So You Wanna Be an Int'l Tour Operator, Huh? Part III

The lad (on left) who put Imagine on the map.

Thanks to a few licked stamps (and a boat-load of serendipity) my little "Imagine...Belize" tour biz got off to a most amazing start that first season.  That the travel editor of one of Seattle's largest newspapers booked my first trip - and then (despite cold showers and jungle drug busts) came home to wax glowingly about his many adventures amid the islands and jungles of Belize, and heap praise on my little fledgling tour company was HUGE!

Verily put Imagine on the map, it did.  And filled up all three of my planned departures that winter (plus happily forced me to scurry to add 2 more.)  But that first season wasn't a slam dunk on the road to success by any means, as selling a nation on the idea that vacationing amid the (allegedly deep, dark, dangerous) region of Central America (where machine-gun-toting Nicaraguan "Contras" were after all - uh, truly toting great big ol' machine-guns!) was... decidedly an uphill marketing battle to say the least.

Nonetheless, I persisted - investing a portion of the profits from that first year in my very own desktop computer (no more pecking brochures and press releases at the library - yay!), and planning 3 more trips for the following winter.  Only trouble was... while at that point I was encouraged that I could eventually make the biz a full-time profitable endeavor, my part-time job in Human Resources didn't allow me enough time to make that happen.  Indeed, the ol' not enough money/yet not enough time dilemma.  Tough to take that leap into dumping a secure paycheck and jumping with both feet into building the business full time.

And then... the dilemma was solved (albeit at the time, most alarmingly) for me, when my part-time position in HRM was dissolved and I was suddenly layed-off. Yikes!  No income and only the proverbial "seat-of-my-pants" to somehow repeat the magic that had brought me such success that first season.  Like it or not, it was sink or swim time.

So I did what any passionate wanderlust with a newly discovered gob of entrepreneurial DNA streaming through her veins would do:  I channeled my inner-Michael Phelps and dog-paddled madly for the next several years.

In the early years I personally guided each and every trip of course.  And though the folks were all great, guiding was one of the hardest jobs I ever had.  My Imagine trips ranged from seven days to three weeks and let me tell ya - being "on" 24/7 for three solid weeks can be quite the marathon indeed. Not only ensuring that all accommodations, transport, and activities were all in place (often without benefit of even a confirmation fax), and coordinating the logistics of physically moving 12-16 folks from islands to jungles to beaches to cloud forests (more often than not on pot-holed dirt roads and/or suspiciously rickety boats), but making sure that each was safe, reasonably comfortable, and deliriously enchanted by each wondrous locale we visited. Ah yes, there was simply no end to the fun and games of being a tour guide, and the challenges kept me anxious and on my tippy-toes most every blessed minute

An early intrepid Imagine group

Among the many "interesting" mishaps in those early days as a tour guide, I fondly remember...

Waking to the shaking of my bed on the 4th floor of our hotel in San Jose - OMG an earthquake! - with my group of 14 lodged hither and yon the hotel!  Racing to each of their rooms and shooing them down to the lobby (w/ frantic instructions to grab their shoes AND their passports). Happily, it turned out to be but a bitty quake (by Costa Rican standards) and... we found the Ticos in the hotel cafe - calmly sipping their morning coffee, not the least bit alarmed. The lass who broke her wrist whilst hiking in Monteverde, and had to be evacuated 60 miles down the mountain to the nearest clinic (in Puntarenas) by the only transport availabile - the village soda pop truck!  Our battered bus (a bright yellow school bus with seats sized for 7 year-olds) breaking down on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (en-route to Placencia in the far south of Belize).  Alas it was a shredded fan belt that caused the bus to overheat (in the already blistering tropical sunshine), and... our clever bus-driver used a strap from one of the backpacks to mend it!

Seriously. It really WAS a tough job!

And when I wasn't guiding trips, I was down in the tropics scouting out new hotels and researching new itineraries.  So I was out of the country most the year, leaving uh, nobody back at the "office" (my bedroom) to keep up with the nitty-gritty of marketing, paperwork and actually selling trips.  I'd also added Costa Rica to Imagine's menu of "Soft Adventures".  So between guiding trips and whizzing to 'n fro the tropics in the off-season, I was necessarily out of the country a LOT those first few years.

