Travel agents

I have been pondering the issue of travel agents, tour guides, travel tours and the like to try to determine what I would like from these services versus what I feel I have gotten from them.
The first thing that comes to mind is that I don’t like the idea of traveling with a large group of strangers in a tour situation.  At first I thought that my objection was in being forced to follow the time and direction of the tour – which is part of the problem.  I also find that my encounters with tour groups have not been pleasant; the folks see to be extremely rude and self centered – promoting the idea of the “ugly American.”  As far as I can tell it isn’t limited to Americans, it has to do with traveling with a large group and that somehow carries the culture of the group along with them – which inevitably clashes with the local culture and customs.  I don’t think it is reflective of a nationality, but rather a mode of travel.
Upon further contemplation, the problem that I have with traveling in a large group has to do with the type of experience that is possible.  I am much more interested in the people and culture than in the “things” when I travel.  Experiencing or seeing the things gives me an excuse to move from place to place, but my interest is in meeting new and different people (who seem to always turn out to be amazingly the same).  In order to do this I want to slide between the currents as invisibly as possible.  I don’t want to change the flow, I want to observe and experience it.  Large groups of people in a tour completely change the environment that they travel through.  You can see the effect very forcefully if you watch what happens when a tour group shows up and finally leaves.  The enter experience of the place changes to take maximum advantage of the dollars that the tour group brings with them.  The local flow of life stops long enough to take advantage of the group, then it falls back into the normal pace of things once the tour has passed.  It is kind of like hunkering down for a tornado, and then coming out and resuming life after the storm.  I want to experience life where I am visiting without the storm.
One way to do this is to just dive in and wander about the new and strange country on your own.  The problem that I find with this is that I usually don’t find the interesting things to find, often don’t really contact any of the people because of language difficulties and other reasons, and have the risk of exposing myself to more danger than is necessary.  It seems to make sense to me to obtain assistance in moving through the unknown country.  This can be obtained either by hiring someone or “imposing” upon a friend.  The friend is of course the preferred approach, but is seldom feasible.  My wife and I toured Australia with friends who have lived there for many years and were totally spoiled by the experience because they knew the place, knew us, and we got to play together on our trips.  
Assuming that it is not possible to find a knowledgeable friend to act as a tour guide, then the option is to hire someone.  For me, this is the reason for going to a travel agent – to get expert assistance in getting the kind of trip/experience that I want.  Most travel agents seem to believe that their job is to book travel and accommodations.  In the age of the internet that is not necessary.  I am perfectly capable of finding and booking transportation and lodging, and can do it at a significantly reduced rate.  Travel agents are not the way to take a “bargain” trip.  
To be useful, travel agents must provide a service beyond simply booking the services such as transportation, accommodations and tours – I think they need to find ways to act as the traveler’s “agent.”  What I am looking for in terms of a travel agent and/or local guide is someone who will act in my behalf, as my agent – rather than as a person who seems to always be working to maximize their profits, or the profits of their friends.  I want a travel agent who will make sure that as I travel I feel like I have gotten a fair deal all along the way.  I am not pleased with spending $450 for a local tour before I go only to find that it is normally priced at $150 when I get there.  The extra $300 leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  I don’t like to find that I have been booked into a dump of a hotel that is located across the street from a nicer place at a lower price.  Basically, what I am paying for is someone to do the foot work required to find out what a fair deal is rather than my having to do that on my own.
When I get to wherever I am going, I like the idea of obtaining a local guide that can show me around, find ways for me to experience the people and culture, and help me get “good” deals on purchases of goods and services.  Basically, I want them to act as my advocate and/or agent helping me to find my way around.  I would also like them to assist me in getting my bearings so that I can explore on my own, in relative safety and in ways that maximize enjoyment of their country.  I don’t want to always be taken to the stores of their friends to purchase over prices, crummy trinkets.  I don’t want to just go to the places where the big tours visit, I don’t want to always be on the lookout for price gouging and shoddy merchandise.  I want someone to help me find good things for reasonable prices.  I guess I want them to treat me as a friend, rather than as a source of extra income.  I am of course willing to pay for these services, but don’t want to feel that there is always “extra” income in the form of kickbacks.  I want the guide to pay attention to my interests, rather than just follow the course of most profits for them and their friends.  
Examples of what I am looking for are directions to good restaurants that the locals use and that serve local food and local prices (rather than very expensive restaurants that serve “tourist” food), places where locals go to find entertainment (local music, etc – something besides casinos and whore houses would be nice for a change), assistance in understanding how to judge and price local arts and crafts, etc.  In short, I am hoping for someone who is there to help me rather than help themselves and the local economy to my detriment.  I would rather stumble around by myself than be in a situation where I am always having to be on guard from the person who I have hired to help.  
It is my expectation that travel agents will have created a network of trusted contacts that can assist them in providing good services and a reasonable price, and that can assist me as their client once I get there in finding trusted guides, services and goods.  If travel agents can’t provide this kind of quality service, then I have no need for their services, I am better off doing the best that I can do by myself.

