How did Columbus find his way to America without a guidebook? Whenever I set foot on foreign soil my life is controlled by authors I`ve never heard of, who, for all I know, consider a hot shower to be as superfluous as a silver toothpaste key.
Left to my own devices I prefer to heed the advice of Suzanne, my travel agent, whose definition of a dump and mine are fairly congruent. But my husband, Duke, trusts only what he reads for himself. A guidebook addict, he devours them the way others gobble mail order catalogs.
Weeks before we left on a recent trip to Ecuador he`d scrutinized three books and mapped out an itinerary, while I was still working up the nerve to finish the lengthy sections on health warnings and inoculations (the one part he refuses to take seriously).
”They just put those in to take up space,” said Duke, who complains that I travel with more drugs than a drugstore. Ever cautious, I went to the doctor and got prescriptions to combat almost everything the book said we could contract, and tetanus, gamma globulin, polio and yellow fever shots too. We flew into Guayaquil, a muggy port with a malarial air and nervous residents who looked as if they`d just stepped out of a Fellini film. Suzanne had advised that we check in to the Gran Hotel, which was well-run, reasonable and had good coffee, but Duke consulted his book and chose a ”top end”
selection on the riverside walk, the Malecon.
I was less than enthusiastic because in Chapter 1 the author had revealed that he traveled with a tent.
Author classification
Writers of guidebooks tend to belong in two categories. Half are Robin Leaches manques who recommend private barges up the Thames and exquisite little Alpine hideaways that cost $400 a night.
The others are Peace Corps alumni who believe big old buses are more fun because of all the passengers getting on and off with their livestock and who are wowed by any accommodation more luxurious than a thatched hut. My husband favors this variety.
Sure enough, we wound up in a sleazy overpriced joint with dank carpet, a broken lock and two soldiers with shotguns stationed in front of the lounge guarding a bat mitzvah.
The next morning Duke proposed that we fly to Loja, a small town in the Southern Highlands.
”We can rent a cabin in Vilcabamba,” he said, speaking of a remote village in the Southern Highlands known as the ”valley of longevity” because inhabitants live to be over 100. ”The book says it`s just a two-hour bus ride from Loja.”
Guidebooks are loaded with off-the-beaten-track destinations, which frequently require a life-threatening boat, train and/or bus journey that I`d just as soon skip. Fortunately, luck was with me. The airline schedule had changed since our guidebook was published (funny, so had the museum schedules); there was no flight to Loja that day, so instead we went to Cuenca, an attractive colonial city on the Rio Tomebamba.
Meet the devil
It was pleasant walking around the cobbled streets, but I was on guard. The guidebook had warned about a known rapist who asked females to write letters for him to non-existent friends. He was described as a short dark man, a description that fits a good percentage of the population. I didn`t meet him, but I did meet the devil on Calle Larga.
Duke had just struck a deal with a taxi driver to take us to see the Inca ruin of Ingapirca. He was congratulating himself on getting a good price ($20 for a five-hour excursion) when a short dark man tapped him on the shoulder.
”Excuse me,” said the devil in all-too-understandable English. ”I heard you bargaining. You must know you`re crazy to take a cab. Just go to the bus station.” Then he vanished in a puff of diesel smoke from a passing bus. ”The book said there was a bus,” Duke said, looking on the map for the station. Yes, but the book also said it was a two-hour ride to the closest town; from there we had to hitch 9 miles to the ruins, and pray we could get a ride back.”The book said the bus is only 45 cents,” he said.
I pointedly reminded him of our last guidebook-inspired economy. We`d just arrived in Albufeira in the Algarve in Portugal after a hellish drive from Lisbon.
I wanted to check in to a hotel that had earned a small house, the
”quite comfortable,” rating from my friend the Michelin Guide, the one book I totally trust.
But Duke was loyal to another volume, which stated if we walked down a certain street and knocked on doors we`d find a charming room for a pittance. In fact, a harried mother with three screaming toddlers offered us a curtained-off alcove filled with laundry.
On the plus side, guidebooks do lessen my fear of the unknown, even though they force me to deal with two unknown quantities-the country and the author. I wish there was a psychological profile at the back of the book so I could determine if we had anything in common.
Lacking such information, I have my own interpretations of key words:
”Peaceful,” for instance, usually means in the middle of nowhere;
”retreat” means not on my life; and ”overpriced” in my experience is not bad at all.
One room, hold the malaria
Which is why in Ecuador I was looking forward to the few days we`d planned to stay in Salinas, reputed to be best resort in the country and malaria free. But at the last minute Duke rerouted us to Bahia de Caraquez, an unspoiled (translation: primitive) port.
I was nervous because the major travel agencies in Quito had never heard of Aerotransportes Bahia, the small airline our guidebook claimed flew light planes to nearby San Vincente, and it was six hours by bus, but my husband was undaunted.
Confident the book would be wrong again, I agreed to go. My blood froze when we returned to Guayaquil and Duke triumphantly led me to a teeny terminal with a nine-seat Cessna parked outside, where he bought $16 tickets. I made him take the seat without the seat belt and gnawed my fingernails. The plane made three heart-stopping stops before finally touching down at what I believed was our final destination-a narrow stretch of coast with a runway long enough for a Boeing 747.
I sighed with relief and followed Duke down the airstrip past a couple of pigs. Twenty minutes later I was still behind him as we trudged along the shore in the equatorial heat toward a rickety ferry dock. The next thing I knew we were crossing the choppy half-mile-wide Rio Chone in a motorized rowboat equipped with wood slabs for life jackets. The guidebook failed to mention this part of the experience.
The rowboat landed us in Bahia de Caraquez, a shrimp-farming center that appeared to have suffered touristus interruptus before developers` plans to turn it into a major resort were realized, leaving a group of unfinished high- rises. I was delighted to discover an ”overpriced” hotel on the beach.
Duke incautiously swam with the ebbing tide and was nearly carried out to sea-but it could have been much worse.
So I was surprised when I woke the next morning and found my husband looking distressed. He`d been bitten by a mosquito in the night, having turned down my offer of insecticide, and he was worried it might be malarial. When I stopped laughing, I told him I had pills for malaria and he seemed impressed. Later, the manager assured him there was no malaria in town. ”Cholera, yes,” he said. ”We have lots of cases.” Duke had just wolfed down a shrimp omelet at a dubious-seeming cafe perched on stilts over the harbor, with no apparent source of running water, but I assured him I had pills for that too. Thanks to my guidebook, I was prepared for everything.
Maybe too prepared, because soon after we returned home Duke immersed himself in a new guidebook for Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. Thumbing through it I note that in addition to the health hazards we risked in South America, there are warnings about meningitis, diphtheria, sleeping sickness, crocodiles and lions.
I think I`ll go buy a Michelin Guide for France.
