Francesco Bandarin, Heritage director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) arrived in Ecuador last week to take a firsthand look at the country and appraise the current situation that´s putting the future of the Galapagos Islands in harm´s way. "The visit seeks to strike the attention of the Ecuadorian authorities and the international community on the significance of the archipelago for today´s mankind," said Gustavo Lopez Ospina, UNESCO representative in the South American nation.

Mankind is tapping into the planet´s natural resources in an unfettered and unprecedented fashion for the past fifty years, thus weakening nature´s ability to provide people with such basic commodities as air and water and fight back against natural catastrophes, a recent UNESCO report reveals. Some 1,300 experts from 95 countries concluded in Paris that approximately 60 percent of the globe´s natural basic services -water, air, seafood and weather are some on a list of two dozen resources- are being depleted to perilous levels.

The San Antonio Ecological Estate in the Nicaraguan department of Boaco is tripping its toe into farming tourism in an effort to win its inclusion in the so-called Coffee Path as part of a travel package. The estate, located in the community of Filas Verdes some 20 miles from the main provincial city, is famous for its plantation of organic coffee.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, warned in 2003 that it could put the stone citadel on its list of at-risk sites after experts said unrestricted tourism and landslides had damaged Machu Picchu and its surroundings. "Today we will submit the Machu Picchu Master Plan to UNESCO, as Peru undertook to preserve its heritage," Maria Elena Cordova, a senior official at the National Institute of Culture, told Reuters.

The Inter American Tourism Institute has just opened its first course on ecotourism, aimed at executives, impresarios, officials, professionals, technicians and community groups linked to the environmental preservation and the conservation of natural areas, as well as tourist operations in those zones.

In the course of six years, some 2.5 million Argentineans have visited the Promised Land, the world’s only religious theme park that recreates biblical sites described in the New Testament. The park is a replica of Old Jerusalem and takes visitors back in time to a virtual trip to Palestine, where they can relive the history of Jesus Christ from his birth to his resurrection. The park is dotted with stone houses, ancient temples and dirt floors.