All well and good.  I mean after all, "working" amid the splendor of tropical isles and verdant rainforests isn't exactly drudgery.  And it surely beats toiling in a windowless cubicle 50 weeks per year.

But from a business standpoint, I needed to be in the office (I believe I mentioned... bedroom?) answering the phone, dreaming up new marketing schemes, and devising ever more fantastic and adventure-filled itineraries for my schedule of trips  - in order to fill those those trips and keep the Imagine piggy bank chubby each year. So after awhile, I began hiring local guides in Belize and Costa Rica - providing a win-win for all involved:

• hiring local guides provided jobs in Belize and Costa Rica (where they were sorely needed);
• local guides would always be far more knowledgeable about the wonders of their native land than I could ever hope to be (and thus my clients enjoyed more intimate cultural exchanges); and I... 
• I was then free to build the business, do slide presentations, participate in travel shows, etc.  plus still got to whiz off to tropical hideaways for research at least a few times each year.

Fast forward a dozen years, and over that time the business grew - not by leaps and bounds, but steadily as Belize and Costa Rica slowly entered the consciousness of mainstream travelers.  Personally I rather hoped that my two beloved tropical treasures would remain "undiscovered" forever.  But of course that notion was blasphemy for a lass who needed to sell trips.

Still... I stayed true to my original philosophy of the "Adventure" in Imagine's "Soft Adventures" - always using small, locally owned hotels, staying in homestays whenever possible, eating local fare (I once talked the Tico cook at our hotel at Manuel Antonio into sending her son into the rainforest to nab an iguana for the group's dinner!), and generally encouraging a cultural exchange on all my trips, along with a serious respect for the delicate tropical environment (from early on, I opted to donate 10% of Imagine's net profits to environmental groups like the Belize Audubon and the Monteverde Conservation League.)

But time marched on, as it so reliably does. Things inevitably changed, and Imagine necessarily changed with them.  And though I know I said this would be the final installment of the "So You Wanna Be an Int'l Tour Operator, Huh?" - this post is already teetering on a tome, so best I save a final, final wrap-up for next time...

~ Tune in for the (seriously, I promise!) final chapter of this 20 year saga: "To Every Time...Turn, Turn, Turn" and how I learned to adapt Imagine to the changing winds of time.

Read "So You Wanna Be an Int'l Tour Operator, Huh?" Part I
Read "So You Wanna...Huh?" Part II
Read: "So You Wanna...Huh?" Part IV

Random Photo Memory: Moroccan Pied Piper Serendipity

Travel serendipity strikes when you least expect it  (indeed, by definition that's what "serendipity" is all about: "a happy accident".)  And in this case, my Moroccan serendipity started on a bright sun-shiny morning in the charming mountain village of Chefchaouen.

Click on the image to view enlargement

Dubbed "The City of Blue" for good reason (most every blessed stuccoed building is slathered in a brilliant shade of robin's egg blue), to me, dear Chefchaouen is among the most idyllic places on the Planet. Rising early on my first morning there, I set off with no plan whatsoever but to simply explore this lovely new corner of the globe.  As I stepped outside my pensione I heard the faint sound of live music.  Much like following the Pied Piper (albeit with a much happier ending), I meandered amid the narrow cobblestone lanes, going up and down, left, then right, in a cerulean maze of twists 'n turns as the music grew louder and louder. As I rounded the final turn I spied the source of the music:  there in a narrow blue cubby, was a small group of musicians with drums rumbling and horns tooting.

And gathered nearby was a bevy of Muslim lasses all dressed up in festive finery, clustered up the stairs and disappearing into the shade of the private rooms beyond.  Clearly there was something special going on here, but of course I had no idea what it was all about.  So I just stood there watching and clapping to the gay music.  When the set ended, one of the musicians passed his cap around and I happily added a few dirham to the mix.  The women watched me closely, and my donation (plus the fact that I'd not dared to raise my camera), I believe endeared me as friend not foe.  They motioned that I could take a photo if I liked, and then (surprisingly!) invited me upstairs for tea.

