. The canyons in Toro Toro are a wildlife haven for vultures and we educate our guides and locals to preserve their environment to enable them to breed without disruption.

We encourage our guests, guides and locals to consciously save water at hotels as water can be scarce in the National Park.

Community

The trip employs a local guide from the small village of Torotoro to join an English speaking guide, hence providing income to the local population. Wages and taxes are kept in country, creating a beneficial relationship between tourism and the local community.

Locals are gaining an additional source of income and are developing a sense of pride to protect the park. It means locals get great life skills, such as learning foreign languages so as to work in tourism, at home and abroad.

We use small local hotels in the village, run by locals. All lunches and dinners are bought and consumed at small, local restaurants rather than brought into the park from the outside.

We are committed to working with local charities in the countries we operate in.

Since 2006 we supported the Huchuy Yachaq community project in Cusco, with the help of everybody who has travelled with us. We donate USD $3000 a year to this community project, funding a full time teaching post.

We are also financially supporting the UK registered charity Amantani which is running boarding houses for children in the remote Andean region around Cusco. It is very much in keeping with our ethos of small scale, targetted help which is educational & sustainabale.

And we are planting trees as part of a reforestation project in Peru.