Tag: guides

Guiding Lights

For years we scoffed at hiring a guide when we traveled, figuring we could read the books, or ask around and figure out most stuff about sights on our own. We looked at groups in museums, massed before a work of art and listening to a guide drone on and on about the artist, the symbolism, the technique …. and we winced. Probably we were scarred by many trips to the old Soviet Union and their pedantic guides.

But in recent years, we have learned to hire a guide to get a really good overview of a city, or when we want a deep dive into the details of a site. We learned on our Zimbabwe safari that without the guides we would have missed a lot, even giraffes standing right in front of us among the trees. In Costa Rica, we would never have seen a spider monkey or identified it’s call. In Spain, we might have missed the Griffon vultures—one of the biggest birds on the planet. Yep, a good guide, particularly a private guide or small group guide is usually worth every penny you pay.

We’re casual bird watchers — we don’t get up at the crack of dawn to visit sewage treatment ponds or horribly remote locations. Our life lists are pretty hit and miss. But we do enjoy stopping on a walk to look at a bird. Our identification skills are pretty lame, so when we’re in a nature lover’s paradise, we hire a guide. Case in point: Monteverde in Costa Rica.

Six years ago we had booked a birding tour through a kiosk at a hostel/backpacker hotel/cafe in St. Elena. The guide turned out to be fabulous. So for our latest trip we hunted him down online (luckily Peter had recorded his name in our journal from our trip six years ago).

Adrian is exactly what you want in a guide. First and foremost, he is wildly enthusiastic. He leaves you with the impression that he not only loves his job, but he simply enjoys a walk looking for birds. When we spotted a rare one, he was more excited than we were. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” He would say, grabbing his spotting scope and trotting off with us closely following, “This one is special.”

With 30 years of experience, he knew every sound, every nook and cranny in the Curi Cancha Reserve. We were surprised that he wasn’t taking us back to the more famous Monteverde Reserve just down the road where we had been six years ago. But as he explained, Monteverde had become way too crowded and had imposed too many restrictions on visitors and guides. Another advantage of a great guide, we thought, as we toured Curi Cancha, most of the time by ourselves.

First question he asked us before we took off? “Who is keeping the list.” For each bird we saw, he patiently and deliberately repeated the name several times, even spelling it if needed. He did complain that they kept changing the official names of birds which made his job challenging at times. His upbeat demeanor carried us through the less than ideal weather. After all, it’s called the Cloud Forest for a reason.

When the other guides zigged, he zagged, leading us into quieter parts of the forest. He knew where the owl generally hung out (it didn’t show for us) and where to find the spectacular resplendent quetzal, the star attraction of the Cloud Forest. But as the other groups gathered in front of the tree where the quetzals pick fruit, he took us back into the woods where it would sit to digest it’s meal. In short, he knew the ropes and had a few tricks up his sleeve! In the end, we saw 48 different species in four hours!

When he spotted a bird, he quickly set up his spotting scope, lined up the bird and stood back so we could take a look. If we wanted, he used the scope and our smartphones to capture dramatic pictures of the birds. When the birds moved too quickly, he used a green laser, pointing just below the bird, careful not to hit it with the light, so we could find it with our binoculars. He also knew which birds would fly away from the light and used the laser very judiciously.

And since we aren’t purists, we didn’t care that some of our bird sightings happened at a cafe with bird feeders. We enjoyed the mid-tour break for coffee almost as much as we enjoyed seeing the birds clustered around the feeders.

He didn’t just talk about the birds, we also got a lesson in the plants around us and the evolution of eco-tourism in Costa Rica. The wild pigs, known as peccaries, are new to Curi Cancha and were originally shy, but have learned that within the park they have nothing to fear — until the pumas choose to return, too. Adrian made us sure we saw the tarantula, and poisonous Green Pit Viper. These guides are all trained, many with college degrees in ecology or environmental studies.

But the great guides don’t just show you the sights, they also give you a glimpse into their community. Of course, we talked about the pandemic and it’s impact on his life, how a frugal lifestyle meant he had money in savings to survive. He had suffered a medical scare two years ago that brought him closer to his family and helped reorder his priorities. But he also shared how the Costa Rican medical system worked for him. He now takes more days off and limits the number of tours per week. And he gave us a clue to one aspect of how the tourist industry works when he told us next time to contact him directly for a better price on the tour. (adrianmendezc@hotmail.com)

As we ended our day the sun came out and we said to Adrian, “see you next year!”

Leading the Blind: Our African Guides

We had used nature guides before—Costa Rica, Yosemite, Vancouver Island. Without them our uninformed urban eyes see very little. But in Zimbabwe, the guides are absolutely critical and a wonderful part of the African experience. It is possible to drive yourself through Zimbabwe’s national parks, but Themba, our guide in the Hwange National Park, laughed at how frequently they end up following a guide’s vehicle to see the animals. We also found out that beyond the obvious tracking skills, our guides were raconteurs, encyclopedias of local knowledge and history, security guards, and, occasionally, baristas and bar tenders in the bush.

