Sustainability
Palaa Mayapo Ecolodge was born out of our vision to create the most inspiring and sustainable eco-lodge in the country. Using the traditional architecture of the Wayuu culture, the unique property has been carefully constructed to reflect this traditional culture, respect our environment and serve as an active resource for the community - all while providing our guests with a truly incomparable experience.
We rely on three pillars to offer sustainable tourism: environmental responsibility, nature and cultural conservation, and community empowerment.
Our unwavering commitment is guided by the United Nations Development Programme's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and each guest's stay directly supports efforts to conserve our natural resources, protect our cultural traditions and improve the quality of life for the residents of La Guajira.
Permaculture
- Caring for the earth
- Caring for people
- Fair share
Starting from these principles gives rise to implementing and creating resilient and sustainable systems to meet human needs by copying nature's tactics. Soil conservation, water and forest conservation, caring for animals and plants in a respectful way.
We develop projects with nearby rancherías so that they can organise their gardens, grow different products that are grown in the same region, thus being self-sufficient to support all the members of the ranchería.
If you want to know more about this project, we offer you a day trip with a tour guide, where you will learn about their customs and how they have been able to develop in bioagriculture and much more.
- Caring for the earth has to do with the care and conservation of soil, water and forests. - Caring for people refers to working for the good of oneself and others for the benefit of the group in order to satisfy basic needs, taking advantage of all existential resources. - Fair sharing is the commitment to collect and recycle products to return them to a new ecosystem.
Mayapo is a municipality in La Guajira, fantastically inhabited by its natives, with white sandy beaches, blue sea and strong winds, where they educate and demand respect for the environment, the soil, the water (sacred liquid in these lands), the animals and the plants, as these are their tools for a sustainable life. It is a place full of magic for total adrenaline sports.
Cultural Development in Guajira
It is to promote the cultural development of the regions of the country. Here in La Guajira it is a dry, arid region, where water is scarce, despite its adversity it has a wide diversity of biological, social and cultural character with great natural beauty and a rich indigenous culture. La Guajira stands out for its music, dances and handmade textiles. The Wayuu are the most numerous indigenous people of Colombia, they have their traditional language which is Wayuunaiki, they also have their own dance; the dance of the Yonna or Chichamays, is a dance of great significance for the indigenous people, with it they praise their ancestors. Their handicrafts are handmade, paying homage to their own tribe. They have a variety of items from handles to a beautiful and fine backpack. The artisans do this to make a living and to keep their ancestral heritage alive.
On 31 May and 1 and 2 June, the Wayuu Culture Festival is held in the municipality of Uribia. It is the main cultural event of the department of La Guajira and of the municipalities with Wayuu indigenous population in the State of Zulia, in the Republic of Venezuela.
It also has great mineral wealth; the Manaure salt mine, the El Cerrejon coal deposit, and important gas exploitation areas that supply the whole country, and which unfortunately have never reached their original inhabitants, the Wayuu indigenous people.
We need to have projects where we encourage and motivate the Wayúu community to learn Spanish as well, so that we can talk to them and address their needs and try to find solutions with commitments on both sides. They need educational, housing, health and food security projects.
Circular economy
The circular economy is based on the concept of "not using and throwing away" but on the contrary explaining us to share all the existing materials as many times as possible. How can we achieve this? By educating generation after generation to conserve our planet for the present and for future generations, so that everyone becomes aware of putting into practice the reduction of waste to a minimum, applying these principles
:
Share: To use, possess, distribute or give a thing in common or to do something jointly, for common enjoyment.
Lend: It is giving something to someone to use for a certain period of time and then return it, thus contributing to the achievement of a goal.
Rent: It is giving a person something to use for a period of time in exchange for money or some animal or material good.
Repair: It is to fix something that is broken or damaged in order to put it to use again.
Recycle: It is to submit a used material or waste, which is subjected to a process in which all or part of the material is recovered and used to make other products.
The circular economy model is based on the following essential principles to generate economic, natural and social capital:
Eliminate waste and pollution by design.
Mantener productos y materiales vigentes el mayor tiempo posible.
Recover natural systems by reusing and recycling materials.
Mayapo is located 25 minutes from Riohacha, a reservation of the municipality of Manaure in La Guajira, populated by the Wayuu Indians and where our Hotel PALAA MAYAPO ECOLODGE is located, a model hotel of the circular economy.
Palaa contributes to create awareness in the whole society, that if we make good use of existing products for the benefit of all in an intelligent, simple and easy way, in the long term we will imitate nature where everything is used because everything has value and where waste becomes a new resource.
The circular economy enables sustainable development goals to be achieved more efficiently and is part of economic strategies around the world.
In La Guajira, where we find the natives of these sacred lands, we can clearly see that circularity has been a way of life throughout their existence.
Inspiration and sustainable models for eco-friendly hotels
Rethink: It is to reconsider the sustainability strategy to be implemented in the hotel. The design is reconsidered as many times as necessary, maintaining the balance between the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development.
Reduce: It means actively working to reduce energy, consumption and waste that have an impact on the environment.
Reuse: It is putting into practice the activity of using and not throwing away, not discarding products or materials that can be reused for the same or different purposes for which they were created. Reuse is extremely important in terms of ecological impact.
Recycle: It is associated with the environment by the action of recovering recyclable material, sorting it and transforming it into new materials that can be used as new products or raw materials. The importance of recycling extends not only to the preservation of raw materials, but also to the reduction of the energy required for the manufacture of various products.
Respect: Environment is everything that surrounds us, it is the environment in which we live and which we must protect, it is our mother nature. Human activity modifies the environment, which is why it is so important to educate our children, the new generations, to explain to them the importance of respecting, valuing and protecting our ecosystem.
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