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 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, 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 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 🇨🇴 — 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 🇨🇴 — 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
• Walk the city
• Book nothing in advance — this tip is what makes that one workable.