Off the beaten Track

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Africans first got the notion that tourism might be a way out of their desperate poverty, they built vast concrete hotels on the beaches of Kenya, South Africa and other countries. For a time the charter flights poured in from Germany and Italy. Tourists hoping to see lions - but also eat sauerkraut and enjoy the other comforts of home - packed into overcrowded game parks or roasted in resorts that attempted to replicate the Mediterranean. That was then. Fortunately, a new kind of travel is in vogue now. Savvier tourists are abandoning the mock-European high-rises for more authentic experiences, like horseback riding through the bush. On the wild coast of eastern South Africa, young Germans gallop on pristine beaches and thread their way through hills carpeted by subtropical vegetation. Huddled by the fire at night after a typical dinner of meat stew, pumpkin leaves and wild spinach, they listen to the local Xhosa people tell folk stories. This experience is offered not by a multinational tour operator but by the Xhosa themselves, through a small, locally run firm called Amadiba Adventures. The money earned will provide the Xhosa tour guides with incomes two and a half times the average local wage. In many ways, this off-the-beaten-path vacation represents the future of global tourism - an industry on the verge of tremendous growth and change. Despite a tumultuous year, international and domestic tourism is expected to boom over the next two decades. While a global recession and the terrorist attacks of 9-11 pushed down tourist numbers in 2001 for the first time since 1982, the impact was less than many had feared.