World Heritage Site

My recent trip to all 10 WHS of Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia was a mix of 3 styles: a Group Tour for Mauritania, independent travel in North Senegal and a Private Tour for Gambia and East Senegal. I do not regret these choices. The downsides of organized travel were mitigated by not having to endure them for a long time. Let’s look at what Tours to WHS can bring you.

Pros and cons of tours

1.      Convenience versus lack of first-hand experience

Although I always first try to cover places individually, sometimes the infrastructure just isn’t there (or very complicated/expensive) to do it on your own. Desert trips like Mauritania and Chad require 4WD driving skills and travelling in a convoy. Manu NP requires a boat and camping in the jungle. Without a tour, you would not even get there. 

The downside is that when I don’t organize it all myself, I feel less prepared and the memories don’t stay with me as long.

2.      Local perspective versus cost of adding a guide

A good guide can be your key to unlocking the country, adding local perspective without the guide having to be a scholar on the Almohad Caliphate or Saloum Delta ecology.

But it is always a gamble whether they deliver on this. A minimum tour leader standard (good English, decent communication and organization skills – qualities you will only start to appreciate when they are absent) is usually aimed for, but most cannot go beyond that level. This is especially true in countries with few tourists, the only kind of countries you take a tour for anyway. Photo 1 shows our Mauritanian guide dancing - an activity both we and he could have done without.

Often you are better off hiring a driver with good language skills. 

3.      Seeing all points of interest versus missing the point

Tours often are all-day affairs, to keep you busy for 12 hours or so. They follow a set itinerary and often use minor, ‘filler’ attractions in the area to offer their guests a varied menu as they cater to an audience of different interests. 

When I travel individually, I make the WHS the center of the day. I spend there as much time as needed. Often I don’t go anywhere else on that day. But I’ve been on tours where I have sat all day waiting for a WHS visit to happen after a kitschy modern palace, a village visit and a belated lunch, reaching the WHS just in time before sunset (I am describing my Moenjodaro visit, during the Pakistan-tour-from-hell). 

So go for a private tour if you can afford it – this way you can make sure, both beforehand and on the day itself, that your interests are prioritized.

Best guided site tours

A special kind of tour is the ‘guided site visit’: sometimes obligatory (you have to join a group to shuffle with 30 others through a palace), but at other times a more in-depth visit of multiple hours up til a day with a knowledgeable guide in a private or small group setting. 

If I can find a good one of the latter, I am always prepared to pay for a tour to enhance my WH site visit. I scanned my reviews of visits to WHS for the ones I remember most fondly, and these came out best:

• Xochimilco (private tour): a very relaxed day tour centered around the produce of the floating gardens (photo above), an essential part of the Mexico City WHS. We visited farmers, ate with them, looked at their produce in the field and at the market. A peek into a lifestyle I could never have organized myself.
• Lake Baikal (private tour): a full day in Baikalsky Nature Reserve, taking in the views, hiking through a Siberian pine forest and observing the ringing of birds (not an activity I would have chosen myself considering my slight ornithophobia, but it was enlightening).
• Matobo Hills (small group tour): seeing varied aspects of this hard-to-grasp site, including a wild chase of a baby rhino with the unforgettable Andy.
• Both Brazilian Atlantic Forest sites, South East and Discovery Coast (private tour): exploring them in the company of passionate Brazilian guides (the best company overall you can have; the photo below was taken in Guarau) who were well-educated ecologists.

Other good bets are sites where there isn’t much to see above ground such as Fort Ancient (Hopewell), where I got a deep dive into the subject on a tour conducted by the Site Manager talking about the complex history of this specific site, or Vredefort Dome.

Do you have any memorable guided day tours to (T)WHS that improved the experience?