How to Explore a City: Getting Lost in an Urban Jungle

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As I started out exploring Arequipa Peru yesterday I realized that over the years I have unknowingly developed an urban exploration 'method' ('urban orienteering' I suppose) that seems to work for me. I like to think that I just walk out the door and go, but as I thought about it I realized there's a whole lot I do unconsciously to prepare. This is my guide to going for an all day walk in a city you don't know too much about. There are certainly issues and conditions in every city that won't be addressed here. Ask your host/hostel/hotel contacts about walking around before you go anywhere.

Preparation starts the day/evening before:

1. Get a map of the city and look at it. Flat? Hills? Rivers? Get some basic ideas of the lay of the land. Go to the roof of the hostel or a balcony or the front steps and look at the map, look at the landscape. Learn a couple visible landmarks, high mountain peaks, big rivers, lofty distinctive buildings, waterfronts. Get some big points of reference. Uphill vs. downhill is very important. Major boulevards are important. Check it out on Google Earth to help get the big picture.

2. Look at the map, the streets, and check out the way the city is divided into neighborhoods. Are there a lot of self-contained neighborhoods, effectively or actually 'gated' that have very limited entrances and exits? You want to avoid cul-de-sacs. Try to get a 'feeling' for what they look like on the map and on the ground. Are there lots of curvy streets? If so you may have to use the map more often to orient. If it is all squares and rectangles, then fewer map referrals are possible.

3. Learn which taxi companies can and can't be trusted, how to hail one, how to negotiate a fair price and about how much you should be paying for a ride halfway and all the way across town. Dealing with taxis is sometimes country specific so I'll leave it to you to get it figured out beforehand.

4. Write down, on a small piece of paper (and bring it with you) the name and phone number of where you are staying, and a main, commonly known point very nearby. This is your 'get me out of here ticket' - whenever you get tired of walking, take a cab back. By having a written return point you can get as lost as you want and just hand the taxi driver the paper to get back. If you can't write the local language/script have someone who knows it write it down.

5. Ask locals/hostel employees about the places in the city where you absolutely should not go. Different people will use this information differently. I sometimes try to walk right through some of those places, but I can't say I'd advise it for everyone. Evaluate the person giving the advice and the advice. A knowledgeable, serious fellow once said to me, "You'll die." So, I didn't go there...

6. Look at the map/guidebook and get 4 or 5 locations, destinations, that might be nice to visit: museums, plazas, parks, markets, shrines, vistas etc. You may not get to any of them and that's OK.

7. Using all the above information, make a very, very rough conceptual outline of where you might walk. For example, here in Arequipa, I'm staying out from the center and I'd been to the center of town, so I thought I'd try to do a circle around the center of town and end up back at the hostel, taking all day. A couple of my 'maybe destinations' were on the rough route. If I got really lost or the loop was too big, I'd take the taxi back. A couple years ago in Dakar I was way out of town so I started walking toward the center, thinking if I managed to get there, great, and then I'd take a taxi all the way back. The heat stopped about half-way, so I hung-out in a small restaurant for a while, met some interesting people and they showed me around, by taxi, perfect.

8. Dress down and conservative. Old jeans are good, depending on the where you are. Sometimes I bring an old pair and use them in the first city then toss them. No backpack or a small, mostly empty daypack. I use a very small, super-lightweight daypack that is about the size of my fist when it is stuffed in its own pocket. It's perfect, if I loose it, no big deal. A bottle of water, thin extra layer for later in the day, sunscreen. It has a couple handy mesh pockets on the sides where I put the sunscreen and the map. Plus it's a good place to put spontaneous purchases. (Search for: 'lightweight packable stuff travel daypack'.)

9. Bring enough money to pay a taxi about 5 times over and buy yourself a couple meals. Don't bring any credit cards, zero jewelery and no watch. No phone or electronic devices of any value. Cheap sunglasses. Bring a photocopy of your passport. I have an old point and shoot that works OK and I bring it, a camera is important, but not a fancy camera! Start with an empty card in the camera. Bring nothing you can't stand to loose. If you get robbed you want to hand it all over quickly and 'effortlessly'. Unlikely but it is really nice to not care about it.

