---
type: Tip
title: Ask travellers coming the other way
description: The people walking out of the place you are walking into did it today — Harry treats them as better than any listing, and rearranges how he books in order to keep meeting them.
tags: [method, hostels, planning, local-knowledge, hiking]
timestamp: 2026-08-07T12:10:00Z
---

# Ask travellers coming the other way

The best information about somewhere, in Harry's practice, comes from other
travellers who have **just been there** — not from reviews, not from listings,
and not from staff whose job is to sell you the thing.

The argument is about freshness and incentive at once. Someone finishing the
walk you are starting has today's conditions, today's prices and no reason to
flatter any of it. A listing has none of those.

**What makes this a habit rather than an observation is that he changes how he
books in order to keep having those conversations.** Having spent the
[Colombia](/countries/colombia.md) trip so far in private rooms, he switches to
hostels — while still taking a private room inside them for his laptop and
camera — specifically because the common areas are where the information is.

## How Harry applies it

**At the edge of [Tayrona](/places/tayrona-national-park.md),** an evening
downstairs with five English travellers, a Pole, a Dutchman and two Swiss, all
either coming out of the park that day or going in the next. Between them they
had the two entrances, the campsites, and which sections were worth the walk. He
says it decided how he would book for the rest of the country.

**On the trail into [Playa Brava](/places/playa-brava.md) the next day, it
decides the actual trip.** A Dutch traveller walking out had slept a night at
each of the park's two beaches, and gave the number that settled it — over a
hundred people sharing four toilets at the popular one. Harry goes to the quiet
one, and it becomes the best experience he has in Colombia.

**Note what the source could not have told him.** The toilet ratio is not on any
listing, is not the sort of thing staff volunteer, and was three days old.

## The limit, which he names himself

He is clear about what he is actually getting: **whether they liked it.** His own
phrasing is that they can tell him what the best things are and whether they
enjoyed them — which is a recommendation, not a fact, and the people giving it
have self-selected by being the sort of person who walks four hours to sleep in a
hammock.

That is worth keeping on the page, because it is why this works well for *which
of two options* and badly for anything with a right answer. Nothing in either
Colombian instance is a logistical fact he couldn't have checked; both are
judgements he had no way of forming alone.

## Demonstrated in

- [A Day In My Life Living In COLOMBIA 🇨🇴](/videos/EuJASkbvem4.md) — the
  hostel evening that produced the park's entrances and campsites, and the
  decision to book hostels for the rest of Colombia.
- [Sleeping on the Beach In Colombia 🇨🇴](/videos/vy2ZMxjBMKc.md) — a traveller
  walking the other way on the trail, and the toilet ratio that chose the beach.

## Related

- [Ask someone who drives for a living](/tips/ask-someone-who-drives-for-a-living.md)
- [Walk the city](/tips/walk-the-city.md)
- [Book nothing in advance](/tips/book-nothing-in-advance.md) — this tip is what
  makes that one workable.