Episode 6 The Travel Show

Can Guatemala overcome its reputation as being unsafe for

tourists and become a world-class destination?

On this week's programme we travel to one of Central America's most

beautiful countries to discover what's stopping some tourists from

going there. Thought old-style photo booths were

a thing of the past? We meet the man bringing them back to the streets of

Europe. And if you've ever wanted to learn how to do this we'll show you

where and how. From ancient ruins to beautiful

natural landscapes and a living Maya culture - the Central American

country of Guatemala has an awful lot to offer tourists.

In the south-west the city of Antigua, with its cobbled streets

and beautiful colonial architecture, has earned the city UNESCO World

Heritage status. The city was the centre of Spanish colonial rule in

Guatemala for hundreds of years, and today it's the top destination for

tourists arriving in the country. A particularly popular time to visit

is in March or April, when the city's famous Easter processions

fill the streets. Guatemala is a growing destination for

international tourists, attracting over two million of them for the

first time ever in 2013, yet there is a factor holding some people

back. It's the country's reputation for violent crime. There are up to

100 homicides per week here on average, making Guatemala one of the

deadliest countries in the world. Drug-related and gang violence means

some areas, particularly in the capital of Guatemala City, are

simply too dangerous for visitors. And even in tourist areas like

Antigua, muggings are not uncommon. Travel advisories around the world

warn travellers to take special precautions. Yesterday, there was a

procession for the first Sunday in Lent and I was very busy taking

photographs. I got really good photographs and my bag was slashed

and my wallet went really quickly. You just have to use common sense.

Don't go out too late at night, stay close to your house, have a good

time during the daytime. I haven't had any problems whatsoever and I've

been here for a couple of months. In an effort to reduce crime against

visitors Antigua has formed a special tourist police force to

patrol busy areas. With tourist numbers on the rise,

new businesses are popping up to cater for them, including a new

Guatemalan restaurant opened by broadcaster and former war

correspondent Harris Whitbeck. I think tourism, if managed properly,

is the future for Guatemala. Yes, there are problems but if you relax

also and really allow the culture to speak to you, you'll find it's a

beautiful country full of wonderful people and, you know, I think the

good always outweighs the bad. Of course you have to be careful, but I

think that people find it's a pretty great place.

One group that Guatemala is really trying to attract is adrenaline

junkies, with zip line tours like this one just five minutes from the

centre of Antigua. Wish me luck! The tour takes place above an old coffee

plantation where nine zip lines are arranged at a height of up to 1,600

feet. First up, the safety equipment. Ah, so, the zip line

goes... Exactly, goes double. Is this a good time to mention that I'm

really scared of heights? I'm not. It's fine! Whoo! Ha-ha-ha! Whoo!

That was fast! Yeah, it's fun. Guatemala is surrounded by

volcanoes, like mountains and all those things so it's perfect for us

because we can work with that and give you a great experience when you

come to our country. In the north of the country is one

of the world's most important archaeological sites - Tikal. A

series of gargantuan ruins spread over ten square miles and beyond. It

was once a thriving centre of the Mayan empire and today it receives

around 350,000 visitors per year. But when you spread that number out

over Tikal's huge area, it's not difficult to find a quiet spot to

yourself. What's truly astounding about this place is that there are

these ruins spread everywhere. Some of the best I've seen in the world,

and yet there's no-one here. John Telfer led the first

international group tour to the country in 1985. Today, he's back to

research a new tour in the region and feels that Guatemala has been

underrated as a destination. I think it's a gross case of people being

quite ignorant about the place. There's lots of other places which

have a lot more space in the media. It's a great shame. You have the

rainforest and the birdlife, the howler monkeys, the mists floating

over the canopy in the morning. It's one of the finest places to visit on

the planet. The time may soon come when

Guatemala's great potential for tourism is realised and the hordes

will descend. But, in the meantime, this place will continue to be a

hidden gem for travellers to explore.

Well, if you're thinking of heading to Guatemala here is some more

information you might find useful. It's worth checking your

government's travel advice website before you head off in order to get

the latest information. Despite the high crime rate, most visits here

are trouble-free but just to stay on the safe side it's best to avoid

catching the brightly-coloured public buses like these found across

the country. El Mirador is also a place to visit if you've got time on

your hands. It was a major Mayan city that flourished from the sixth

century BC and was abandoned at the end of the ninth century. But, be

warned, it takes a gruelling trek of at least five days through the

jungle to get there. The procession season in Antigua

runs from early March until Easter and it's one of the busiest times to

visit so be sure to book well ahead. Tango. Since its invention in the

1890s no other genre of music seems to sum up the passion, the beauty,

the sex and the attitude of Buenos Aires so perfectly. But the Tango we

know is not always the Tango that was. See, almost 100 years ago, one

baritone voice performer would, with one startling act, catapult Tango

from a lower class pastime to a classy international phenomenon.

