I consider myself a real backpacker, and this is a serious title. This means I use hostels, hand-wash my clothing, and strictly use the cheapest methods of domestic travel. It also means I eschew anything that might be viewed as “touristy”, as the label of The Tourist is fatal to my sense of adventure. For some reason, there exists a rift between Backpackers and Tourists in my mind, which is isn’t uncommon in the world of cheap backpacking. Even though my backpacker status doesn’t technically equate to me being a native and, therefore, non-tourist, I still somehow feel exempt.
So in my years of travel, I have always avoided hiring tour guides in any form. If I explored a new city, I did it myself. If I climbed a pyramid, I passed by the swarms of Americans looking for tour guides in the parking lot with a haughty smile. Doing everything on my own, with only the aid of my Lonely Planet, was the biggest indicator that I had succeeded in my travels. Being crammed into the turibuses with the foreign masses or, worse yet, being part of the uniformed tour groups ambling through pyramids, was one of the most humiliating experiences I could have imagined for myself.
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But then I went to Copan. I was prepared to wander the ruins myself, per usual. By chance, the night before my visit I met two interesting people in my hostel: an artisan jewelry-maker named Walter, and a tour guide who knew Walter’s wife from working with her in the archeological site earlier that year. On picnic tables in the balmy Honduran air late at night, over cigarettes and jewelry bits, we started chatting about the ruins. Before I knew it, I was salivating on myself as Chozo, the guide, expanded on particular topics of interest. I was putty in his palm- I needed to hear everything this man had to say.
The next day we met in the central plaza of Copan and headed for the ruins. He showed me tombs, explained the significance of their alignment, pointed out political references in the stonework, highlighted exactly where the ancient elite took their concubines for their “appointments”, helped me up when I slid in the mud, led me through underground tunnels, and, most importantly, shared his wealth of knowledge about the ancient Mayans. For me, an Ancient Civilization Enthusiast, his words left me breathless and itching to jump into a time machine. His knowledge was incredible, leading me to believe that he spent most of his free time bent over volumes about ancient history. I had hired a tour guide, and I had hired a good one.
If you would have passed by us on that particular day in Copan, I was the gape-mouthed girl towering over the squat Honduran man, eyes sliding back and forth from the ruins to his face. I could have listened to him for days, even under the scorching Honduran sun. A new feeling bubbled in the deepest parts of my stomach: Chozo had taken what would have been an incredible-by-default visit to Copan and turned it into a fricking-amazing-and-life-changing visit to Copan. What had I missed on my other visits on the Mayan trail? I had wrongly assumed that simply seeing the ancient ruins was fascinating enough. Wrong. Learning the secrets behind them is a whole new level of fascinating. Not out of a book, but in person, at the ruins, in articulate, melodious Spanish.
I lucked out with Chozo, that’s for sure. There will always be sub-par guides, and those tour packages that are more interested in lumping tourists together into one big manageable group as opposed to really imparting knowledge to their customers. However, the lesson here was twofold: Even with the weighty “Tourist” title looming over my head throughout Copan, I realized the label was what I made of it. Chozo was no threat to my backpacker esteem, as no good backpacker will ever pass up a chance to learn more about a foreign culture or pieces of history. I also realized that, ultimately, hiring a tour guide has no say in whether or not one is a tourist. We all are tourists, despite our personal travel classifications, as long as we’re passing through that foreign country.