Our guide at the Ruckomechi camp on the Zambezi River in northern Zimbabwe was a young man of about thirty, Mundoga. Our guide in Hwange National Park, Themba, was a study in contrasts—but more about Themba later.

Mundoga was a fast talker with a wicked sense of humor.

Constant banter and joking. “Hey, Peter, there’s a huge crocodile…I think he’s dead….would you go over and check please.” He had nicknames for many of the birds—the Jesus bird because it walked on water (jacana), Cain and Abel bird because the one of the two chicks invariably pushes its sibling out of the nest (Fisher eagle), the good husband bird because it fed the female (the little bee eater). And when we’d hit a very bumpy patch on the road and the Jeep became a bone rattling experience, he’d turn and smile….”African massage”.

Despite the humorous banter, we learned very quickly that Mundoga was incredibly skilled, intense and knew every inch of this huge park and its wildlife.It took him seven years, much of it in university, to become a guide—culminating with a comprehensive and very expensive test to get a guide’s license. Tourism is, however, about the only real industry left in Zimbabwe, and one of the few places to find jobs, so guiding is a sought after profession. Good work, but still with its downsides. His schedule was 54 days on (seven days a week) and then 14 days off. His wife and three sons—18 months, 6, and 9 —were a long’s day and two bus rides away.

We did two game drives a day set by when animals are active —one in the early morning, starting at first light (difficult for those of us who hadn’t seen a sunrise in years) and one in the late afternoon extending into the evening after the sunset. We were thankful because the midday October heat was punishing. As we drove, Mundoga would give lessons on the flora, stop to identify birds or small animals. He would scan the horizon for large game and would spot them well before any of us had even see a thing. Kudus, eland, impala, warthogs, sable antelope, Cape buffalo—all around us, and we would likely have missed them. He would then maneuver the Jeep into a position to intersect the animals and wait—giving us a chance to get great pictures.

The one exception were the elephants—they were everywhere, often in the middle of the road and, not surprisingly, difficult to miss.

But It was the big cats which brought out Mundoga’s extraordinary skills. The second day we were at the Rukemechi camp on the morning drive, another guide radioed that he had located a leopard nearby. Mundoga sped to the location in “Ferrari Safari” mode, as he put it, and when we got there the leopard was barely visible in the undergrowth.

On a very good hunch based on years of experience, he took us back to the same spot later to find the leopard clearly visible on branch in a very large acacia tree.

Our last morning at breakfast Mundoga asked us if we had heard the male lions roaring last night? Of course, we hadn’t. He would find them for us—for sure. Almost immediately he found fresh lion tracks. “They’re out there, I know it!”he said, pointing off to a large open area. We circled the area several times—nothing. You could sense his frustration. But then luckily we ran into a researcher studying wild dogs and, yes, he had seen two males five minutes ago. Off again, picking up more tracks. Several more frustrating minutes, and then, turning a sharp corner, two spectacular young male lions, resting in the shade. Mission accomplished.

Our guide in Hwange National Park, Themba, was older than Mundoga as his gray hair indicated.

Themba had risen to manager status in the Davison Camp and was clearly highly respected by his colleagues. Themba grew up in a small village in the bush and lamented that his three sons had no interest in returning to his village and that life. He loved the bush and his knowledge was tempered with a close connection to the land.“You rub this plant on your skin to repel bugs…you use smoke to catch an aardvark…this is how you snare a steenbok.” He admitted at one time the he had been a poacher—not for money but for food for his family. He was now a passionate conservationist, and a little embarrassed by his past. His family scrimped and saved enough money to send to him to a Quaker high school, a boarding school, and to college. He took the guide’s test and studied hard because he said he only had the money to take the test once. Failing was not an option. He had a deep, husky voice with a booming laugh.“Good people, here is what Themba proposes for the day…” he would say, usually referring to himself in the third person. He knew every bird in the park in all its variants, had all the superb tracking skills of Mundoga, and an intimate knowledge of the bush.He found lions everyday and pulled the Jeep right up next to them for our photo ops.

He pointed out every interesting detail on the elephants—this one a three split trunk—rare he said—this one was pregnant, this one had an ear disease that would cause it to have a blind spot on its left side.He located the rarest of the antelopes for us.He found the largest male giraffe in the park.

Themba’s real passion came out in our walk through the bush. Armed with a rifle, he lead us single file off into the scrub land.

Even without any large animals, this walk was magical. He would stop and talk to owls, imitating their calls.

He pointed out porcupine tracks, edible fungus, the wild basil his mother used for fragrance around their home, he showed us how to follow elephant tracks to water, and identified various animal holes, including the very large aardvark holes. He told us that during the war of liberation, his wounded brother was hidden in an aardvark hole until his comrades could rescue him. The walk ended with him very, very carefully blowing sand out of an insect hole to reveal a single larvae, the earliest stage of termite development, which he put in Mary’s hand

Our guides, Mundoga and Themba, opened our eyes to a world we would never have seen without them.