Arriving back in Manapiare, Alberto gave us a few words of advice - tour companies that don't have their own guides often try not to pay the guides they hire for single trips. Instead, it is much better to go to the area of interest and personally ask around for a guide upon arrival. This way the guide is going to receive the money directly from the tourist without having to chase up money from a distant office, and the price for the tourist would be lower - both sides get a better deal.

There are several naturalists in the manapiare area who work closely with remote villages to bring in a tourist based temporary work force. The man in the upper left picture has a program that does exactly this. He takes tourists (and trains other guides to do the same) into villages that are building houses or working on large projects and are looking for extra help on these projects. The tourists often want to learn about traditional building techniques and lifestyles, so the trade works well. He also emphasized that asking around a village once arriving in a specific region is the best way to find someone knowledgeable in the local forest and its people and languages to take guests into the forest and along the rivers.