I’ll start with a post that is both business and personal…! Why is it that even the best tour guides have the reputation of sleeze, debauchery and general filth? And why do we all fall for it regardless?
How Do you Do?
A few weeks ago when I was up in the Bay of Islands (staying at good ol’ Pipi Patch), a young man belonging to a certain big bus tour company was overheard stating that a shag might as well be a handshake to the average English backpacker.
This to me neatly summed up a side of the New Zealand backpacking industry, and it probably applies to many other countries as well. After all, backpackers are young, naive things in search for new experiences – and travelling far from the watchful eyes of home seems to have become a wicked excuse, to not only do what you want… but who you want.
A Trusty World Bar Teapot - Tour Guide's Weapon of Choice?
Kia Ora and let me welcome you to New Zealand!
More often than not, this quest may end with a tumble with a fellow traveller… but then there’s your tour guide. The focus of your entire trip. Leader, teacher, and someone who has undoubtedly seen and done far more things than you’d hope to ever imagine. Sociable by nature, everybody’s best mate and who you confide with.
There’s just something about them that is irresistible. So before you know it, you’ve had one too many jagerbombs in World Bar and you’re letting him feel you up on the dance floor.
Unfortunately, the bar manager is watching passively thinking about how you are the fifth girl this month that he has done that with. Sorry ladies, but most of the time it’s true.
Easy backpackers
Thing is, I think most of you travellers know it all too well and actually like it. Back to the handshake comment – for each “easy” tour guide, there are 10 backpackers out there who are more than too willing to fill his needs. We see it all the time… There was one girl upon one of our tours that was approached by a Kiwi Ex driver and his “friend” who asked her straight out for a threesome, and she jumped at that opportunity.
Perhaps this is why the tour guide has become this way (I speak of them as a species almost). Too many tour members ultimately throw themselves their way so they think, why not?
The exceptions
I met my partner Steve on my very first tour in New Zealand. I was the young and naive backpacker, he was the tour guide. For me, it began with a sense of awe. Here was a man who had hundred times the life experience I had, a fella who had millions of friends and an abundance of confidence. His energy just drew me in.
From the moment I entered a relationship with him I was to encounter a vast swarm of prejudice, which leads us back to it – the tour guide’s reputation. Every person I met warned me of it. But I fought it. I fought because I knew that although he was a human male and obviously not a saint, Steve wasn’t one of those guides. And the people that criticized in the first place can still see we’re going strong 2 years later.
We have another guide at Haka, Si, who would be the pure exception… right to the point when he met his English girlfriend who was on his tour about a year ago. BUT they are still together and she relocated over to New Zealand to be with him. So it doesn’t count.
The darkside
Unfortunately, the problems of this unwritten contract between the tour guide and his too-happy travellers will go wrong somewhere along the line. At some point a “relationship” will come crashing down when the rest of a tour group or bus is disrupted and the mood changes. People won’t approve or someone will get jealous… or they won’t think he’s doing his job right. I’ve seen them all happen and been at the receiving end a couple of times.
So backpackers, be warned – enter at your own risk! As I said, your guide has indeed probably seen and done far more than you after all.
Posted on April 22, 2010
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