Needless to say, to be invited into the sacrosanct domain of Muslim women was a most precious honor indeed. Inside, was a large room with long cushioned seats lining each wall.  The women moved gracefully about, and a few children sat placidly on colorful wool carpets that covered the floor.  Not a single person spoke a word of English, and I knew little more than "shokran" (thank you).  So I capitalized on that one phrase over and over, as they served me hot mint tea and tiny sweet sandwiches.  They showed me beautiful beaded dresses, and one woman was packing a suitcase.  Somehow I managed to glean that the music and the finery were in preparation for a wedding, and the bride was packing to move to her new husband's household.  One young woman pantomimed that she was the bride's sister and had sewn each of the many glistening beads on her sister's wedding dress by hand.  I of course oohed and aahed liberally (happily, such gasps of delight translate the same in Arabic and English!) as the dress truly was a work of art.

And the children - ranging in age from about five to ten years old - crept ever closer to me, shyly touching the edges of my skirt, and staring (no doubt curious of my light hair and blue eyes.)  And suddenly I remembered...  I took my iPod Touch out of my satchel and showed them the simple game of "Paper Toss".  The one with the wastebasket and the fan that moves from side to side - you need only flick your finger to toss the wadded ball of paper and try to get it into the wastebasket.  Silly game.  But oh so very handy when words fail.  Both the ladies and the kids loved it, and it proved a simple way for me to share a little piece of my world, as they had so kindly shared a piece of theirs with me.

To be a guest amid such an intimate scene, in a foreign culture on a distant continent, was a most memorable occasion indeed.  For a traveler, it is just such rare bits of serendipity that quench our wanderlust and keep us ever seeking more.

To view all the photos of my solo backpack around Morocco, visit
my Morocco Gallery at "Through the Eyes of TravelnLass".

Finally... a Blast-off Date: October 1, 2011

O.k. there's no more wiggle room now...  I've finally bit-bullet and set a blast-off date.  I'd originally hoped to blow this dear U.S. of A. popsicle stand by July 1st, but...

1. Turns out that's pretty much the heart of the monsoon season in Asia, and I thought it best to uh, not start off by getting swept out into the South China Sea on my first day in Vietnam.
2. Just waaaaay too many loose ends to tie up in little more than 4 months.  Seriously, it's all a good bit overwhelming.  Having to sell most everything including my car, researching and setting up a mail forwarding service (more on that in another post), ditto travel insurance, finding a good home for my dear kitty Luna, arranging a storage locker (and figuring out what stays and how to fit it all in!), immunizations, banking issues, plus getting visas, copies of my college transcripts, a police background check (for a work permit in VN) - the list goes on and on.  In short, trust that moving lock, stock 'n barrel overseas, isn't at all like slapping on a backpack and hopping on a plane for a 3 week vacation.

Thus I've opted to be prudent and push my ETD out a bit.  But it's now official:  I WILL be heading for that g-forsaken rice paddy in Southeast Asia come October 1, 2011!

(Shoot, I've even sealed the deal by installing a little

"countdown" widget in my Travel'nLass sidebar.)

So there's no turnin' back now!

Pay It Forward: Helping a Fellow Wanderlust Here at Home

Sometimes travel serendipity can happen right in your own backyard.  Leastwise it did for me today (albeit somewhat in reverse), right here in Left Seattle, just down the street in my neighborhood shopping center.  It was near dark and pouring down rain.  A somewhat rare torrent unlike our usual pathetic Pacific Northwest drizzle.  Really WET out there with gusts of wind and sheets of rain.  I was doing errands (hair cut, groceries, post office - you know the drill) and getting cranky running to and fro the car.

Rushing out of Rite Aid, I bumped into a stranger - a middle-aged man in work clothes standing in the rain.  I paused just long enough to mutter "Oh, sorry!" when he soundlessly proffered a crinkled slip of paper with some writing on it. Staring at the damp smudged note it read: "Chelan's - West Marginal Way and Delridge".

