Author of Grandaddy of South American Travel Guides Identifies Cheapest Places, Recent Tourism Trends

In this interview, Ben Box, author of the South American Handbook, notes the growing trends of volunteerism and community tourism in South America. He also points out the destinations offering the best values and the places that travelers best avoid.

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The South American Handbook is now in its 86th edition. Are there any interesting trends you’ve noticed with regard to traveling in South America?

I’ve been working on the book since 1980, so there have been many changes over the past 29 years. Apart from practical changes, such as better buses, constantly changing airlines, the growth in foreign-owned and foreign-oriented hostels, the main trend of the last few years has been towards eco-tourism. But this is not an isolated phenomenon.

As I see it, people are looking for a more varied traveling experience. In other words, they do not go just to sit on the beach, or to do a trek, or visit only the jungle. They are looking for combinations of different things. There has also been a move towards volunteerism and community tourism, doing something useful as well as having a holiday.

Another trend has been in the growth of older backpackers (people whose children have grown up, people taking career breaks), quite often who were backpackers in their youth who now want to experience South America in a bit more comfort, but still independently. And equally important are the retirees who are traveling.

Other trends include the expansion of “boutique” hotels, sometimes at eye-watering prices, and in gay and lesbian tourism, with a well-developed market for that in certain cities.

What countries seem to be drawing the most tourists now?

I’m afraid I don’t have statistics to hand. From the evidence that I receive I would say Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Brazil. But that may not tally with the official figures. As tourism gets more specialized (for instance, birdwatching, fishing, cultural, volunteerism), certain countries attract more of one type of tourist than another. Likewise countries promote certain attractions and activities, which may influence how numbers pan out.

Have any countries been making a special effort to attract eco-tourists?

Which haven’t? Some have been making more visible efforts than others, but I don’t think it is a trend that any destination would ignore, assuming they have the funds to promote themselves. And as I said above, some are promoting certain aspects above others, birdwatching being an obvious example. Don’t forget also that where the public sector may have been slow to get off the mark, for whatever reason, the private sector has generally been keen to promote eco-tourism, just as it has often led the way with activity-based tourism.

Which destinations in South America would you say offer the best values for tourists right now?

None is the cheap destination that South America was traditionally seen as, although in countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Paraguay you can probably get by on under 25 dollars a day, but that will depend on exchange rates with the dollar and, increasingly, the euro.

It also depends a lot on what you want to do: if you are living and traveling at the most basic level in most of South America you can get by on a reasonable budget. But once you start doing more, for example taking internal flights, hiring a car, making a trip to a jungle lodge, trekking the Inca Trail, etc, your costs will rise.

It’s also fair to say that it depends on what your expectations are and, in the main, you get what you pay for. This is particularly true with things like locally-organized tours where a trip will probably be cheaper if the operator has cut corners, pays its staff less than a going rate, compromised on safety, and so on.

Which countries have changed the most since you’ve been writing about South America? Colombia seems to be a much safer place to visit than it was in the past.

All have changed a lot. When I first started going to South America, regional politics was very different: it was the era when dictatorships were coming to an end and new democracies were emerging, when the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas conflict was having a serious effect on British relations with Argentina. There has been a significant change in relations between countries (such as the improvement in relations between Peru and Ecuador after a succession of border skirmishes).

Then there has been the move away from single term presidencies, the rise of Brazil in the BRIC group, etc. There have been huge economic variations, too (the 1990s referred to as the “lost decade”), often because of commodity price fluctuations as well as international financial crises. This is reflected in living standards, although the underlying problem of income distribution is proving pretty intractable.

The importance of tourism in economies has grown, although this is treated differently from country to country. Economic prosperity, or otherwise, is also reflected in how much international or domestic tourism South Americans enjoy. Peru is probably the country I have visited most and there have been vast changes there, from being a quintessential part of the Gringo Trail, through the trials and tribulations of the Sendero Luminso and MRTA period and the cholera epidemic of the ‘90s, the Fujimori years and their aftermath, and so on. It’s a much safer country to visit than it was 10-15 years ago and with a much more varied tourism market.

Colombia is certainly attracting more visitors, but the improvement in safety is not just for tourism. Things like the Hay International Book Festival in Cartagena and other international events are giving the country a much enhanced profile. But my travelling is not consistent, in that I don’t go to each country with the same regularity, so it is hard to be precise.

The leaders of countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia seem to be often at odds with the U.S. and other countries. To what degree will this affect tourists?

That’s up to the tourists (or the operators they choose to travel with if they are not going independently). None of those countries you mention is excluding tourists. Obviously there are regional tensions at times, for instance the recent move of Colombia to accept the US base which was at Manta in Ecuador has sparked ill feeling. And tensions between neighbours do arise, but there have been no border closures or restrictions on travel (certainly not long-term).

I can only speak from a European perspective, not a US one. I was last in Venezuela in 2007 and experienced no difficulties at all, although colleagues have sometimes found getting around the country a bit intimidating. On the other hand, UK tour operators that I have spoken to who send clients to Venezuela are finding their operations in Venezuela as good as before (problems as a result of the credit crunch notwithstanding).

In Ecuador in 2008, traveling around was absolutely fine. In Bolivia, tourists might face more problems from the internal tensions within the country, between the highland and lowland communities, roadblocks, etc (but roadblocks also happen in Argentina).

The political dimension is undeniably important and my view is that anyone who goes to South America should be aware of it. But I would suggest that the roots of the current differences of opinion date back hundreds of years, right to the time that Europeans carved up South America to expand their various empires. The context is much wider than specific, present-day political or economic systems, or even individuals, and laying blame on them is not the solution. In an ideal world, tourism could be a way to improve relations (through the meeting of people and the interchange of cultural expression, breaking down barriers), but maybe that is putting too much onus on what has become a major industry and therefore could be seen as part of the globalizing influence.

But as long as there is no prevention of tourism, then what most tourists will experience is not the confrontational politics, but the politics as it is lived everyday. It’s open for discussion, it’s on the streets and in the papers, on TV and radio. It shouldn’t be a reason not to go, but should perhaps be a stimulus for finding out what is happening on the ground, what social changes are taking place.

Are there any places that you’d advise tourists to avoid?

Not in terms of a country as a whole. There are areas within countries which it would be prudent to avoid, such as favelas and slums (unless you are with an accepted tour operator or local), parts of Colombia and Peru where insurgents and drug traffickers operate, and in some border areas you need to keep your wits about you. There are many situations in which you have to take care, particularly in large cities (e.g.,  bus stations when you have all your luggage with you), but the same would apply in any large city the world over.

Do you have any amusing anecdotes you may have about when you were writing the latest edition of the book?

In March this year I visited the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas). One of the outer islands the Tourist Board kindly arranged for me to go to was Weddell Island, at the southwest corner of West Falkland. At 98 square miles, it is fractionally larger than Malta. Malta has 400,000 inhabitants, Weddell has two, and then only from October to March. After breakfast on my last day there, we had a change of plan. The weather was closing in with rain and a cold wind and the farm manager recommended that the sheep be brought closer to the settlement, so four men, two quad bikes and a Land Rover set off to gather several hundred sheep. Pretty straightforward really: one quad bike patrolled the flank and drove the flock to the fenceline, the other went off looking for strays. I was in the ‘Rover, taking up the rear to keep the sheep moving forward, with Mozart on the CD player and a close eye on any boggy ground. With the sheep corralled we had to find the lambs that required tail docking and castration (where appropriate). And we were back in time for a cuppa, a piece of cake and the phone call giving the ETA of the plane to take me to the next place. All in a day’s work for a guidebook writer…

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