And people wonder, why I want to have nothing to do with this kind of tourism business. Yes, I have said what Britseye quoted and this kinds if situations only reinforce my view that the current state if worldwide nature tourism is utterly broken.
It's not all about you though, is it, Opisska?
Since some older and wiser heads have tried to point this out to you both here and elsewhere, let me reinforce that point by first of all establishing some common ground. You will be hard-pressed to find a more cheapskate birder anywhere in the World than me
It's not so much a matter of pride, it's just having started at a very young age, on the whole I'd rather not see a bird on my travels that's been pointed out to me by someone else, unless it happens to be a close friend I've embarked upon the trip/expedition with. I can think of three occasions, I've had no choice other than to pay a small amount of money to see something specific - once in Israel, once in Ecuador, and once in Sulawesi - but since I've also been paid twice myself to take a couple of little old ladies around birding in the States, my overall net spending on bird guides the World over is pretty much nil.
HOWEVER. On a journey through life, depending one how one is treat by parents and educators in our early years, one gradually becomes aware of the fact that the World doesn't always revolve around US and we learn to adapt our points of view accordingly. Many people who start birdwatching late in life are very grateful to have others point birds out to them and are prepared to pay for that service. Some who've been birding from an early age still harbour desires for a decent World list of birds as they grow older, but they take on the responsibilities of a job and/or a family, and find they no longer have the time to do the homework required t get them to see the birds they want to see. They have only a short time available for holidays and they are happy to fork out for someone else to take them around and show them what's what.
In short, win-win situations develop whereby market forces come into play and businesses develop around such mutual needs for guides and travel services. If your life experience consists only in being a physics teacher and have a guaranteed, consistent wage in that field, I would respectfully suggest you may correspondingly lack an understanding of the vicissitudes inherent in a less stable occupation such as the tourism industry in general, and, as in this instance, bird guiding in particular. That doesn't necessarily make you a 'terrible person' it just makes you an ignorant one - and I'm not using the word ignorant in its pejorative form, I'm just using it in the sense that maybe you lack experience in that arena, that's all.
Now consider your experience as a First World traveller in a Third World country. Are you really so smug/naive to think that you having the luxury to ponce around with a few hundred spare quid in your pocket to be able to visit someone else's country far, far away and then deny them the right to somehow be able to wrest a small fraction of that off you in order to be able to perform a service that will make your life happier and maybe allow them and their family to eat for the week? Please don't let's get bogged down in the good guides v bad guides discussion and deflect from the general point I'm trying to make here. I've just come back from three months in the Gambia where this discussion is very much at the fore and you and I can talk about that some other time some other place, if you really want to.
Whether you are going to use guides or not is entirely up to you, but at least have the decency in public to appreciate that other people have the right to earn a living in a way that they best see fit, and others have the right to negotiate the price with them/take their business elsewhere as THEY see fit. It's really NONE of OUR business.
NOW, finally, if you are still looking for a way of birding around the World on the cheap, let me give you two addresses of organisations I've been affiliated with for the past twelve years that will allow you to some extent to be able to do that, although if,as you're posts suggest, you are still seeing the World through the eyes of a twitcher, you might not see them as an opportunity to 'put something back' like I do. They are largely volunteer organisations (hence why I have no spare money to pay for bird guides :-C) and they suit me because I am first and foremost a patch birder, a birdwatcher, and an all-round naturalist, rather than the twitcher and lister that I once was (I've still seen almost twice as many birds in the World as you have though 3
).
wwoof.net and workaway.info
These are just two. I have heard of others but I can't remember their names. They'll cost you EUR 20-30 to join for a year and the list of opportunities is mind-boggling. You can volunteer next to the Mountain Gorillas in Uganda, if you want to. Now, these organisations expect give and take, so you will get out of them as much as you want to put into them. As I say, they might not be for you for the stage of life that you are at, you may still be locked in to the need for security of having a regular job, for example, or be attached to some nebulous idea of a 'Western Palearctic List', but in the spirit of fraternity from one 'low-rent birder' to another, I recommend you have a little look at them and see if they give you any ideas. Even if its only for the six weeks of your 'summer holidays', maybe not this year but the next, you may find your learning trajectory becomes much greater if you give it a go, and you can spend lots of time birding in a new environment at the same time.
Best of luck
Graham