10. Leave early, but after rush hour and get back before dark.

11. Tell someone where you are going and when you might be back.

Go for an all day walk:

Walk out the door with your very rough conceptional route in mind. Keep the map easy to reach but don't use it very often. Take the first or maybe the second small street going in the rough direction you want to go and just walk. Don't fret about exactly where the road goes or even it's name. It's a road, it goes somewhere and 'somewhere' is the objective. The only real issue is if it is a through street and not a dead end, which you want to avoid.

Stay off main roads as much as possible. There are neighborhoods between main roads, try to stay in the neighborhoods. You will regularly run into main roads, and may have to walk a couple blocks down them but you'll have a lot more fun if you stay on neighborhood streets.

If a street is one-way, walk towards traffic. Often sidewalks are non-existent or sketchy in the places I walk and I'd rather see the traffic coming. But you may find that you'd prefer it the other way.

Use the lay of the land and your big reference points to guide your decisions about which way to turn. If you 'know' you are heading more or less the correct direction then make a right because the road T's or whatever, shortly there after you should make a left to stay more or less on course, maybe...

Check the map occasionally, like once every hour, more or less depending on your comfort level. Make sure you are not going in circles and that you are 'on' your rough conceptual route.

When you are trying to decide between going down two small roads, watch the traffic. Some small streets are more connected than others and traffic will prefer them, taxis especially. Even the wear of the pavement can show you which route gets more traffic. Use this to filter possible dead ends and streets that get too little, or too much traffic.

Small roads are really nice but in dodgy areas I tend toward slightly bigger roads with regular traffic and people.

When confused or uncertain, ask someone. Even if you can't speak a single word of the local language, greet them, then smile and point in your best guess direction and say the name of a prominent point of reference along your conceptual route. Say it as a question, both in inflection and in facial expression. These are more or less universal and if you get it across as a polite question you'll get a polite, simple answer. Pointing sets the stage and the answer will likely also involve some pointing, and off you go. Ask an older person when you can...

If you start down a street and get a bad vibe, turn around. It is easy to backtrack and it is going to happen. Just turn and head back, take a different walking route or take a taxi out of there.

Get sidetracked. You may see something way down a street that looks interesting. Go look, and modify your wandering route accordingly. Watch for people 'streaming' in one direction, depending on how many there are you may want to go look or run the other way. I'd have completely missed Chicago's 'Cloud Gate' sculpture if I hadn't followed the folks who actually knew where they were going... and those teenagers in Buenos Aires who were throwing brightly colored powder all over themselves...

Avoid walking next to big 'buildings': stadiums are usually boring and dirty; industrial buildings are also busy and dirty; schools are sometimes a little dodgy. Sometimes it's just the way you have to go. And sometimes you'll want to walk down the busy, commercial city center streets, it's part of the picture. The narrow, winding alleys in old Cairo, where shop after shop makes fezzes and the crazy busy street in Davao I think of as 'hardware' road... not easy places to walk, but really interesting.

Sometimes you'll want to walk fast. It is best to not linger in dodgy areas. Don't give folks too much time to contemplate who you are. Last year my Filipino friend said to me.."You went WHERE?!" "Don't ever go there again. They will be ready for you...."

Those 'destinations' you picked out... maybe you'll start to get close to one and decide to actually go there, then just use the map to get there efficiently. In my recent Arequipa walk I had 5 possible destinations and got to 2 of them, but I feel I really saw the town.

Stop occasionally and sit, in small cafes or parks. If an area is just not working, take a taxi to one of your destinations and start walking after you visit it, or not.

OK, there's some risk, every place is different. You are responsible for figuring them out and acting accordingly. Remember, the safest thing to do is stay at home, in your room, and do yoga, for the rest of your life.

Enjoy and good luck.

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