Our favorite trip souvenir is a beat-up, sun-bleached baseball cap that says Costa Rica on it.  It’s not beat up because we’ve worn it so much – it came that way.  We went on a horseback-riding trip in Monteverde and bonded with our guides.  One of them admired a baseball cap one of us had on and we, in turn, admired his.  We decided to trade and never regretted it.  We have a great cap that reminds us of one of our best days in Costa Rica as well as a Tico we will never forget.   It’s also an eco-conscious souvenir since it’s second-hand.  Granted, it didn’t stimulate the local economy, but don’t worry, we also bought some cool tie-dye shirts in Monteverde.

Other souvenirs we’ve accumulated that are more eco/socially conscious than cheesy future landfill filler:

• Locally grown coffee (Costa Rica)
• Local snacks like dried pineapple covered with red chili (Mexico)
• Road maps (Ireland) – reminding us how lost we got
• Cookbook written and published by one of our favorite Bed and Breakfasts (Costa Rica)
• Basil infused olive oil (Italy)
• Photos we took framed by local merchants (Chile)
• CDs of local music (almost everywhere we go)

There are many ways to remind yourself of your trip or bring home interesting items for your friends and family without adding to the landfills of the world or to the pockets of the far-removed owners of huge Walmart-like tourist superstores.  Be creative and send in your own photos of cool socially-conscious or eco-friendly souvenirs – we will publish them here!

Tags: coffee, cookbook, Costa Rica, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, olive oil, pineapple chili, Souvenirs

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 7:32 am and is filed under Ecotourism, Europe, Latin America, Socially conscious tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.