Question number 1:
You’re off to Dominica for the annual family vacation as soon as the kids finish the spring semester. You heard about the boiling lakes, but would like to go and enjoy yourself at your own pace. However, you have the slightest idea how to get there because you’ve never been to Dominica. How do you find this place? A) Arrange a tour with the hotel’s hired tour guide and you go according to their schedule B) Ask John Doe who happens to be from Dominica who you see regularly working out at the gym to connect you with someone back in Dominica who’d be willing to take you to the boiling lakes whenever it’s convenient for you C) Change your entire agenda and settle for the lukewarm beach water even though Dominica isn’t known for their beaches.
Question number 2:
Since you did not get that anticipated bonus this year, you’re going to have to change your plans a little bit for this year’s family vacation. You promised your daughter that you’d take her to visit the Basilica in Higuey while visiting the Dominican Republic this summer. After all, she had to write a report on it for her geography class. How wonderful it would be to visit. Unfortunately, the only available time to go to the DR is during the height of the tourist season when prices are sky high. You still want to take her though. Do you: A) Make arrangements with your new neighbors who happen to be from the DR and from Higuey who has family there who can possibly give you a tour? All you may have to do is probably treat them to lunch and provide gas money out of common courtesy B) Go ahead and just go with the tour provided by the hotel. Other than the higher cost included, the other drawback is that you might have to go at 8:00 AM regardless if you are a morning person or not and return three hours later even if you didn’t get to see as much as you wanted because you all went on a popular day to visit and the crowd was so overwhelming. Therefore, most of your pictures would include the tops of heads of people you don’t know because you had to rush and take a photo at the first opportunity. C) Just show magazine pictures of the Basilica to your daughter on the plane ride there and hope that because she’s young and naïve, you can just tell her that looking at the photos is almost like being there. Besides, you can make one at beach out of sand.
If you choose answers B and A, then you realize that even though you can learn and see a great deal about a place from hired tour guides or researching the Internet, the best source of information is from those that are from, have lived or know of someone from the place you plan to visit. The best tour guides I have ever been acquainted with were not employees of the hotels where I have stayed before. They did not even work for a local company in the countries I visited. Since I know a good amount of foreigners, I usually go to them for places to go whenever I have the opportunity to visit their country. If they can’t take me personally, arrangements are usually made via a few phone calls. Not only do I get what I like to call a personal tour since it’s our vacation, I usually can pocket the difference in what I would spend had I gone on a tour with XYZ tours. Not only that, I would have to go and return when XYZ were ready, just like class trips from elementary and high school.
To sum it all up, if you’ve been dreaming about a family vacation to Italy, strike up a conversation with the local pizzeria owner next time you go for a slice. The biggest difference between what he tells you and what a hotel hired tour guide has available can be costs, sites that may have not been included on the hotel’s agenda and the flexibility to move at your own pace. One thing I’m sure you already know, but I must advise anyway especially in this world today, is to use a healthy dose of skepticism. Just because someone you just heard talking has an accent that sounds like they are from where you are planning to take your family doesn’t mean that you should just ask him if he knows someone over there. Make sure you know the person a well enough before you act on his recommendations. I know you knew that already.