TOURISTS TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

Blighted Urban Areas Become A Draw for Jaded Travelers; The Other Big
Apple Tour It's hardly dinner and a show.

When tourists think of New York, they generally think of the Statue of
Liberty, Central Park and Broadway. But in the latest example of how
traveler ennui is pushing the boundaries of conventional tourism,
Angel Rodriguez takes groups on walking tours of the South Bronx, an
area that over the years has been frequently viewed as crime-ridden
and drug infested. Canvassing streets where mambo was once king and
hip hop music now rules, he recounts his painful past, like losing two
brothers to drug violence, and points out the spot where back in the
day neighborhood kids break-danced.

By Eleena de Lisser in New York and Adriana Brasileiro in Rio de
Janeiro.

With so many travelers these days exhibiting a "been-there,
done-that" mentality, cities and tour operators around the world are
leading visitors to some areas that their local convention and tourism
bureau would previously have spurned -- neighborhoods like Anacostia
in Washington, D.C., and north Philadelphia.

Part of the idea is that walking by a burned-out shell of a building
can add a bit of adventure to an otherwise typical big-city trip. One
highlight of a $30 tour of Houston neighborhoods: a visit to a
Buddhist temple founded by a Vietnamese couple after experiencing a
life-threatening robbery.

City Mondial in the Hague, Netherlands, which leads tourists through
an immigrant neighborhood, even offers a three-day package including
accommodations in a hotel. One popular tour of Rio de Janeiro takes
foreigners through the city's largest and oldest shantytown, Rocinha
- -- about 10 different companies offer a version of it.

"You are about to enter a forbidden zone, a place where crime is a
fact of life and drug lords rule undisturbed," says tour guide Marina
Schulze, on a recent tour, lowering her voice like a TV announcer.
Tour operators promise to give an insider's view of the less marvelous
side of the city, putting them face to face with the poverty, violence
and drug dealing that have become synonymous with the shantytowns,
known as favelas.

Not everyone thinks all this is a great idea. Kelly Shannon, a
spokeswoman at the U.S. State Department, says the favelas are "sites
of uncontrolled criminal activity, and are often not patrolled by
police. U.S. citizens are advised to avoid these unsafe areas."

Beyond issues of basic safety, there are more complicated questions of
cultural voyeurism and respect. Tour organizers say they're doing a
public service by exposing people to places they wouldn't otherwise
have seen. But some see it as ripe for potential misunderstandings, if
not outright exploitation.

Marjolijn Masselink, a former social worker in Rotterdam, Netherlands,
who runs the City Safari tours, initially encountered stiff resistance
from some residents and local officials. The criticism was that the
tour, which takes people through neighborhoods inhabited by recent
arrivals from Turkey, Morocco and Cape Verde, amounted to "treating
ethnic people like monkeys in a zoo."

But she says 8,000 people took the tours last year, including
government officials. The tours are rarely guided -- tourists are
given a map and a list of appointments to places like a Surinamese
herbal medicine store, mosques, a Turkish bakery. "It's less intrusive
than having a guide lead them around," she says.

Kathryn Smith, executive director of Cultural Tourism DC in
Washington, says that "not all neighborhoods want these tours," noting
that her organization works only with neighborhoods that want them. In
Philadelphia, resident Tomasita Romero says the fact that the city is
arranging for outsiders to come to North Philly is public
acknowledgment that her community is improving.

The neighborhood tours are usually mini day trips, from 90 minutes to
about three hours, with prices that start as little as $9 and go up.
The City Safari tour in Rotterdam costs =8845, or $52. Depending on
the scope and focus of the tours, food and transportation may be included.

These tours fall into a category known in the tourism industry as
historic/cultural. While the travel sector in recent years has been
less than stellar, this niche has been growing consistently,
particularly in the U.S. The number of historic/cultural trips taken
by Americans last year -- to see such things as Civil War sites to the
birthplace of break dancing -- was up 13% from almost a decade ago,
according to a study by the Travel Industry Association of America.

"I wouldn't do it with a bunch of inbound Americans who were hoping to
see Stratford-upon-Avon," says Ian Jelf, a tour operator who offers
tours of Summerlane, once a notorious slum in Birmingham, England.

Tour operators in Rocinha and local Brazilian law enforcement say
there have been no violent incidents involving tourists visiting the
massive shantytown in Rio. One reason: The area has been controlled by
a powerful drug gang for years, which has kept the lid on major
conflicts. This allow tourists to enjoy the breathtaking views of
Rio's most famous attractions, the Statute of Christ and Sugar Loaf
Mountain, without having to constantly watch their backs.

The best way to find these tours is to check with the local tourism
board. Legitimate tour operators have a business license and usually
register with the local tourism office. In the U.S., these kinds of
tours generally have been created as a tool of economic development by
local government officials and community leaders.

Karen Hartnett and her boyfriend are typical of the folks taking these
tours. They recently showed up at Independence Mall in Philadelphia,
and then hopped a trolley-bus heading north, to an area with pockets
of burned-out and shuttered buildings. They visited a community center
for a quick lesson in playing the claves and bongo drums, and stopped
at a salsa and merengue record shop. The tour culminated in a light
picnic lunch at a community garden that was once a drug-infested lot.

For Ms. Hartnett, a recent transplant from Phoenix, taking the tour
was her way of getting to know parts of her new city that even her
boyfriend, a lifelong Philadelphian, had never visited.

- -- Vijai Maheshwari in Rotterdam and Keith Johnson in Madrid
contributed to this article.