Afternoon Delights

During a vacation abroad, come 5 p.m., many tourists have exhausted their energy reservoirs and retired to their hotel rooms to crash before a night out. Pity. That’s often precisely the time to be out and about, experiencing the community life of a destination.

Around the world, late afternoon and early evening are a time when, having completed the day’s work, young and old take to the streets, cafes and plazas to exchange greetings with their neighbors, shop for the evening meal or just relish the joy of a bracing walk in the open air.

Throughout Spain, for instance, the afternoon parranda is an institution, with groups of teens, elders and mothers with baby strollers turning out like clockwork to promenade among their peers around the village green.

In Italy, cafes overflow with couples luxuriating over creamy gelati , while in France folks are lined up at boulangeries for crusty baguettes fresh from the oven, and Britons are gathered at the local pub for a pint and the latest “royals” gossip.

The beaches of Brazil empty of sunbathers and come alive with young men jamming on samba music or battling it out over a volleyball net. And in Bali, colorfully attired villagers parade to the local temple, the women balancing on their heads steep piles of artfully arranged fruit and pastryofferings.

For active travelers who may have spent the day scaling a mountain trail or tackling a solitary bike route, the hours around dusk are a wonderful opportunity to incorporate people into their otherwise often isolated activities. A country, after all, is as much about its inhabitants as its scenery, and any trip that gives short shrift to the human side really is a much diminished experience. Too often, an adventurer’s only encounters with the host population are interactions with locals hired to haul supplies, cook or provide other support labor for an excursion--which is hardly representative of everyday community life.

During many years of exploring the world’s far reaches, my strongest memories are not of towering mountains, deep blue seas, or emerald rain forests--though these certainly loom large and pleasantly. What brings back smiles and fond reminiscences time and again are the mental images of “people” experiences in cities, villages and assorted stops along the way. The same holds true with the thousands of travel photographs I’ve taken. My scenic shots, though often dramatic, do not provide nearly as much joy as my pictures of new acquaintances on their home turf, who invariably seem delighted to offer a smile and a chunk of their time to a visitor interested in more than directions to the nearest hotel or tourist draw.

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Meandering up the labyrinth of stone walkways in the northern Italian hill town of Todi late one afternoon several years ago, a traveling friend and I came upon a trio of senior women sitting on a bench earnestly engaged in conversation. My friend, who was short on Italian but long on conviviality, put all the words he knew together and launched into a discourse that sent the women into gales of laughter. Using mainly hand language, they insisted on taking us on a tour of their village, followed by glasses of strong red wine in one of their homes. Though we comprehended little of each others’ language, we all understood the message of friendship implied in attempting to communicate, and ended up in goodby embraces and hearty arrivedercis .

Later I sent the women a copy of the photo I’d snapped of the trio gleefully reacting to my friend’s fractured Italian. Every time I look at that picture, it gives me a laugh and a craving to return to little Todi, and I like to think of my three ladies gazing at the photo with similarly warm feelings.

Sometimes you have to go a bit off the tourist track to find precious nuggets of community life. In southern Spain’s Andalusian region late one afternoon we were exploring Setenil, one of the less touristed pueblos blancos (white towns)--ancient Moorish villages with whitewashed houses stacked up the hills like sugar cubes. Ascending on foot the steep path to the town center, we were surprised to find the place all but deserted--and then we heard what sounded like cheering coming from a little hole in a wall that we discerned was the village bar.

Entering the dark entrance way, we discovered dozens of men on rickety wooden chairs facing a small TV screen on which a bullfight was being broadcast from Madrid. Each time the matador whirled his red cape and the bull snorted by, a roar went up among the crowd, followed by much slapping of backs and debate about the bullfighter’s strengths and weaknesses. It was like Sunday afternoon football, Spanish style, and we joined right in, ordering a round of cervezas for everyone and cheering along with the rest (though we were secretly rooting for the bull). In this stone village with few modern amenities, technology and tradition coexisted nicely, and we’d been a happy part of the meld.

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We had another opportunity to savor Spanish tradition the following week in Barcelona, where late each Sunday afternoon, much of the city’s Catalonian population gathers in the courtyard of the cathedral to dance the sardana , a centuries-old folk dance performed in large circles, and accompanied by a sizable band. Had we taken our afternoon nap, as planned, we would have missed this spectacle--and the wonderful photo we snapped of the sardana dancers in full swing.

Mingling with locals at a restful time of the day is often the best way to get a handle on the social and political pulse of a place, a factor of special interest to those exploring once out-of-bounds areas only recently opened to Westerners. On a cruise up eastern Germany’s Elbe River two years after the 1990 reunification, we stopped in Dresden, which had been transformed from a dull gray socialist enclave once favored by the secret police into a colorful hub of capitalism with pizza parlors and Baskin-Robbins ice cream trucks.

Strolling along a narrow street lined with brand new cafes, we fell into conversation with a couple from Frankfurt who were devouring a pizza at a small table adorned with flowers. They told us all the sprucing up was very nice, but they worried that a taste of Western comforts would produce impatience for prosperity among the eastern Germans and an unmanageable drain on the western German economy. Sure enough, a month later we read of massive strikes in Germany over the diversion of money to the east, and rising tensions in the east over a perceived lag in advancement.

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While especially fruitful encounters often are serendipitous, you can increase your chances of experiencing a community at its most interesting by doing a little research when you arrive in a town--often the information is no further away than your hotel’s front desk.

Chatting with the reservation’s clerk at Amandari, a luxe resort amid the lush rice paddies of northern Bali, we were advised to skip the poolside cocktail hour and instead venture out to the nearby villages to watch the daily pilgrimage to the local temple. We chartered a hotel car and driver for two hours, and spent a joyous time navigating from one village to another, pulling over to watch the parade of men, women and children bearing tributes of flowers, fruits and sweets. In one village, dancers wearing masks representing characters from Balinese mythology gyrated and twirled alongside the paraders. One dancer slowed down as he approached me, striking a dramatic pose to accommodate my raised camera.

We had planned to spend the night at a cultural show for tourists--but that seemed unnecessary now. Here on this dusty street in a simple village, we were witnessing the real thing, minus the artifice of performance schedules, tickets and group seating. We lingered until the last of the procession was a distant dot and all we could hear was the rhythmic beat of drums fading into the dusk.

Not a bad trade-off for happy hour, huh?

Diving In

* Before your trip, scan guidebooks for information about traditional daily or weekly events in the towns you’ll be visiting.

* When you arrive at your hotel talk to desk clerks and, if there is one, the concierge, all of whom are likely to live in the community and be familiar with highlights.

* An easy way to strike up a conversation on the street is to haul out a map and ask directions.

* In a cafe, a good ice-breaker is to indicate to the neighboring table how good you think the beer/coffee/wine is. People invariably will notice your accent and if they speak any English probably will ask where you’re from. With that, the conversation usually is off and growing.

* For insights into cultural etiquette, internationally, pick up a copy of “Do’s and Taboos Around the World,” by Roger Axtell (John Wiley and Sons, $12.95).