He hardly spoke a word of English, but I gathered he wanted to go to this "Chelan's" place.  Unfortunately I had no idea what it was, and the Marginal Way/Delridge location was a fair ways away down amid the convoluted labyrinth under the West Seattle Bridge.  "Do you have a car?" I pantomimed, and he replied "No".  I wasn't sure if any buses went to that obscure area, and I was already late to pick up a friend for a class at 5:30.

"Do you know someone at this Chelan's?" I asked.  "Do you have their phone number?"  He then rummaged through each and every one of his pockets, and finally unearthed another slip of paper with the word "Lonnie" and a phone number.  Hooray!  I swiftly dialed the number and happily Lonnie answered.  I briefly explained the gentleman's dilemma and told Lonnie I was but a stranger trying to help.  It turns out that "Chelan's" is a restaurant that Lonnie owns and he likewise had only recently met the stranger (who I learned is a merchant seaman named "Perara") while traveling in Sri Lanka.  Lonnie said he'd be happy to come pick up Perara, but unfortunately he was a good hour's drive away in rush hour traffic.  So I suggested I stash dear Perara at the nearby McDonald's (with a Happy Meal to keep him company for good measure) where he could wait for Lonnie, all warm and dry.

Fine.  So Perara and I drive over to McDonald's and I get him all nicely tucked into a booth.  I ordered him some grub and advised the folks behind the counter that Perara spoke little English but was waiting for his friend to pick him up in about an hour or so.  I then waved goodbye to Perara and headed out the door back  into the rain.

But Perara was soon right behind me!  He had his camera out and was dancing around in the rain trying to tell me something.  Ah... he wanted me to take his photo - with the AMERICAN FLAG there in the background beside the McDonald's!

Such a simple random encounter with a fellow traveler, and I was happy to lend a little help.  But more importantly, it reminds me so of my own dilemmas in distant lands where I too, don't know the language and haven't a clue which direction to go.  So I'm just thankful that I could be there for Perara - a little "Pay it forward" for all the times total strangers have been kind enough to help me.

Random Photo Memory: Costa Rican Deluge Detour

When is a crummy pic better than a wowzer pic?  Answer:  When the crummy pic is accompanied by a great travel story.

Click on the thumbnail to view enlargement.

The decidedly mediocre snapshot for this week's RPM was inspired by one of my most memorable travel adventures.  It was taken on a research trip to Costa Rica in... I dunno, sometime in the 90's.  I'd gone down there to review hotels for a world-wide hotel directory that paid me a pittance to inspect and write reviews of all the uppity hotels in Costa Rica (which, at the time numbered little more than two dozen).  Clearly my Imagine small group tours favored far less opulent - nay comfortable but small and locally owned - hotels.  But hey, I had to do research for my own tours anyway, and the swanky hotel reviews leastwise paid my airfare. Likewise I rented a car (another uppity move that I normally shun, as it insulates you from the local culture and thus I muchly favor public buses and taxis to get around Costa Rica for research.)  But I needed to move swiftly on the hotel reviews so I could have time for my own research as well.

Technically it was the "rainy season" in Costa Rica, but it was sunny and dry for most of the hotel reviews.  Dry that is, until...  I was meandering my way amid the Nicoya Peninsula in Guanacaste (normally the most arid region in all of Costa Rica), headed on a dirt road towards the northwest coast to review a remote (in those days EVERYTHING was "remote" in Costa Rica) luxury beach resort.  On the drive in, I (naively, as it turned out) admired several little waterfalls trickling down the banks beside the road as I whizzed by.  Little did I know then, that but a few hours later...

I easily arrived at my destination and spent a couple of hours reviewing the resort and enjoying a complimentary lunch (trust that when one is reviewing hotels, one is treated exceedingly well by the hotel owner - often including comp lodging in their best room).  But I didn't have time to spend the night as I had one remaining hotel to see that day.  Nonetheless, it was late afternoon before I could tear myself away from that beautiful setting beside the Pacific.  As I drove away dark clouds were forming in the sky, and soon it began to rain.  In earnest.  A quintessential tropical DELUGE. I'd not gone more than a few miles from the coast and already I was splashing through six inch deep puddles across the road.  Wishing in hind sight that I'd rented a 4-wheel drive, I nonetheless hurried on hoping to make it swiftly back to the main road.

