Inside Guide - Venture Magazine Issue #2 Pages 12-13

Goodbye Baked Beans, Hello Refritos

What does it take to be a tour leader? Giving up home comforts, reaching number 87 in the music charts and teaching English are all part of the mix, reckons Lee Nicholson.

Venture caught up with Kumuka’s Latin America operations manager in Mexico!

Q A tough job, but I guess somebody has to do it. How are you coping living in Cancún?
A Actually I’m on the Isla Mujeres, just off Cancún. Palm trees and sand really, very tranquilo. I’ve never had an office on the beach before. I wouldn’t want to live in Cancún itself – it’s kind of Las Vegas by the sea.

Q Hurricane Wilma swept through in September 2005, greatly under-reported in the press. How has Cancún coped with that?
A Magnificently, actually. I was considering staying put and then, after experiencing the category four storm Emily a bit earlier in the season (which was incredible), I decided that Wilma sounded too big for comfort. I’m glad I left, with everyone else in the area who could. So I holed up in Mérida, on the mainland, for the duration. When we got back, the devastation was unbelievable. It was like a war zone. But the Mexican authorities really got their act together; they started to get the power up in two weeks.

Q What about Kumuka groups in the area?
A We had no groups at that time, but it would have been a case of diverting them or evacuating them to safety as fast as possible.

Q That kind of event can happen anywhere, perhaps even more so in the more adventurous parts of the world that Kumuka specialises in. Don’t some travellers look for that kind of excitement?
A Yes, I think they do, that’s certainly part of it. But from my point of view, while not in any way wishing to cramp people’s style, we have to find a balance between adventure and danger. And hurricane-watching definitely falls on the danger side of the equation.

Q Tell us about your background. Have you always been a wanderer?
A I grew up moving from country to country, as my parents worked for the Foreign Office. From the ages of ten to thirteen we were living in Madrid, and the culture, soon after the restoration of democracy there, had a profound effect on me. I loved it, and I spoke fluent Spanish. It wasn’t a settled sort of life, but in many ways I think it gave me the best possible education. But I flunked all my O-Level exams a few years later in Zambia and it was only after being sent to school in England that I ended up doing a Spanish and Marketing degree in the UK.

QSo how did you get from that to running Kumuka’s operations in Latin America?
A Slightly by accident I guess. Things just happen to me. None of my career has been planned as such. After a period in a band, I moved down to Brighton and worked as a marketing manager for a dot.com startup. But the rat race feeling didn’t appeal at all, and I missed travelling, so I did a TEFL course to enable me to teach English abroad – like a passport to a travelling lifestyle really. And from that I started leading tours of amazingly well-behaved US high school students around Europe. Of course they loved the English accent, and my languages were an advantage. But then our American friends started the war in Iraq and my tours were all cancelled. And that’s when I contacted Kumuka.

Q Before we get onto your current job, tell us about that 'band period'
A Yes, Formula One. That was the name of the band. We played, I guess you’d call it Indie Pop, but with a slightly weird twist. And we were really quite successful, in a very cut-throat industry. Martin Carr, from the Boo Radleys, produced our first single and the wonderful John Peel put it on his programme and was a bit of a fan for a while. At our height we got to Number 87 in the charts, and NME had us on the front cover. The whole thing. For a while we felt it was all going to happen and we did an album called Full Circle. But then NME lost interest – you know they’ll only love you for so long – and things just sort of petered out. I lived in Preston at the time. Then we all moved down to Brighton and started doing digital music in our flat. But we all needed jobs. Hence...