And that man's name? Carlos Gardel. When Gardel put lyrics to a

previously instrumental music, it created a massive stir both in

Uruguay and Argentina. So big was the stir that the international

media got ahold of it and thus became our introduction to tango. I

was essentially looking for the first tango song the world had ever

known, and so my first stop was La Boca - a picturesque bohemia known

for its homage to all things tango. But this place was not the answer.

Every single person I approach wanting to talk about tango with

wanted money. Every time I tried to take a photo, somebody wanted a tip,

so if I'm looking for the real tango in Buenos Aires it's definitely not

going to be here in La Boca. Next, I headed to Abastos the

neighbourhood that Gardel supposedly grew up in. But that was equally

exasperating as, even on the street dedicated to him, no-one was around.

Needing to go inside and warm up for a bit, I headed to the trendy area

of Palermo to visit a record shop that I had seen earlier. I had

originally passed it off as too rock'n'roll for what I was after,

but I thought I'd least ask whoever was inside for some guidance. But

the owner, Paco, didn't seem too hopeful. It's going to be hard, man.

Like, nobody carries gramophones now. You could get, like, a really

fine vinyl copy, maybe a really good audio print. I know a place you

could go to. Nobody knows about that place, I don't tell my customers

because I buy my records and the stuff I sell here there but you

deserve it because you came a long way to find that song, man. And so

my treasure hunt had been changed from an old gramophone record to an

old Odeon recording. Found a tango collection, found Gardel and found

my treasure. A forest green background with Gardel smiling back

at me and on the back, side two, song two, Mi Noche Triste.

Germany's airports reflect to buy a strike this week. More than 1500

flights were cancelled or delayed at airports across the country. I plan

to weekend with my girlfriend and we had to reschedule everything. We are

going to be delayed on our flight. We are going back to the United

States and flight is cancelled. At this point, we don't know when we

will be able to get back home. It is ridiculous. I don't know what

Germany has got going on, but they need to work on it. These dramatic

pictures show the moment when a train derailed. The train travel

partway up an escalator. Amazingly, there were no serious injuries.

The Burmese government have placed a ban on more hotels in its home to

thousands of temples and shrines. It claims the previous military regime

for a underside Lee hotels in the ancient compacts years ago.

If you're heading to New York this weekend, be sure to visit the city

's first cupcake vending machine. On the upper East side, it holds

cupcake of up to 16 different flavours. It is some. It is so

exciting. I love cupcakes. I hope they open more. There is always a

need for cupcake 's, right? Next up, London's East End. It is

home to one of the best circus schools in the world. They're now

offering visitors to the capital the chance to learn from the experts.

The Travel Show went along to take a look.

The kind of circus we are talking about here at the National Centre is

very much acrobatic and aerial-based. It has to have an

element... Well, I call it the wow factor, and if it doesn't make you

go "Wow!" It's probably not a very successful circus! But equally it

has to have aesthetic, as well, so you can't get away with just being a

daredevil. You do have to have an aesthetic and that's what makes an

artist. The National Centre for Circus arts

is not just about people wanting to train to become a professional

artists, although that does happen. Experience days are offered at the

weekends and people come in from the outside and get to try different

skills. So it might be flying trapeze, it might be acrobalance, it

might be juggling or tight wire, but they'll get to try different things

and have some fun doing it. I just got to the end of the tightrope. It

was incredibly satisfying. I went from only taking two steps in a row

and falling off to getting all the way to the end in one big leap, and

I just had to stop thinking. It was fantastic.

Why don't you trust me? I do trust you! I trust you!

So when people come in and it's the first time ever on the trapeze,

normally they're scared, a bit apprehensive, which is a totally

human reaction, totally get that, but they're excited, too, and

they're enthusiastic and that's quite infectious so, as a teacher,

that's brilliant. Keep stretching up. Right, Zach, so, now that we've

got your safety belt on we're going to put you up on the flying trapeze.