But the sheet of water falling from the sky continued unabated, and those cute little roadside waterfalls I'd merrily noticed earlier, were now creating giant ponds across the road.  And finally - a near LAKE spread out there in front of me, barring my way.  Prudently stepping out of the car into the downpour, I waded ahead to see just how deep the water was (Answer: TOO deep - leastwise for my little Toyota compact.)  Indeed, seriously deep and RUSHING.  A veritable flash flood, and the rain still coming down.

Plan B: head back to the resort from whence I came and wait it out til the rain and road floods subsided (in suh-weet comp luxury!)  Ah but as I turned around and headed again toward the coast, within minutes I was barred by yet another lake likewise rushing across the road.  Uh-oh.  Blocked in both directions.  Barred at every turn, in the middle of nowhere.  Worse, the dim light of evening was rapidly fading, and soon I'd be marooned there alone, in the dark of night.

(Do bear in mind, that in those days there were no cell phones to call Triple A, nor auto-voiced GPSr's kindly pointing me to the nearest Holiday Inn.  Nope.  No such handy technos that many take for granted today.)

And then... as darkness fell, I spotted a light - a single lantern wobbling down the hill in the pelting rain.  As it came closer, I could see a Tico man and his young son, rushing down the hill shouting:

¡Muy peligroso, Señorita!  ¡Venido, venido! (Very dangerous!  Come, come!)

Long story short?  They guided me back up the hill to their humble home and invited me to spend the night.  Utterly grateful for their kind hospitality, they led me to a tiny shed (uh, abandoned chicken coop?) with a concrete slab as a "bed", and offered me a couple of blankets and a candle as my only "amenities".  Despite such grim accommodations, I was thrilled to be out of the rain, and safe from being washed away in a flash flood on a lonely road in Costa Rica.  The next morning, I woke to the cluck, cluck of chickens and the snorting of pigs.  And the dear Señora in the photo cooked me a most delicious breakfast of fresh eggs, rice and beans.

And in the end - had that shabby little shed been on my list of hotels to review, I'd surely have given it a 5-star rating!

So You Wanna Be an Int'l Tour Operator, Huh? Part II

There was no internet in those days of course. Even desk-top computers were somewhat rare and new to the scene. I surely didn't own one. Heck, I didn't even own a typewriter. Indeed, I typed my very first "Imagine... Belize" brochure on a Selectric at the LIBRARY!

(Errr... this is beginning to sound like the dodderin' old fogey's boastful lament: "Why when I was a kid I trudged 30 miles in a blizzard - BAREFOOT - to get to school!")

But seriously. That's how it was. No internet, no email, no twitter, no cell phones.

(I know what you're thinking: "Good grief - in those dark days - how on earth did the globe manage to even SPIN?")

And likewise no guidebook whatsoever on the pristine little nation of  "used-to-be British Honduras" Belize. (Actually, one of my greatest regrets was that I had to turn down a rather lucrative offer to write one 'cuz at the time I was too busy building my own little int'l tour biz.)

In short, not only had few travelers even HEARD of Belize, but marketing a wee upstart travel business like mine - without benefit of today's digital freebies - surely called for some mighty creative marketing techniques.  Clearly if I was to get my fledgling "Imagine...Belize" biz off the tarmac, I needed to (literally) think-outside-the-box (i.e. those little - and ever littler computer boxes that we all peck on today.)

So I did the only sensible thing a delusional wannabe int'l travel czar with an advertising budget of zip would do: I took a $30 class in writing press releases, licked a few dozen .22 stamps (yep, first class stamps were less than a quarter), and snail-mailed a boatload of press releases to key newspapers across the country.

And the result of my $37.92 investment? The LA Times gave me 8 inches of editorial (worth about $800 at the time), the Denver Post and a handful of other newspapers printed brief shout-outs, and the Seattle P.I.?  Not only did the travel editor of my local newspaper publish a nice blurb on my forthcoming Belize trips, but the paper PAID to have him JOIN MY 1ST TRIP!!!

