Buenas tardes! My name is Stacey Hollis (@stacebird on Instagram) and I am a professional birding and tropical ecology & wildlife tour guide with a specialty in ecotourism and environmental education so we can learn as we explore rainforests, coral reefs, mangrove ecosystems what makes them so incredibly important. A large part of my guiding is that I’m always explaining how these ecosystems function and interact, every tour is always with an informative and fascinating exploration of our biodiversity of tropical ecosystems that I simply adore sharing in depth with visitors to the Bocas del Toro archipelago.
I have guided in Bocas del Toro for six years, four of which were with Tranquilo Bay Eco-Adventure Lodge, it’s where I truly started out my life here in Bocas, a place I now call home. I have taken a jump into independent eco-guiding and now with an emphasis on local indigenous potential ecoguides. As I approach my second year of independence, I feel honored to have had a successful first high season and am finding out how much is involved, logistically, that I never had to worry about working as a team, everyone working at Tranquilo Bay Eco-Adventure Lodge catering to every one of its guest. Well we were able to facilitate the guest experience through an array of background forces, including the queen of logistics who makes it all seem effortless while I am learning (sometime tripping and falling) how much time logistics take to make a for a perfect, seamless ecotour daytrip for future guests.
Through guiding, and as I practice and learn how to perfect my methods of marketing and logistics I can feel like I’m taking priority care of my guests as we share phenomenal experiences exploring nature together. And it is meaningful to me to share with my guests an in depth learning experience on tours so that they clearly understand the incredible, vital importance of these ecosystems and how we rely on them to stay healthy such that the tropical biodiversity can still carry out vitally important ecosystem services that humankind relies upon and how these systems are facing a future that is uncertain greatly due to our own, increasing human impact on mother earth. Education leads to awareness and spurs wider education and greater awareness..this is a large reason why I guide, so that I can reach people and show them personally what I’m discussing.
I’m now in my sixth year of guiding, I’ve taken many guests on a whole array of tour offerings including to Tranquilo Bay for their day trip and monumental 66ft birding tower, also the famous Zapatillas cays for their beautiful beaches and fascinating flooded forest, the Nivida Bat Cave with intricate formations aging millions of years of age, I’ve taken guests snorkeling in a variety of different hard and soft coral reef ecosystems, I love to lead paddling tours exploring the mangroves and explain how they hold so much importance that isn’t widely known even though we rely on them enormously, and as always, taking my guests hiking through some of our beautiful, richly diverse tropical lowland rainforests looking for wildlife and a variety of birding tours in throughout archipelago are an experience to be had, we have so many ecosystems in this province that the birding (and wildlife viewing) is a delight, year round.
Always my ecotours include a wealth of interesting and important information about these sensitive and fascinating ecosystems, including how we can protect them for future generations to enjoy.
Protecting the nature of Bocas is priority, we’ve done enough harm and we need to be made aware of what is happening to our ecosystems and how they have long been unbalanced by our own human existence. For this reason and my own passion and love for the birds here in Bocas and beyond, as a bird guide I do not use birdsong or callback recordings to show my guests birds that are hesitant to approach or are being pushed away by our presence and are just out of sight.
We’re already harming their habitat so much, there’s no reason we need to interrupt their daily life with fake calls or songs that cause a calm bird to suddenly become completely agitated and thrown off pursuing its essential needs to fight off an invisible intruder. And then it can’t find it so it gets even more frazzled (every movement not contributing to its wellbeing cost precious calories). I could go on, but here’s to say, I don’t do callback on birding tours which is actually becoming more and more common as more birders join the ranks and environmental awareness and education continues to grow.
My guiding isn’t just focused on birds, but also my guests. Always is safety and comfort first and I always give my guests every ounce of my attention and care while we are together. I have had repeated great success with my tours, often apparent through the great tips and that I invariably end up staying in touch with many of my guests through social media as we’ve had such a ball together and have become true friends. I’ve even had the honor of return guests, which always means a great deal to me.
If you’d consider Bocas Biodiversity, you will get a hardworking and very connected guide who takes her work very seriously. As part of Bocas Biodiversity I use funds for my work with local indigenous Ngäbe to improve English and to help them toward a future position as a Bocas eco-guide if they are so interested, considering they already have the eagle eyes to spot wildlife, I’d love to boost them in any way I can and help them see they’re already hugely valuable as future guides!
Thanks very much for reading and I look forward to being in touch should anyone care to reach out! I offer customized ecotours, birding ecotours, nature and wildlife ecotours, paddle and/or snorkle tours.
Please contact me with any questions about tours, cool wildlife you’re hoping to see, where you should stay in Panama during your travels here, anything and everything, simply contact me via stacebird@gmail.com or WhatsApp +1 240-672-7363 if you have any questions at all.
And check out my GoFundMe to learn more about my work with Ngabe indigenous who want to join me to practice english and work towards becoming eco-guides. Read more about it here!
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