Hospitality for touring cyclists / Hospitalidad para ciclistas viajeros
By Anonymous - Posted on August 25th, 2008
One more long cycling day ending, the sun going down, the night arriving. A city or a small village ahead. The doubt: where to sleep? Where do you sleep at the most when you are within a town? How do you contact local people asking for shelter? Do you ask for? Or do the people offer? Do you have some trick that always works?
Is there specific ways to do that concerning Latin America? Are the people distrusted about foreigners? Do they let you use their showers? Do you eat something together, they invite you for dinner? Is there any charge, or do you offer some money? And, finally, who (socially speaking) hosts you?
Más un largo día pedaleando terminando, el sol bajando, la noche llegando. Una ciudad o una pequeña aldea adelante. La duda: ¿dónde dormir? ¿Dónde ustedes duermem en la mayoría de las veces que están en una ciudad? ¿Cómo ustedes entran en contacto con el pueblo para pedirle abrigo? ¿Ustedes piden? O la gente ofrece? ¿Tienes ustedes algún truco que siempre funciona? ¿Hay maneras específicas de hacerlo en se tratando de Latinoamerica? ¿Las personas son desconfiadas con relación a extranjeros? ¿Déjan qué ustedes usen las duchas? ¿Comem un algo juntos, invitam a cenar? ¿Tiene alguna cobranza, o usted proponen alguna plata? Y, por fin, ¿quien (socialmente hablando) hospédelos?
Hi Ricci -
What we usually do is this:
We almost never know where we're going to sleep until we get to the end of the day.
If there is likely to be hospitality in the town that is our goal for the day, we check into that and see if it works out. Hospitality in Latin America has been quite cheap, from US$10-$15 in Mexico to $5-10 now in Peru. It's nice to have a shower (often hot) and a bathroom and a safe place to put the bikes.
If we don't make it to hospitality or if we don't like what we find (has happened a lot in Peru) then we ask around for possibilities for camping. We've camped at police stations and people's houses and in back of restaurants. Most fire stations, police stations, and gas stations will let you camp.
On rare occasions we've had the delight of staying with Warmshowers.org hosts or at Casas de Ciclistas. These are not too terribly common in Latin America, but a delight when we arrive at one.
At one really cold place in Peru we just asked if somebody had a room where they could put us for the night. We weren't going to make it over the pass, and they didn't want us up there in the cold, so somebody volunteered and we had a delightful evening. It was a pretty primitive place, with a long trip out to the privy in the middle of the night and no shower. On that night we paid her a token amount for letting us stay in her house. When we camp at somebody's place, we rarely pay them for it, and they've never asked.
In general, if people have a shower or a bathroom, they share them with us. Many people do not. Sometimes they're embarrassed about what they don't have.
Random people that we've asked for a place to stay have not generally fed us. Members of warmshowers.org sometimes do, but that's above and beyond.
In general, it's our opinion that camping in a random place is not a wise thing to do in Latin America. For security reasons, one should ask for permission to camp, and camp where the people who offer it think it's safe. Inside somebody's realm of understanding of security. Inside their "solar" (the Spanish name for their "compound".) If they say you can camp at their place and you camp where they say, you're pretty safe. They know the security situation and will get you through the night.