Woo-hoo!  A struggling start-up tour operator's DREAM-COME-TRUE, yes?

Errr... but uh, I still hadn't yet even guided a group to Belize!  Needless to say this most fortuitous development filled me with a good bit of ambivalence.  The thought of having the travel editor of one of Seattle's biggest newspapers along on my first group trip, scribbling notes at every turn made me a bit weak in the knees.  I was thrilled at the potential publicity of course, while at the same time terrified that I really didn't have a clue, and had no business presuming to be an international tour operator.

Nonetheless I managed to pull my shredded nerves together, and by Febrary 1986, I'd filled my 1st trip with a group of 12 intrepids hailing from all across the country.  And after rendezvousing in Houston (in those days no U.S. air carriers served Belize so we necessarily flew TACA, the Salvadorian airline), we all tumbled out into the tropical sunshine at Belize International Airport (see pic, not a heck of a lot of security there with uh, folks waving on the roof!)

I could fill quite a few posts here on the bountiful adventures we shared on that first trip (like... the travel editor of one of Seattle's biggest newpapers standing up amid the blue Caribbean on a snorkeling excursion screaming "Sh-sh-SHARK!"; the sweet lass from Denver who sashayed up to check-in at the Houston airport like Ginger Grant from Gilligan's Island - juggling no less than 3 suitcases filled with an assortment of stylish HIIGH HEELS; the young lad who'd never before been out of the U.S. yet bravely signed up for an adventure to a country he'd never even heard of; the cold water outdoor showers in the jungle; the ghastly muddy road to Tikal; oh and did I mention... the gun-toting Belize border guards that arrived at our secluded jungle lodge set along the border with Guatemala one morning, searching for drug smugglers?)

Ah but despite such deliciously daring anecdotes, the truth is that I managed to get the whole crew safely back home (with all appendages intact).  And (miraculously!) all reported that they'd had their most wondrous travel experience yet.

Indeed, I believe I introduced them all to a wholly new style of travel.  You see in those days, the travel industry pretty much offered but two (vastly disparate) styles of travel.  Your choice, pick one:  A. Luxury cruises and all-inclusive (ala Club Med) resort vacations; else B. hard-core adventures scaling mountains and camping in the bush.

But Imagine trips offered a new style of travel - small group trips that I dubbed "Soft Adventures".  No camping, nor arduous treks, but also no posh hotels with a/c and room service that insulated you from the authentic local culture of the country you'd traveled so far to see.  A balance. Decidedly off the beaten path, but with a bed, a modicum of plumbing, and with any luck, a trickle of hot water.  Pretty common nowadays.  But back then there were few companies that offered any such tours.

Likewise in those days Belize was the next "undiscovered" destination, and Imagine's "Soft Adventures" were on the leading edge of that wave.  So suffice that upon our return to Seattle, the travel editor of the P.I. reported lavishly on the trip - a full page and a half for two weeks in a row, with lots of pics of Caye Caulker, our jungle adventures (yup, even the drug bust at our jungle lodge) and the magnificent Mayan ruins we visited on a day trip to Tikal in Guatemala.

The result of which... verily put my fledgling little "Imagine Travel Alternatives" enterprise on the MAP!

My phone was ringing off the hook.  Indeed, the P.I. called to say they were fielding complaints that folks couldn't get through to Imagine for days on end.  Word spread like wildfire, and I'd soon filled all 3 planned departures that winter, plus had to add a 4th and a 5th!

And so it was that I officially became a full-fledged international tour operator - and all because I'd licked a few 22¢ stamps!

~ Tune in next week for the next chapter of this ancient saga: the next 20 years in a nutshell, running small group trips to Belize and Costa Rica (w/ various 'n sundry tangents along the way).

Read: "So You Wanna Be an Int'l Tour Operator, Huh?" Part I
Read: "So You Wanna...Huh?" Part III
Read: "So You Wanna...Huh?" Part IV