Private guides can be worth their weight in gold if you’re traveling somewhere with significant language or transportation barriers. Practically speaking, in most locations, there are apps that can assist with transportation, and locals speak at least a little English. But sometimes, it can really bridge the gap between a pleasant trip and an amazing vacation.
Plus, you can save time, money and support the local economy!
My favorite places to find guides are Tours By Locals, Get Your Guide and Viator. Make sure to interview several guides on Whatsapp before you go and negotiate rates (either daily or by activity). Cash payments in USD and Euro will also get you better rates.
Don’t forget to review them on-line after you return home. In-country reviews are considered suspect and may be deleted from the sites!
A couple of examples when our guides took our trips to the next level:
Senegal
If you speak French and stay at an all-inclusive beach resort, there is absolutely no need for a guide. Just arrange transportation between Dakar airport and the coast. But if you want to surf, race quad bikes around the famous Pink Lake, see live music, eat like a local, and experience animism at a local village, a guide is key.
We hired Oumar (or Uncle Oumar, as my younger brother, Charlie, affectionately referred to him). When Oumar met us at the airport with our entourage (a driver named Papi and a bodyguard named Sunny), we felt like total ballers. Sunny was always ahead of us making sure we were treated like VIPs wherever we went. We never waited in a line—we even had a separate officer to escort us through passport control in a private office.
And this VIP treatment cost less than an organized 1-2 group tour in a typical European country.
Egypt
We wanted a bespoke vacation when we visited Egypt. We wanted to hit the big sites (the Great Pyramids, the Sphynx, mummies, King Tut’s tomb) and ride the obligatory camels. But we also wanted to spend time in the Sahara Desert.
One first guide was Tamir. Similar to Uncle Oumar, he provided VIP services and a bodyguard for the key tourist locales. But we had to widen our search to find someone who could give us a unique Sahara experience.
And that’s when we stumbled upon Samir, a former Sudanese professional basketball player and former teammate of Manute Bol. Samir advertised multi-day camping trips across the Sahara, but he was happy to create a 1-day trip for us. It was magical! Visiting locals, swimming in desert lakes and surfing the dunes.
And when my brother became ill with an ear infection, we navigated through a local village filled with donkey's transporting field crops until we located a small pharmacy. For less than $20, we had all the antibiotics we needed to ensure the rest of the trip was pain-free! Our guide literally saved our flight to Luxor the following day!
And several weeks after our return, we received a wonderful message from Samir. Based on our glowing reviews of their guide services, Tamir and Samir decided to join together to develop new travel itineraries based on the excursions they developed for us!
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