On Traveling

Some things that have been on our minds the past few weeks:

1. Tourism

About 2 years ago, Kristen and I were driving up to Acadia National Park, listening to David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster book on tape.  The author has a passage where he talks about the hordes of tourists flooding a quaint New England town for the annual Maine Lobster Fest.  He says:

“To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome.”

While I don’t necessarily agree with the degree of awfulness contained in this quote, there is something inescapable in its message.  Travelers are, for the most part, seeking one thing – an authentic experience.  But we can’t have it.  It’s true that I’m constantly mildly disappointed that I’m not the first ‘outsider’ to travel a particularly scenic road, or visit a particularly good restaurant.  Not that it ruins the experience, but there is a calculus involved – do I want to see or do this thing bad enough to become a part of its touristic commercialization?  In the case of the Perito Moreno glacier, absolutely yes.  But I wouldn’t be caught dead on an open-top city bus tour.

The feeling is intensified in poor and rural areas, particularly when people are selling handicrafts or other homemade/cheaply bought items.  It makes me wince every time.  The truth that I am one of the horde of foreigners (in the eyes of a local, of likely unimaginable wealth) that comes to this place to ‘experience’ it clashes with my self-image.  I don’t like how I must appear to these people.  The experience can be, to some extent, shameful.

Maybe that’s why we like to travel to places with lots of hiking and other outdoor activities.  When you’re in the wilderness, it seems to matter less that you’re not a local.  And there is nothing to buy, so there is no need to confront the economic and social impact of tourism.  In short, outdoor experiences feel ‘real’ to us – they don’t feel like transactions.  But in a foreign city, you can’t escape the feeling that you don’t belong.

2. Discomfort

Traveling is, by necessity, uncomfortable.  When I was a bit younger, the idea of travel was romantic.  I’d visit exotic locations, make exotic friends, and absorb local cultures.  I’d be a ‘citizen of the world.’ 

Now I know how it works – you see fantastic things, but you’re constantly on edge, and in a state of mild bewilderment.  The stresses come in two forms: practical and visceral.  The practical stresses are day-to-day – will the bus show up on time, will the hotel have my reservation, did that guy understand what I just said?  The visceral stresses are more intermittent, but make you long for home a bit more – who slept in this bed yesterday, did that guy just touch my salad without washing his hands?  The visceral stuff is especially important when traveling in the developing world.  In Argentina, they aren’t afraid to show you how the sausage is made.  Literally – the meat truck shows up with cow carcasses at the butcher shop and you can witness them hacking it into different cuts, and figuratively – a long-haul bus once picked up all us passengers and took us to their disorganized maintenance garage to tighten the lug nuts and check the tire pressure.  In the States, you never see that stuff, to the point that you forget anything behind-the-scenes exists at all.  The US is more or less Disneyland compared to South America.

And then there’s the constant bewilderment.  You don’t know how things work.  Questions are constant.  Why does the expensive long-haul bus pick people up at 2am on the side of the highway?  Did they have to buy tickets like the rest of the passengers?  Is this the tourist price or the real price?  (Exhibit A: we once made reservations at a hotel at a price of X, and when confirmed a few days later and asked for a reminder on the price, the owner said “well, what price did I tell you?”  Right.).  Everyone else always seems to know something you don’t.

Money can mitigate the discomfort somewhat.  Flying business class, staying in a 5-star hotel, etc.  But the truth is that travelers are just that – away from home.  Homesickness is real.  The desire for comfort and understanding is constant, and you don’t know you desire it until it’s not there.  The romantic ideal of travel to exotic places whitewashes over the practicalities.  Again, only after you’ve experienced it, there is calculus – is the experience of this place worth suffering the discomfort?  For Kristen and I, right now, absolutely.

Our parents have told us that our trip sounds incredible, but that they live only vicariously through our pictures.  They’re past the point where the discomfort is worth it.  Appreciating the idea of Home, I think, is one of the most important lessons a traveler learns.