Travel Tip 29
How to connect with local people.
Leonarda and I talked a lot in 2021 when I was writing an article about the women who bring alpacas to Cusco for tourists to take photos. This year I was able to give her 2024 Peace Corps calendars that feature her and her daughter.
As fun as it is to the see the sights, most tourists also want to meet locals to get a real sense of what it’s like to live in the places we visit.
Tour guides and the people who work at the hotels and restaurants we visit are the easiest people to talk to. But what if you want to meet people who don’t work in tourism?
It depends on where you are and what the local culture is like.
Find the right place.
Some cultures hang out in parks, some in pubs, some at the beach and some at the market. Leonarda (above) is at the Convento de Santo Domingo in Cusco every day. Look around and find a place you’d be comfortable hanging out for a few hours – or a few days.
In Vietnam, I found that if I sat on a park bench with a book, people would come politely interrupt my reading. One by one, high school or college students would come ask me if I would speak with them in English for a bit. They got a little language practice, and I got all my questions about Ho Chi Minh City answered. That was my first trip to Vietnam in 2005 and I loved it.
In Cusco, people don’t approach me for English practice if I’m sitting in a park. The best way for me to talk with people here is to approach them. Of course, that only works because I speak Spanish. If you don’t have a language in common with the people at your destination, this becomes next to impossible.
I spent a couple hours in a bar in the Mekong Delta on that same 2005 trip and ran into a total language barrier. Everybody in the bar was enthusiastically watching a soccer game on tv and drinking pitchers of light beer half-filled with ice. I tried for over an hour to ask how to say “cheers” in Vietnamese and eventually gave up. I still don’t think they understood my pantomime and attempts to ask the question.
Most alpaca ladies speak Spanish but a few only speak Quechua. They're easy to talk to because their job is to sit around and wait for tourists to take photos of them.
The language barrier can make this hard.
If you can find a way around the language barrier, you may find plenty of locals who will sit in the park with you, eat with you, drink with you or sit on the beach with you.
Be safe.
Use your common sense about where and when is a safe place to hang out. Most places around the world after dark is not a good time, even if you were in a good place during the day. If you start to feel uncomfortable, make up an excuse and leave. You don’t have to be rude, but don’t worry too much about if your excuse is believable. You’re unlikely to see whoever you were talking to again (unless you already followed each other on social media).
Kelly and her alpaca Pancho work in the courtyard at the Marriott. It’s probably the safest place in Cusco.
If it doesn’t work, don’t get discouraged.
Maybe it wasn’t the right place or maybe it wasn’t the right time. Either go try another place or try a different day or a different time of day. People in most countries around the world are curious about the tourists who visit their town or city. If you find the right time and place, be ready to make new friends.
Coming back to the Delfín after a sunset cruise in a skiff on the Amazon River.
Article
Delfin Amazon Cruises review on Luxury Latin America
My review of my recent cruise on the Amazon River is finally out! Click on the link above to read all about my float through the Amazon Rainforest. You can read my Delfín blog here.
This was once an interior wall in a massive Inca temple unlike any other Inca temple I’ve seen.
Blog
Raqchi is an easy day trip from Cusco. It’s a 2-hour drive each way and it’s a pleasant drive, as soon as you get out of Cusco’s sprawl. It’s about a third of the way to Puno and all the tourist busses between Cusco and Puno stop here. Click on the link above to read how Raqchi is unlike any other Inca ruins I’ve seen since I started traveling around Peru in 2013.