Eco-Lodge Owner & NGO Director, Peru

Tell us more about the Lazy Dog Inn and the Andean Alliance.

The Lazy Dog Inn is a sustainable lodge that my husband and I built in Huarez, Peru. The Andean Alliance is an NGO that aims to provide local social benefits, on a sustainable basis, working with the lodge. They both work together hand in hand – one supports the other.

How did you come to build the Lazy Dog Inn?

In our late thirties, my husband and were drawn to the idea of actually living and working in South America for a couple of years. My husband, an environmental consultant, found work with a Calgary-based company that was working in Ecuador, which was where we wanted to live. But what began as a two-year trip has now been 22 years living abroad.

For seven years, we lived in Ecuador. My husband continued working as an environmental consultant, while I was helping friends to manage an eco-lodge in northern Peru. It provided a great, strong basis for learning what the tourism business was all about in South America.

What I’ve learned though that is if you want to find work abroad, you’ll need to have multiple skills and interests. When we lived in Ecuador, I worked as an English teacher for the Fulbright Commission. I also worked with an Italian NGO that worked with street children in the centre of Quito and ran the South American Explorers Club.

We had a dream to build an eco-lodge there, in Ecuador, but by 1999, the country was experiencing some political and social instability. We just couldn’t see ourselves staying there. In 2003, we faced the question: do we go back to Canada or find another place?

At that time, Peru was coming out of a period of instability and was becoming a much more attractive place for investment. Their GDP was good; their government was stable. We had always travelled to the Cordillera Blanca area for hiking and we had good friends there. To make a long story short, we were able to secure land for an eco-lodge, and so in late 2003, we drove from Ecuador to Peru in a pick-up truck with all of our belongings and two dogs.

Can you share more about the community approach you’ve taken?

It’s important for people to understand that you don’t just show up and put yourself down in the middle of an established community without finding a way for integration. We never had any desire that we would become campesinos, or live with people in their homes, but we wanted to find ways to help enrich the lives of others without it being a ‘hand out’. Our idea was the community would be a part of the solution.

Geographically speaking, we’re eight kilometres away from any local town. We live close to four small, campesino (farming) villages. For six months, we held a series of pre-arranged meetings with people who lived in the area to share our plans and discuss the impact, or possible community benefits. It allowed people to ask us questions, critique the concept, and offer ideas. We also began meeting with community leaders, nurses, teachers to do a needs assessment with the surrounding communities.

Eventually, based on what we heard, we decided to build a community building to house a variety of community activities: a women’s knitting business that employs 16 women, and a community-run café that’s open during the tourist high season. Recently, we donated the land to the community, so it’s a publicly-run project on public land.

As manager of the Lazy Dog Inn, what does a typical day look like for you?

There’s no typical day for me. I think it’s much more than a job, it’s a lifestyle choice. If I wanted to ‘get rich’ from this job, I wouldn’t be here. Four to five times a week, I get up and go for a run. We live at 12,000 feet in altitude. The land is all park, farmland, and rocky hills.

My day starts at 6am when a big truck comes down the road, trying to sell corn feed for the horses. The driver goes “Panca! Panca! Panca!” There’s always a range of guests with different needs. So I’ll start breakfast for those who arrived on the night bus from Lima, or those who are up early because they’re going hiking for the day.

After breakfast, I do food preparation by looking at menus, ensuring I’ve got what I need, or I’ll have to go to town. I cater to guests’ needs – they may want to go horseback riding. I also have to manage our staff; to make sure they understand where they need to be, and what they should be doing. I might zip down to the NGO project to make sure things are running smoothly there, and to see if they need support. I have to get lunch ready for guests, then maybe I’ll go to town to pay bills, or buy food and building supplies.

There’s always something to do, whether it’s preparing a meal, taking laundry off the line, or getting the sauna ready for guests. The whole thing goes until 9 or 10pm. That’s a typical day during the high season when we have a constant stream of guests.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

There’s been great gratification in working with the community and particularly our staff. It’s very rewarding to watch people learn, grow and become independent. We do have flexibility with our schedules, which I enjoy. We have to be very responsible and aware of what our staff and communities’ needs are, while at the same time taking care of the needs of guests because without tourists we don’t have a business. Without the business, we don’t have an NGO. I feel very satisfied when sharing our approach with clients who are genuinely interested in getting to know local people, visiting their homes, and supporting their work.

What are some of the challenges of running The Lazy Dog Inn?

Dealing with local level politics, or national politics can be challenging. It can be very frustrating. Often, you can come up against these kinds of buffers, or attitudes from individuals that because we’re not part of the local population, we owe them something. It’s very challenging to deal with these attitudes in a sensitive way.

The other issue is that it’s not a 365-day business. Most people who work in tourism would agree that there are challenges that arise because there’s a high season and a low season. During the high season, for example, I have to hire an assistant manager, but because there’s so few guests during the low season, I can’t afford to keep that person. So every year I’m training someone new, and after twelve seasons, that starts to get a little exhausting.

What kinds of abilities and skills do you need to succeed in this work?

People who excel in what we do are those who have a fairly broad skill set; those who can identify their skills and know when to apply them in different situations. It’s important to be open and fair, and to demonstrate patience, but it’s also critical to maintain your standards and ethics. It’s important to be a great communicator and practice empathy. In terms of cross-cultural management, you need to make sure your staff understand their jobs – not simply telling people what to do, but teaching them so they understand what it is they’re doing. Most importantly, at times, you’ll need to be okay with being uncomfortable.

Do you see any openings in the tourism / eco-tourism industries in South America at the moment?

At the moment, there’s a bit of a boom in places like Ecuador and Peru for eco-tourism, and there are lots of opportunities. It depends where you go. There are companies developing projects in certain areas, and other areas with great potential for opportunities, but aren’t yet being developed.

There are plenty of opportunities, but if you wanted to develop an eco-lodge experience from the ground-up, you wouldn’t see results in a year. We’re talking five, ten years. How many people want to put that kind of time in to get results? You need to do something new, unique, slightly off the wall. Why would you want to do what everyone else is doing? What can you do to stand out? You need money, time, and patience to do it. Yes, there are opportunities, but you have to recognize it could take you 5 to 10 years to make it happen.

Do you think it’s important to get a particular education, or specialize in this field?

Yes, and no. We see many people who come with degrees – say, in international development – but they have no work skills. International development is great because it gives you an understanding of the world, but it’s very theoretical. From my observations, those who come with degrees but no practical experience, these people often struggle. Those who excel are people who have lived practically and have a desire to be involved in self-exploration and recreational activities. I would recommend studying tourism, but also to put your studies into practical use before looking for international work. Theoretical knowledge and skills are important, but they’re not as transferable as being able to get hands-on, get in and get dirty.

For people who are interested to work in eco-tourism, what’s your best advice?

If you’re interested in developing an eco-tourism project, you’ll have to look ahead in your future and accept the fact that you’ll be living away from friends and family in your home country. Sometimes you’ll feel a desire to go home. You’ll have to get used to that, which isn’t easy.

Financially, you’ll need enough of a buffer to get started on a project, and to hire a local leader, or project coordinator. Where I’ve seen projects fail is when, say, younger people want to do it, but they also want to have a family. They have to ask themselves ‘What is the future for my family here? Where will my kids get educated? Is there a school system? Do I have to create my own school? What’s the healthcare like?’ It’s important for people to research the history of the country. To ask: what are the potential pitfalls? What’s the potential for political strife that would make life hard? What’s the support of the community? Will they be welcoming? It’s important to put a lot of thought into these questions and to consider how you can make a long-term project work, realistically.