  

Trip to Panama

My brother and I made a trip to Panama a couple of weeks ago. The initial purpose was to take our father through the Panama Canal, but it turns out that he didn’t feel up to it, so we went by ourselves. The area was pretty interesting from the historical point of view. It was fun to find myself in the middle of the areas that we have been taught about the with regard to the early explorations of the new world. Columbus was there, Balboa is evident everywhere, the great pirates sailed these seas (Henry Morgan, Sir Francis Drake, etc.). The cannons shown in the photos were intended to protect the gold and other valuables stored at Portabella, on the Atlantic Coast. After many pirate raids, they finally put up massive, well armed fortifications on both sides of the harbor. These armaments were never used, which either means that they came too late and were no longer needed, or they were so formidable that it was not necessary to us them. Maybe it was a kind of “cold war” tactic that was just too much to attack.
We did manage a trip through the canal, which was totally different than what I had in my mind’s eye. The canal is not a big ditch across the isthmus, but rather a few locks and ditches connecting huge manmade lakes. There are three identical pairs of locks on each side, bring the ships up to the level of Lake Gatun. There is a cut through the continental divide that is almost 8 miles long, and then the trip though Lake Gatun is about 15 miles. There is also higher elevation lake that supplies water to Lake Gatun and electrical power to the project. The whole thing is a VERY impressive project. They are beginning the construction of a third set of locks paralleling the two that are already in place.
Some of the stories about the building of the canal are pretty impressive. For example, when the French were attempting to build the canal they had so many corpses to deal with that they put them into barrels, pickled them, and sold them around the world for medical specimens. They sold so many that they funded the construction of a very large, modern for the times, hospital. Unfortunately, they hadn’t figured out what the cause of the malaria and yellow fever was. In an attempt to make a pleasant setting, and to keep the ants under control, they planted lots of well watered flowers, and put the bed posts in containers of water. This created wonderful environments for the mosquitoes, bringing the cause of the problem right into the hospital – where it enhanced the availability of corpses for sale. They lost 35,000 people in the hospital, and possibly that many more who died outside of the hospitals. At one point they had so many critically sick people that instead of admitting them to a hospital bed, they were admitted to lay in their coffin! That would be a pretty good clue about how sick you were.
One day we took a tour to an “Indian Village”. It was a rather confusing event to me. We got there by outboard motor powered dugout canoe, which was pretty neat. They first took us up the river to a waterfall, which brought up all of images of heading up a river with the natives in the middle of the rain forest (which was in fact what we were doing). We came upon a large dugout with hundreds of cases of Coke Cola stacked in it. It turned out that this was a film crew filming a Coke advertisement. You just can’t get away from civilization any more.
After the walking trip to the water fall (I managed to slip and fall into the creek on the way back from the falls), we went to the village. The village appeared to be in the style of a real village, but the people didn’t live there. They worked there during the day giving shows to the tourists and selling stuff that they said they made. Who knows if they really made it or not. There were some nice baskets, wooden carvings and small carved animals. I left my donation at the souvenir hut. The ladies danced while the men played music. It was fun, and nice to see them doing this, but it was also kind of weird being some sort of “voyeur” looking at their cloths, music, buildings, etc. The ladies were topless, so that was kind of odd too because of the “presentation” aspect of the events. The story about them was that the tribe had lived in the rain forest near a border (I didn’t figure out which one) as farmers. It got the point that they couldn’t get their crops to market, so they moved to this rain forest, which then because a national forest – meaning they couldn’t farm there either. In an attempt to keep their village together and live the life that they wanted to live, they began this tourist business. If that is all true, then I guess it is appropriate to go and see what they have to show. If everyone spent as much on souvenirs as my brother and I did, they should be doing quite well.
There is a lot of very poor people in the country, especially in the cities. Most of the cities are what we would call “slums” with extremely poor folks with no obvious source of income. We were warned many times to not go to those locations any time of the day. In fact, the “safe” locations for the tourists butted right up to those that are not safe. We got shooed out by the “tourist police” whenever we got too close to the other side of the street. It was kind of hard to tell where we were because it all looks about the same, terrible. The business district of Panama City is modern, clean and safe. However, we couldn’t find any interesting entertainment in town. We had lots of folks offer to help us find strip joints, “sex clubs”, “clean” ladies, and the like – but no place that just had local music and people enjoying themselves. There are lots of small, and not very interesting, casinos in the area – this is where you find the “clean girls”. Not much for us to do. I suppose you could find more if you spent a bit more time.
I found that the tourist support folks (hotels, tour companies, hotel transportation, etc) to be extremely untrustworthy. It wasn’t that they were dangerous or anything like that, but extortion is their way of doing business. I constantly felt like I was surrounded by a bunch of thieves trying to get all that they could out of me. There was never a time that it seemed like any of these folks were in the least bit interested in our welfare; it was totally focused on making as much money, in the shortest period of time, as possible. I tend to be kind of lax about this sort of thing, so ended up on the wrong end of the deal many times. I started to learn to treat everyone as a bunch of lying cheats, but that took much of the fun out of the trip. My brother made a personal connection with one of the bell hops at the hotel, which started to make all of the difference. He helped us find inexpensive transportation, good local restaurants, things of interest, etc. However, he was certainly not the norm and it only happened because of a personal connection. My advice if you decide to go there – BEWARE, you are not seen as a friend, you are seen as a mark!!