Taken for a ride

Reputable tour agencies often complain that rogue companies are undercutting their prices by offering inferior excursions with no guides, hidden costs and poor itineraries. Are they protecting their turf or are tourists really getting a raw deal? Vanessa Macdonald booked a tour to Gozo to check out what happens.

You know there has to be a catch. How can a company offer a full day tour to Gozo for Lm5.95 when the usual price is closer to Lm20?

The company - one of several that offers similar tours - tells you straight away that lunch is Lm3.50 extra, that you have to pay Lm2 for the ferry. Entrance fees, I later found out, were also extra.

It does not work out that cheap after all.

However, the biggest problem is that the "guided" tours are not actually "guided" at all. A mini-van collects the tourists from the various hotels and takes them to Cirkewwa. At Mgarr, 56 of us from various companies were split between mini-vans.

The driver, whom I will call Gorg, spent most of the day with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a microphone. At the end of the day, he nonchalantly informed the nine of us on his van that he would have to stop talking as we approached Mgarr as he was a driver and did not have a permit to guide.

He was a cheerful and chatty character who kept us amused throughout the day but he was really little help when it came to the itinerary.

His English was very poor; I found it hard to follow, let alone the non-English speakers on the van. For example, we were informed that there are two names for the capital.

"He is called Victoria and Rabat. We Gozo call Rabat. Victoria he is called because the Queen, he came here."

The information given at the various stops was also pretty useless. At Dwejra, we were told that there was "The inland sea on the right, the Azure Window on the left and the Fungus behind". The Fungus?

And Ta' Pinu is decorated with "the pictures of the small marbles". Mosaics, perhaps?

At Victoria, we were directed to the Citadel, given some very confusing information about the cathedral's trompe l' oeuil dome and told that there were excellent views "on the cathedral". One of the tourists actually took this to mean that there was a balcony on its roof.

Ggantija was described as a "very old temple, from 3,600 years before Chris (sic)". It is no surprise that few of the group bothered to go in. Would any more have bothered had he told them that it was the oldest freestanding monument in the world and a veritable World Heritage site?

One of the problems, confirmed to me by a number of private sector outlets who declined to be named, is that they are not put onto itineraries unless they are willing to pay a commission. We drove past Gozo Heritage and Ta' Dbiegi Crafts Village and were not even told about the folklore museum in Victoria or the wonderful Heritage Malta sites in Victoria, like the Archaeology Museum and the Old Prisons, even though we were given one-and-a-half hours to spend there.

We did stop at the excellent Gharb Folklore Museum, whose 28 rooms are crammed with memorabilia covering every facet of life. It cost Lm1 to get in, compared to the normal fee of Lm1.50, a concession for mini-van groups. We were also given a whole 20 minutes at Fontana, to visit the souvenir outlets there.

The itinerary was also shaped by peculiar forces. We were rushed to Xlendi for lunch at 11.45 a.m. I thought this was because we were the first sitting (which is quite possible) but I later heard him tell another driver he had had to go to pick up some schoolchildren at noon.

Lunch was an edible meal in a typical restaurant with fake plants and tables covered in clear plastic. It seems that less than half of the Lm3.50 I paid goes to the restaurant, so you cannot really expect much better than the frozen lampuki and scoop of ice cream that made up two of the three courses. Drinks are on the expensive side, obviously the only way for the restaurant to break even. The pressure to eat and make way for the next lot was quite daunting: I was in and out within less than 20 minutes.

Many more upscale restaurants are now simply refusing to cater for groups as it is not worth the poor reputation they get from offering such poor fare, a few restaurant owners told me in Xlendi and Victoria.

After the long stop in Victoria and the somewhat pointless stop at Ggantija, we were treated to a photo stop at Qala as we had some time to spare and then drove very, very slowly down to Mgarr. It was only 3.40 p.m. and we were due to take to the 4.30 p.m. ferry.

Some of the shortcomings were by no means unique to our tour. The ferry was packed and dozens of people were sitting on the floor. A taxi driver at Mgarr told tourists that they should take his taxi as there was no public transport in Gozo!

The temporary passenger tent at Mgarr has no chairs and a few small, overflowing cardboard boxes were being used as litter bins.

Many of the village squares looked abandoned: Not a shop or bar was open and there was hardly any colour, even if they were all much tidier than in the past.

Roads are truly diabolical. The San Lawrenz road was being done up which meant a detour round half the island to get to Dwejra along roads normally off the tourist track.

Gorg joked that we were being treated to a safari.

At Ta' Pinu, visitors knew that there were stories connected with the many testimonials put up there - alas, they are nearly all in Maltese. The audio guide was out of order and, in the absence of a guide, no one was any the wiser about the painting or its relevance.

Two smart wood and stainless steel staircases have been set up at Dwejra but divers still have a treacherous route down to the sea. One middle-aged man, huffing and puffing, passed me as I picked my way gingerly over the rocks.

"You should try it with all this gear on your back," he said.

Victoria was a real disappointment for the tourists who were looking forward to meandering round the alleys. At 1.15 p.m. all the shops were closed except for a handful of souvenir outlets all selling the same things as each other and the same things we had seen at Xlendi and Fontana. Even Tigrija Palazz and Arkadia were closed and the number of stalls at It-Tokk has been reduced to a few, the space taken up by tables and chairs.

It was not all bad. Gozo is blissfully devoid of construction cranes. Every single person we encountered was smiling and helpful. Even the ice cream vendors were chatty and full of tips on things to do. Boarding the ferry, a Gozo Channel employee rushed to a woman with a walking stick to show her where the lift was.

The worst thing was, however, the fact that the tourists did not realise that they would not get a guide.

Two British ladies felt they had probably missed out on many things; an American told me she would gladly have paid more for a guide. "We were told that there was a driver/guide, without realising that there is no such thing. We are not very happy."

A young French couple was more pragmatic. "We opted for this tour because it was cheaper. We were offered one free trip with the company if you booked two. I guess when it is that cheap, you know that there will be a catch," he shrugged.

"We still had fun."