In El Almacén (Oaxaca) you will learn to make pulque like a local
We are against traveling by crossing items off a list, as we have already advocated several times. We prefer a much deeper and more sustainable way of getting to know the world, in which we fully immerse ourselves in the culture of the destination and connect with its people. **
That is precisely the way of traveling through Mexico that rutopia , an agency created by Sebastián Muñoz and Emiliano Iturriaga with proposals that range from diving into virgin cenotes or climbing volcanoes to visiting the crops of an island that cars do not reach, or learning to make pulque in the traditional way.
The two young Mexicans saw the light on a trip through El Triunfo (Chiapas): "We were working with a community to generate a tourism product that they could sell. And we realized that they had absolutely everything to be successful , from natural resources to organizational capacity," recalls Muñoz.
However, they were not enjoying such success. And they were not the only ones in that situation: the founder tells Traveler.es that there are more than 3,000 communities in Mexico that have launched their ecotourism projects, most of them have not yet produced the expected results. Analyzing the scenario, the friends realized that one of the problems was that those people they did not have enough tools to make themselves known effectively.
You will live with the local people and share their daily rituals
To solve this problem, Rutopía was born, a platform that allows travelers to explore these initiatives and enroll in them through the internet, giving the opportunity to travelers "in search of authentic experiences and outside the conventional routes " to "access rural communities, especially indigenous ones. They do it through "hosts who want to share the incredible cultural and natural wealth of their land", as its creators explain.
Rutopía, which has already brought together more than 20 of these groups under its umbrella, seeks to preserve the natural and cultural heritage of the country, ensuring that tourism revenues generated actually reach "where they are most needed".
In this way, 80% of the price of each experience goes to the hosts , who are in charge of designing the activities and accommodating users in their homes or in cabins or community hotels. The remaining 20% is used for the infrastructure of Rutopía itself.
The travel packages start at 250 euros per person for two days and one night (all included, except the means of transport to reach the destination) and can reach around 3,500 euros for this type of stay. Still, Muñoz maintains that their prices are between 30 and 40% below of the average of all-inclusive tours in the country.
Hand in hand with the locals
"With Rutopía you are not going to see experiences, you are going to live them", defends the professional. In fact, Muñoz argues that all the company's packages have four dimensions: the spiritual, in which the rituals of each community are explored; the "of the heart", which takes place when connecting with hosts and its environment -it is the most important for users, according to the founder-; the physical -because, as we have already mentioned, it is not about looking, but about experiencing for oneself- and the mental, since in each of the trips something is learned: to say words in the local language, to prepare recipes ancestral...
"You are going to accompany the locals in their daily experiences: you will go with them to the coffee plantation to collect coffee, you will learn to make the crafts of the area, you will cook their traditional dishes... They are truly transformative journeys ", culminate from the company.
A transformative journey