You're going to ve be standing up there with those two lovely women

who are going to help you, and it's all about keeping your arms straight

when you first get on the bar there, yeah? And keeping your head up.

Yeah? Head up. Nothing to it. Straight.

I'm actually pretty bad at heights. I'm one of those people who are the

last to jump in a swimming pool, but I figured, why not? I'm here in

London so I'll give it a go. My first thoughts were this is a lot

higher than I was expecting. After that it was, "I really hope I don't

fall before I get my hands on the bar!"

I was glad to find that I actually did it well. I felt like, at least -

I don't know how it looked! But it was really awesome, so exhilarating.

I actually felt very secure the entire time with keeping both hands

on the ropes and then the connections, and, of course, having

two professionals by my side might have helped a little bit! I had a

blast. I want to do it again. You normally get people who just

want to do it as a hobby, and that's fine, and most of what we do here

for the adults and the children, that's what we do. But occasionally

you get somebody who starts doing it as a hobby and actually is quite

good at it and then wants to do a bit more, and then, actually, why

don't I apply for full-time training? Why don't I become an

acrobat or trapeze artis? And that's great. It doesn't happen often, but

when it does, fantastic! The higher end stuff, the aspiring

professionals and the professionals themselves, are graduates. You've

got people who specialise ver much in one or two disciplines and whoo

show that off to good effect, as you saw earlier. So, they'll pick a

discipline and work until they're masters of it, until they're

experts, in fact, so it's not something you can pick up overnight.

It does take years of training. So, not one for the faint-hearted

but you can tell your mates back home that you've run away to join

the circus, if only for the day. A typical lesson costs around ?70,

or 120 US dollars but if you're not heading to the capital there are a

handful of other venues around the UK where you can learn to swing from

a trapeze. Now, many of us had our first

passport pictures taken in these, but they've all but disappeared in

many parts of the world. Old-style mechanical photo booths have given

way to their more up-to-date digital counterparts, but two men in Berlin

have a passion for bringing a touch of retro technology back to the

streets of Europe. So, this is Photoautomat. This

actually is the very first Photoautomat that we put on the

streets of Berlin, and still holding up pretty well ten years in.

Together we did a documentation about an art project and then we

used one of the old vintage photo booths that's still left in there at

this time, and the idea came up to put one of these booths in Berlin

because we both loved it so much. We started out of the pure fascination

of this old machine with its unique photographic quality. And, to our

own surprise, the project, or the booth, was well-received among

Berlin people. Now we have around 20 photo booths

in Berlin, and we have two in Hamburg and one in Leipzig, and then

we have some of our friends and relatives also run in co-operation

with us some photo booths in different cities in Europe,

actually, in London, Vienna, Florence and Cologne.

It wasn't a business idea but it was the fascination for these photo

booths, for the process of taking a photo in a photo booth and the

actual photo stripe. Which, we feel today, everybody has a camera but

nobody's actually thinking about photography. I think that's what

makes these photo booths popular, too, because, you know, for once,

people are confronted with photography and the abilities. It's

a physical product, you can smell it, you can see it, and it's

something to think about. These machines, when we started the

only places you could find them were museums. There were birds inside,

living birds inside, cats. But we were able to put this back into

working condition, so that's kind of the expertise we have to bring these

machines back to life. My best Photoautomat memory was when

I took a lot of pictures with my best friend and then I made a photo

wall in my room of all the pictures. With my best friend when I was 14 we

went into the photo booth and took a lot of photos. Unfortunately, we're

not friends any more, but I still remember her and I still have those

beautiful photos. Part of the appeal is we don't put

it in safe places, we put it out in the street where real street life

happens. There's no surveillance here, it's just out in the street

and anything could happen. It's a lovely process, it's fun

work. It's fun. We are here, we have holidays and it's a nice memory to

look at the pictures and know, "Oh! That was in Berlin and it was

sunny," so I think it's nice. The project bringing photo booths

back to the streets of Germany. Well, that's it from us for this

week, thank you for joining us on our travels and here's where we're

off to next week. Thailand might have a reputation for

being a sun and sea destination but Henry goes off road to explore

another side of the country. What these machines are really built for

is off-roading and that's exactly where I'm going to take it.

So, do join us there if you can. And in the meantime, and don't forget

you can keep up with us while we're on the road in real-time by signing

up to our social media feeds, details of which are appearing on

the screen right now. But for now, from me, Christa Larwood, and the

rest of The Travel Show team here in Guatemala, it's adios!