One of the things that I do while I'm working with communities that are close to major roads is help to set up cave tourism. I've been fortunate that we've had a lot of help from USAID and the Ministry of Culture in that, so we can afford to do a good job and adequately train people to manage caves. Since there's such extreme poverty in northern Alta Verapaz and the southern Peten, anything that will end up helping the people and help them to value the caves is a good thing.

I got into a conversation with members of the Ministry of Culture yesterday about a cave that is being opened for tourism in July, and gave them a checklist of stuff that I think is important to have successful cave tourism:

1) a willing and interested community
2) ease of access to the cave
3) ease of transit through the cave
4) easily created paths that don't put the tourists, the cave, or artifacts in danger
5) a clean and impressive cave

Does anyone have anything to add to this?