Travel Tip 153

Why hire a local guide

During the training, guides evacuated “victims” off the glacier and coordinated with the Air Force to then evacuate them by helicopter to the appropriate hospital.

My top four reasons to hire a local guide.

This past week I observed a super intense five day training by Socorro Andino for mountain guides, fire fighters, police and military. It took place in Huaraz, Peru’s most popular destination for mountaineers who want to climb the imposing peaks of the Andean Cordillera Blanca.

It was an impressive example of how civilians and armed forces work together in Peru when there are accidents at high altitude. I’ve attended Wilderness First Aid and Wilderness First Responder courses in the US, but the police and military were never integrated in civilian rescue crews.

Before we worked with the helicopter, we practiced evacuating a victim up to a helicopter that can’t land, which is a real possibility in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca because of the steep terrain.

In Peru, the integration is mostly because civilian volunteer rescue groups don’t have the budget to buy the kind of rescue equipment I’ve seen in the US. However, from what I saw this week, that limitation actually works in their favor. The Fuerzas Aéreas Peruanas (Peruvian Air Force, FAP) sent their personnel, equipment and even a helicopter to be part of this training. I’ll write a full blog post about it when I get home to Cusco but since the training was 8am to 7 or 8pm every day, I didn’t have time to write much this week.

FAP SO1 Ríos Ortiz taught civilian guides and firefighters how to effectively communicate with Air Force rescue teams to request a helicopter for aerial evacuation of an injured climber.

1. You’re safer with a local guide.

Having a local guide in Peru is so important.

If you are doing any mountaineering in Peru, especially over 15,000 feet of altitude, I highly recommend hiring a local guide. Even if you’re an experienced mountaineer and in North America or Europe don’t hire a guide, it’s important in Peru. Guides in Peru who have participated in trainings like the one I just did know how to effectively communicate with local police and military to get help when needed. If Joe Simpson and Simon Yates had a local guide with them, the FAP could have sent a helicopter to their base camp. They would have brought personnel to pull Simon out of the crevasse, equipment and emergency supplies. Sure, Touching the Void might never have been published, but the rescue would have been much more effective. 

My local guide in Borneo showed me how to harvest wild ferns in the rainforest and cook them for dinner.

2. Local guides have personal stories.

“My ancestors brought our dead to these caves long ago, before Islam came to Malaysia. Our burial practices are very different now,” Jai told me. It was my first trip to Borneo, and my guide, Jai, took me to some caves called Agop Batu Tulug. About a dozen coffins, each made from a single log, were set on raised wooden platforms. At the time, the caves were hidden deep in the jungle, without any signs on the road indicating that there was anything to see and certainly not any signs about ancient burial chambers.

During that trip, I went to a village on the Kinanbatangan River, where a friend had served in Peace Corps in the 1970s. The villagers had created an eco-tourism cooperative called Kopel, which is even stronger now than when I was there in 2012. Jai grew up in the village. When he took me out on the river to look for orangutan and other wildlife, he told stories about every tree, every bend in the river. That tree was where he saw an orangutan building a nest the week before. The next bend in the river is where he first saw wild boar as a child. 

It wasn’t just his connection to the ancient burial caves. Jai’s stories made the place come alive in a way that it never could with a guide from the city.

Luis Fernández (Fuerzas Aéreas Especiales Peruanas) showed guides how evacuation equipment works inside a helicopter and reviewed important knots with them.

3. Local guides have access to local experts and professional development

Professional development goes beyond safety. Like any city that lives primarily on tourism, Cusco is full of experts on subjects that interest tourists. It’s not just Inca history. Guides in Cusco learn about archeology, geology, astronomy, botany and wildlife.

One of my favorite places in Cusco is a bookshop called Inkari. By day it’s a café with hot drinks, delicious chocolate cake and hundreds of books to peruse. By night it’s a cultural center with professional development for tour guides. Above are a few of the posters for lectures by local archeologists, historians, astronomers, biologists and many other experts. I’ve attended their lectures and also gone on their excursions to places like Inti Punku and the Valley Floor trail in the Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary. The lectures and excursions are designed for tour guides, though they’ve always welcomed me with open arms.

Celestina taught me so much about her community’s history and culture, which gave me a deep appreciation and understanding of life in this northern part of Argentina.

4. Local guides have family and friends in the area.

In Tumbaya, Argentina, I stayed with Celestina, a local political activist and baker who dreams of opening her own tea shop. After teaching me how to use over a dozen medicinal herbs that she collects in the hills near Tumbaya, she asked if I wanted to see the cemetery, which is also in the hills above town. It’s a beautiful walk and after paying her respects to her mother’s grave, and a few other family members, she took me to an ancient grave with no name. 

“She’s like a saint,” Celestine explained. “People come pray at her grave, and she grants miracles.” The grave is so old that there’s no telling if it’s even a woman buried there, but that doesn’t seem to matter. 

There’s no stronger connection to a place than growing up there and hearing stories from parents and grandparents who grew up there too. Most local guides grew up hearing local legends and myths about the places they live from older generations. Maybe a guide who learned a region’s history from books knows everything that you could learn from visiting museums and reading books, but they don’t have the same personal connection to the stories as a local guide.

The bottom line: An experienced and knowledgeable local guide will make your trip safer and much more interesting.

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