A nakamal on Maewo
After a 5k walk through the forest on Maewo we visited the nakamal of our guide, the community center for his village of three people.

We’re sitting in a coral-strewn anchorage in front of Ansanvari, a 200-person village located at the bitter end of Maewo, a long sliver of an island with only 4000 residents, lying in the eastern part of Vanuatu. I’m picking the mud out of my toes and trying to steady my brain after consuming two coconut cups of freshly ground kava, a local beer with marijuana-like effects.

The mud and kava, along with a full brain, are the result of a six-hour trek through the woods to a “bat cave” with Barry, a villager who lives in his own mini village above a waterfall on the outskirts of Asanvari. Barry’s village consists of just three families—his, his brother’s and a cousin’s—and I’m guessing that it is because it’s located along the path to the cave that Barry has assumed the mantle of local tour guide. This year we’re only the second visitor to come sailing into Asanvari (which is the only way to visit), and the path was only recently re-cleared of the verdant brush that grows rapidly in the volcanic soil and heavy rains.

Barry, tour guide for the bat cave at Asanvari on Maewo
Barry, our tour guide, in his element after a rigorous hike through the forest.

Getting Comfortable with the Tour Guide Label

I used to have a real problem with the term “tour guide.” When we started Context we refused to refer to the contractors who lead our walks as guides. We called them docents, in part because they often had Ph.D.s and were more highly credentialed than typical tour guides, but also because we didn’t use scripts and didn’t teach them all sorts of “guidey” behavior that can seem inauthentic. It was our differentiator, and over time we developed a haughty disdain for the tour guide.

I’ve really come around, and Barry is an excellent example of why I think that the tour guiding as a profession is uniquely fitted to the future.
Our walk was difficult. The terrain was steep and muddy, and the path hard to follow. After years of living on boats and traveling in the untrammeled parts of the world we are, as a family, generally pretty up for a challenge. I would rate this a seven. Unsurprisingly, Barry was finely attuned to it and invaluable in a purely physical sense: Whether he was helping my youngest daughter, Jade, to surmount some vertical rise or simply just sorting out which wall of green held the path, without his guidance we could not have actually gotten to the cave. We live in an age where more people are striking out to find exceptional experiences like our walk in Asanvari. These paths are, by definition, unpaved. So, on a very basic level, a guide like Barry is instrumental in making it happen.

Drinking fresh coconut water on the trail
A smart tour guide knows exactly when to break out the fresh coconut water.

Asking the Right Questions

The Ni-Vanuatu—the indigenous Melanesians who’ve inhabited these islands since long before Europeans arrived and comprise the entire population of out islands like Maewo—are a bit shy. Although a gross generalization, a Ni-Vanuatu will wait until you approach them before they speak. Barry was no different, and we began our trek in silence. This, of course, is a terrible attribute for a tour guide, who should be gregarious and engaging. It’s not an insurmountable liability, but requires the client to do some work. So, I put on my journalist hat and started with the questions. How many people live in your village? Where is your garden? Do you grow kava? Do your kids go to the school in Asanvari?

Barry opened right up, and within minutes we were deep in conversation. I learned that recent rains had triggered a landslide and he was moving to a new spot where, along with his brother and cousin, he would erect a new village. He grows kava and coconut, the latter of which he processes into copra. However, since the copra market collapsed, they only export kava to Luganville and Port Vila.

Using a palm leaf as an umbrella
Once we opened him up with questions Barry had fantastic info at every turn, such as this natural umbrella he fashioned for us when it rained.

Leaning In As the Audience

This is a key lesson. Interacting with a guide is not a one-way street. You’ve got to lubricate the interaction with questions and take a super curious stance. If you sit back and wait to be entertained, then one of two things will happen. With a guide like Barry, who is a bit quiet, you’ll be disappointed. With a professional guide like you might hire in Rome or Barcelona, you’ll be bombarded with disconnected facts and the script of dates and popes that they learned in tour guide school. A well-thought-out line of questioning is your best defense. Done well it transforms the guide experience from a lecture into conversation. The guide opens up, and you begin to get deep insight into the local culture, history, and place.

It’s become a well-worn trope that the world is getting smaller. In a travel context, people are going farther and interacting with a wider range of people. But it’s easy to mistake the size of our frequent flier account for true learning and true connection. Just hopping on a plane doesn’t open our minds and teach us about the world in its heady multifariousness. The question is what we do when we arrive? Are we leaning in (to co-opt Sheryl Sandberg) when we’re in destination?That seems to me a critical stance. And, once we take it, fantastic things happen. We find a local guide who knows the place, the thing, the people, and the history deeply; and, with our intellectually curious questions, we use him to pry the place open. That’s the kind of deep travel for which the tour guide is critical.