Tis the season for family travel with school out and many businesses shut down over the Christmas & New Year’s holidays.  Hawaii is one of the most popular destinations with the island of Maui a top favourite.  We were here in Sept 2013 using Ultimate Reward points transferred to Hyatt to stay at the Hyatt Regency Maui.  This hotel, like many others in tropical locations has several captive parrots in cages and on stands, a few penguins and some flamingoes.  While this is no bona-fide eco-tourism experience, what you can do is use the opportunity to educate your children about the native habitat of the birds and get them interested in future travel where they can see the birds in the wild.

As you wander through the lobby to the swimming pool, you will see these birds.  If you don’t have pet parrots, this may be the first time for your children to see live parrots and penguins up close.  The Hyatt Regency has provided signs that give more information about the birds and where they come from.  This is a good chance to show your children how far away the bird’s native land is and show them what the bird’s habitat really looks like.  Here on MTTW, I have bird profiles for many parrot species (adding new ones all the time) and many other birds in which I give links to other websites with scientific information and videos of the bird in the wild such as the African Grey profile.

Even better if they do a school science project about wild birds, they could get their whole class interested in eco-tourism!

Depending on the age of your children, a trip to Africa or South America may be a few years away but you can get them excited about the possibility and maybe get them to start saving up for such a trip!