LYING under a thick patchwork quilt, breathing in the fresh mountain air, I felt like a true eco-traveler as I listened reverently to a morning medley of nature streaming through my window: the chirping of a cockatoo, the scuffle of a passing lizard, the rustling of leaves ... and then, from the room next door, the shrill, piercing voice of my travel companion shouting, “There’s a huge spider in my duffel bag! Get me out of here!”
Dashing into the living room, I found my friend — call him the ultimate urbanite — standing on the couch, staring down at what was, in fact, a fairly large spider crawling across the floor of the cabin. I suspected he was having second thoughts about joining me on this “environmentally friendly” trip — a first for both of us. Before he left New York, his image of a green vacation consisted of drinking mojitos after a seaweed wrap by an infinity pool, not fighting crawly things the size of a baseball mitt in the Australian bush.
Quite urban myself (I grew up in the Midwest but now live inLondon), I planned this trip wondering what it would be like to travel in a more sustainable way than I have grown accustomed to over the years — grabbing cheap flights to whatever city caught my interest at that moment, never mind the carbon footprint I was leaving behind.
Yet I also wanted a vacation that would not be too jolting for a couple of green travel novices. So rather than signing us up for a marine conservation expedition in Antarctica or a Bedouin trekking journey across the Sahara, I settled on a more “eco-light” experience:hikingin the Greater Blue Mountains in New South Wales, a World Heritage Site since 2000, said to have unparalleled examples of nature, including forested landscapes on sandstone plateaus, deep gorges and canyons, secluded rain forests and ancient trees. Best of all, we would not have to rent a car once we got toSydney. The Blue Mountains are an easy two-hour train ride from the city center.
Of course, one could make the argument that the moment I choseAustralia(a blow-your-carbon-footprint-off-the-map sort of destination), I committed my first serious environmental crime of the trip. According to one carbon calculator, my round-trip journey between London and Sydney alone (about 21,000 miles) would produce an outlandish 5.6 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of leaving all the lights on in my home all day and night for two years and six months. And though air travel accounts for only 2 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, according to figures from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is the fastest-growing contributor toglobal warming. With such an earth-shattering (literally) equation staring back at me, it was hard not to think twice before flying.
But when I read in September that Qantas Airways had begun a carbon offset program, I began wondering if I could justify a January trip across the world if I paid for my emissions and then, once there, traveled responsibly (no internal flights or rental cars) and delicately (staying only in green hotels, eating locally grown food and so on). In fact, for a one-time payment of 24.02 Australian dollars to Qantas (about $21.50 at 1.12 Australian dollars to the U.S. dollar), I could offset my entire trip (including a fuel stop inBangkok) by contributing to an Australian government-accredited “greenhouse gas abatement” program.
It seemed a ridiculously small amount to pay for a ludicrously long trip (19 hours of flight time), but at least I would be preventing my carbon footprint from growing any larger, even if I wasn’t reducing it by staying home. And though many feel offsetting — whether it is planting forests or financing green initiatives in the developing world — is just a fashionable way for vacationers to feel less guilty about traveling, it still seemed better than doing nothing.
Still not entirely convinced, I called Justin Francis, a founder ofResponsibletravel.com, a British-based Web directory of thousands of screened sustainable travel vacations all over the world. “Certainly, the goal is for everyone to try and fly less each year by finding alternative means of transport, particularly on short-haul distances,” said Mr. Francis, who used to work at the Body Shop forAnita Roddick, one of the first eco-leaders of the corporate world. “But when you have no choice but to fly, be sure to offset,” he said, adding that until “greener” airline fuel is developed we have little alternative.
Mr. Francis went on to assuage my guilt by telling me that one in 12 jobs in the world is in tourism, and if everyone decided not to travel, the result would be a global recession that would undoubtedly hit the developing countries hardest, and not just their economies. (In October 2007, theUnited NationsWorld Tourism Organization estimated that 46 of the 49 poorest countries in the world rely on international tourism as their primary source of foreign exchange earnings.) “Tourism also keeps many cultures from going extinct,” he said. “Often rituals and traditions are passed down between generations primarily because tourists come to see them.” I vowed to learn something about the Aborigines if I went to Australia.
Armed with eco-information, I decided to book my flights, excited not just to set foot in a new country, but also to see the Blue Mountains, or at least a small part of them (the entire area is about 2.5 million acres). Even better, I found a two-bedroom bungalow at an eco-lodge, the Jemby-Rinjah, which bills itself as “one of the earliest examples of sustainable tourism in Australia” (it started in 1987), which sounded much better to me than a campground near the extreme rappelling cliffs.
Set into the landscape overlooking one of the Blue Mountains’ seven national parks, the Jemby-Rinjah is surrounded by signposted trails for hiking (along with raised planked walkways to protect the flora and fauna from human impact), an eco-lodge with a dining room and circular stone fireplace, and plenty of visible wildlife, including possums and parrots. What’s more, it is just outside the village of Blackheath, and not far from the area’s other two towns, Katoomba and Leura, filled with shops, pubs, boutiques and cafes for occasional breaks from the bush — something I thought we might need.
Still, my friend looked anything but happy when we checked in and the first thing the receptionist handed us was a flashlight so we could “locate” our cabin in the pitch-black wilderness. I must have looked equally troubled when, in a burst of enthusiasm, my friend signed us up for a guided hike into theGrand Canyon(forget his arachnophobia; my fear is heights!).
And I am certain, had we ended up in one of the bungalows with a composting, rather than standard, toilet, he would have vacated the premises faster than I could mutter “organic waste.” In fact, I wondered if our two-decades-long friendship could sustain this sustainable travel experience when he complained that the solar “light globes” weren’t bright enough to read by. (He abruptly upped our energy consumption by switching on the electric lights so he could read the novel he had taken along.)
