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More
than Galápagos
Ecuador looks to boost mainland travel destinations
By
Andrew Princz
Reporting from Quito for ontheglobe.com
Take a walk on the waterfront
of the clean, unassuming Ecuadorian port-city of Guayaquil, and you may
be surprised to see a collection of modern, high-class tourism infrastructure
developments. The futuristic Malecón is a riverside promenade adorned
with sculptures, suave restaurants, a conference facility, a museum and
even an IMAX theatre. Just the kind of projects that tourism officials look
to in making this country's continental destinations more attractive to
foreign visitors.
While the coastal city of Guayaquil may not be imbued with spectacular attributes
to attract international tourists to its shores, it is the sheer care taken
in developing the city that has put it on the map for conference-goers and
international tourists.
The development of this kind of tourism infrastructure points to the seriousness of plans to attract some 1.7 million yearly visitors by the year 2010, almost double current levels.
"Cities like Guayaquil have done something very clever," says Francisco Doudebés Egüez of the leading Ecuadorian tour operator, Metropolitan Touring. "They have positioned themselves at the doorway of what Ecuador has to offer, as opposed to encouraging tourists to come to Guayaquil for the sake of itself."
Hard to beat
jewel: the Galápagos islands
Many visitors to Ecuador fly to Guayaquil before continuing to other local
destinations - be it a short flight to the Galápagos Islands, the
Andean capital of Quito, or other exotic continental destinations. Visitors
can chose among one of the country's many volcanoes, colonial haciendas,
or the tropical Amazon region.
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"Ecuador is a place where you can find many cultures, religions and peoples," says twenty-year-old Marco Vinicio Chávez-Loor, a student at the Catholic University of Guayaquil, "The coast, the land, the mountains, the orient and the Galapágos Islands, all within a few hours."
"In one day you can travel to one distinct place, then another day be on a mountainside or the coast."
Take Cuenca, the country's third
largest city, which also boasts colonial architecture and typical litany
of churches, and a heritage of being an intellectual center. Cuenca is also
a centre for handicrafts, silversmiths and weavers, and a stones throw from
Ecuador's only extensive Inca ruins, Ingapirca.
Ecuador boasts, however, a hard to beat jewel. The pristine but ecologically fragile Galápagos Islands, indisputably the most illustrious tourism magnet for Ecuador. These idyllic islands 600 miles off of Ecuador's coast were made famous by English naturalist Charles Darwin. His visit to these islands in 1835 inspired the earth-shattering 'Origin of the Species', a publication that altered man's conception of the origins of life.
And these islands have since become a paradise for tourists, scientists and ecologists alike. Today, the Galápagos Island of San Cristóbal is a place to sleep among sea lions, to walk along pristine beaches, interrupted only by the curious gazes of a multitude of comely marine iguanas and exotic birds.
"Naturally the word Galápagos is what guides people to this country," said Egüez.
Banking its future tourism potential on Galápagos, however, is indeed a losing proposition and one of the reasons for the country's inland reach. Simply growth for the Galapagos Islands is physically and ecologically impossible. The island are also at the edge of their carrying capacity, absorbing some 120,000 tourists yearly, a figure that almost trebled in the past five years alone.
And growth has to develop somewhere,
if tourism official's targets are to be reached. But Ecuador is getting
there, with consistent increases in tourism numbers on a yearly basis. In
2005, Ecuador attracted 860 thousand tourists of the 18.1 million visitors
to the South American continent, up 5.1 percent over the previous year.
Top countries of origin
of incoming tourism, according to Ecuador Tourism Ministry figures, were
Peru, the United States, Columbia, Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany.
An integral marketing plan of the Ecuadorian Ministry of Tourism continues to be ambitious, targeting increasing those numbers significantly in the coming years. Targets include attracting 1.1 million incoming tourists this year, and boosting that figure to 1.7 million by 2010. Hence the strategy to encourage travelers to Ecuador to experience the capital Quito, parts of the Amazon rain forest, the highlands, its volcanoes, its culture, its Pacific coastline, its beaches or its gastronomy.
Ecuador, life
at its purest
Take a polished advertising campaign dubbed 'Ecuador - Life at its purest',
published in the US edition of National Geographic Magazine - in collaboration
with the rainforest alliance - which sends a message of sustainable tourism,
and depicts reasons to visit the diverse regions of Ecuador.
One image of the award-winning
campaign depicts an indigenous man with the vast, impressive and expansive
Andes mountain-range in the distance inviting tourists to discover the people
and cultures of Ecuador, while another shows the pure and beautiful volcanic
mountains of the Andes, while another illustrates the lush tropical Amazonian
region. All this to show that Ecuador, is more than Galápagos.
Then there is the capital, Quito, situated high in the Andes mountain-range and nestled in between a host of snow-capped volcano's. Venture to the hill of El Panecillo in Ecuador's capital Quito, over 2,800 meters above sea level and perched high above the capital with a spectacular view of the expansive city is Pim's Restaurant, just metres from the 41-meter-tall monument of a Madonna assembled high above the hill.
This vista gives a birds-eye view of this city that since 1978 has been world heritage site. Here you will see architecture that could represent the best of the European heritage, as well as a unique cultural mix of the country's indigenous roots.
While putting the four corners of the ecologically and culturally diverse Ecuador on the map for international tourists is a challenge, one local contemporary dance choreographer admits that the task is difficult, since this country has long been on the periphery of some of its neighbours.
"The problem is that the
great capitals of culture in Latin America are Buenos Aires, Caracas, Bogota,
Santiago… and even Lima," said Kléver Viera, the director
the contemporary dance company Grupo El Arrebato.
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"Yet at the same time, this
has resulted in dance remaining authentic to itself, and created by our
culture, and what we are," he concludes.
Perhaps, discovering the least exploited parts of Ecuador is finding something
more pristine, natural and untouched. Being somewhat isolated sometimes
has its advantages.