Q So there you are now in Mexico. What’s a typical day on a Kumuka tour?
A That depends on the tour. In Latin America we have two main types of trip: overland trucks and escorted local transport. As a tour leader, I always specialised in local transport tours, and we’d be staying in a hotel of some kind – truck tours do a mix of camping and hotels. So my day would start with getting everyone in the lobby after breakfast and heading off to the transport park. If possible, I’d have bought tickets already, but sometimes you just have to turn up. And sometimes that scheduled service to wherever just doesn’t happen. So I might be up on the running board of a lorry or a pickup, waving a twenty dollar note at the driver and essentially hitching a lift for the group. Whatever it takes to get us where we need to go, safely, it’s my job to make that happen. But I’ve had years of experience of travel in the region, so I guess I’m quite astute at judging these things.

Q Does it ever all go badly wrong? Insane clients… implacable border officials? Have you had any scares?
A No – and I’m touching wood – not so far. I have been very lucky. But I do think experience comes into it. And I believe that goes across the board at Kumuka. There are quite a few companies out there where the management team wouldn’t all have that much hard travel experience. That isn’t the case at Kumuka. Pretty well everybody has tons of travel experience and that gives the culture here a bit of extra flavour, I think, and it’s reassuring for our travellers. We did have a bit of a situation in La Paz, in Bolivia, during the elections a while ago, when the whole city just sort of closed down. But I still managed to get the group out.

Q So, no mismatches between your clients and your tours then?
A Well, I wouldn’t say that! You do get people who are sure this is for them, and they turn up with suitcases or in high heels or something, and you just think ‘oh no!’ But it’s rare that they don’t get into the spirit of the travel very quickly. They sometimes even turn around and admit they had it all wrong, that they didn’t realise they were going to get their hands dirty… and they’ve absolutely loved it.

Q What is it that characterises a Kumuka trip, compared with other operators?
A I think it is down to the experience. And certain policy things, too, to do with how we sell the trips. We include a lot in them but by the same token they’re not the very cheapest you can get, and that’s reflected in customer satisfaction – and also goes back to the fact I’ve always had such a good time with my groups. People get a lot out of the trips.

Q And your groups never get into trouble? Never have any gringos or gringas partying a little too hard with the locals?
A Well, again, it’s not a case of never. People do come on holiday to have a good time, and they’re all adults and we run quite flexible tours. But if it ever gets to the point where the local community isn’t being respected, or anyone’s doing anything illegal, well, they’ve all signed up to our conditions. And I would talk to them very seriously. And if they didn’t listen, in theory they’d be out.

Q The world is changing very fast, the world’s climate is changing, and the environment and traditional cultures are under threat everywhere. How does your job deal with that, being on the sharp end of the tourist-local relationship?
A That’s absolutely true, and without saying we can’t do anything, it’s all too big, we’re a just a tiny part of so many global issues, I think Kumuka’s trips do as much as they possibly can. In all these areas. For example, our trucks are certainly ‘greener’ than most of the local vehicles. We use local guides. We’ve recently updated our responsible travel policy. We only use local suppliers and partners who we know to be responsible and sustainable in their own operations. And we’re already doing things that on balance have a net positive benefit to the local community. For instance, in some of the remote Peruvian valleys we’ve been enabling them to sell local crafts direct to our travellers. That helps to keep people in the villages, where a lot of youngsters have already left to find work in the towns.

Q What advice would you give someone who wants to go into tour leading?
A If you can handle having your eyes opened very wide, and you can cope with being away from home for long periods, and you don’t mind saying goodbye to marmite and Guinness and beans on toast – home comforts – then go for it. You do need to be decisive. There are times when you have to think very quickly, no messing about. And I guess you have to be a little crazy too.

Q What do you think the future holds for travel in Latin America? Will they ever finish the Pan-American highway?
A The infrastructure is getting better all the time, but crossing the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia is still virtually impossible. The civil conflict in Colombia makes parts of it dangerous. So there’s no immediate likelihood of the road-builders going in. But there is Americanisation all over Latin America, that’s true.

Q Is there any danger for you of getting jaded with it?
A No, not at all. I think looking ahead, say twenty years, people will still be able to have an authentic experience. And I definitely can’t see myself falling out of love with Latin America. I love the attitude, the people, the lifestyle, the food... it’s perfect.