Baja family holiday in Mexico

Planet

Southern Baja (Baja Sur) is a haven for marine life, separated from the mainland by the Sea of Cortez the far end of the Baja Peninsular has an ecosystem that’s both varied and beautiful. Because of the concentration of marine life such as whale sharks, grey whales, humped back whales and sea lions we can keep transport distances to a minimum and we do not need to use any internal flights in order to keep carbon emissions to a minimum. All transportation we use is shared by how ever many happen to be in the group. Whether this is an overland vehicle or boat.
We are fortunate enough to benefit from year round sunshine almost so accommodation energy can be mainly run using solar currently: Los Colibris Casitas is 75% solar energy and we hope to be 100% within the year Both Camp Cecil de la Sierra and Camp Cecil de la Isla run 100% on solar energy
Trips each day include hikes, paddle boarding, kayaking or simply swimming so most activities are Carbon neutral by nature. We are also part of ATTA's Neutral Together program so we are carbon neutral as a company.
Our chefs in all 3 locations happily prepare both vegetarian and vegan food that is super delicious. This is not difficult to achieve in Baja and 80% of all our food is sourced locally.

ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE

All 3 of our properties are single-use plastic-free, buy in bulk, are engaged in active waste reduction programs, recycle and compost organic waste. The 3 Babisuri Suites at Los Colibris are rammed earth construction with a living garden roof.
We have several bird feeders and one bat box at Los Colibris and lots of plants/flowers for pollinators. There are no artificial wildlife aids at the camps. The trips include entry fees for the Sierra La Laguna Biosphere Reserve and Archipelago Isla Espiritu Santo Marine Reserve.

When available on a trip we do turtle hatchling releases with local conservation groups. The whale shark fees directly support the management of the whale shark program in the Bay of La Paz, and our park conservation fees help pay for the monitoring of the sea lions at Los Islotes.

We are founding members of/major contributors to Alianza Cero Basura and the CEO of our partner is on the board of directors and am charged with fundraising. Our mission at Alianza Cero Basura is to dramatically improve local waste management systems and to change the relationship our community has with trash. Our goal in doing so is to improve the health and wellbeing of our communities, our environment, and our economy, and to contribute as a community to the global climate agenda. Ultimately, we want to be a united community that produces less waste, takes responsibility for the waste it does produce, and supports a circular economy in which waste is repurposed by vibrant local businesses.

The lagoon in front of Los Colibris is being overtaken by Arundo Donax, an invasive weed species. We have been working for several years to get the lagoon and the surrounding ecosystem declared an Area Critica that can be protected. We have made some progress but it is taking time.

People

All accommodations are locally owned on this trip. Everything we do is local. No mass tourism/mass market opportunities work in this environment here.


EMPLOYMENT, INCLUSIVITY AND DIVERSITY

100% of staff are from Mexico. We have a truly excellent team of guides who are all Mexican. Roughly 20% of the people are from the local community (it's a small community)

We rank among the top adventure companies in Mexico in terms of the number of female guides and managers that we have. We have articles that can be sourced on line , Guide Like A Girl is one of them

We pay our team extremely well, well above minimum wages.

We do have an active strategy to hire more female guides and a good number of our staff members are part of the LGBTQ community. We are fairly homogeneous in terms of nationality but we're really about giving people a local experience with local guides and local staff so we don't have a high motivation to change that.
We also have many guests from the LGBTQ community.

We have taken blind people, one-legged people and folks with varying forms of cognitive issues on these trips but we really have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis as trip suitability completely depends on the outlook of the individual and/or their family members.

We take local kids on both day trips and overnight trips about once a year.