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Adventure and recovery in Aceh

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

It's still in its fledgling stage but tourism in Aceh, the Indonesian province devastated by the 2004 tsunami, is growing...

The province's government is firmly committed to ecotourism, with governor Irwandi Yusuf saying that if his province is to prosper in the long term it must safeguard its natural assets, particularly the inland forests and marine reserves.

To that end, various bodies, including Indonesia's tourism department and the United Nations Development Program, have launched a campaign to let the world know of Aceh's assets and its new tourism initiatives, most of which revolve around adventure tourism.

For example, the village of Mane in the Pidie district has developed white-water rafting trips and elephant trekking, both of which are providing jobs and income for the local community.

And as strange as it seems, there is also a place for what is described as tsunami tourism.

Lisa Heederik, a Dutch-born aid worker who came to Aceh to work on the reconstruction effort three years ago and who has established Aceh Adventure, a hiking and biking tour company, says travellers are keen to learn about what happened on Boxing Day in 2004.

''The thing is that Banda Aceh is unrecognisable from those early days,'' she says. ''You actually have to look carefully to find traces of the tsunami, so well it has recovered.''

See www.aceh-adventure.org and www.visitaceh.com.

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