Monday, June 22, 2009

Viajeros y Turistas

Problem: Is it better to be a traveler or a tourist?

Solution: Unclear at this point. More analysis needed.

Well I have had some wild times of late, let me tell you. Two weekends ago, I went to Las Cataratas de Iguazu, these huge, famous waterfalls on the northeastern tip of Argentina, near Paraguay and Brazil. And this morning, I arrived home in Buenos Aires from an excursion to Mendoza, Argentina's wine capital, located in the far west of the country, just over the Andes from Chili. Both experiences were totally rad. Both were very different. Shall we examine them together? No? Too bad.

The primary difference, it seems to me, is that I played different roles on both trips. I think these roles can best be encapsulated by the terms "tourist," and "traveler."

I might be splitting hairs here, but a tourist is someone who goes to a different place with a set agenda, with more than a few people, who takes a lot of pictures, and who maybe tries new things but nothing too crazy. Tour guides are usually involved. Safety is usually a pre-arranged non issue. Tourists spend money on touristy things. They are the primary actor in the "tourism" sector of the economy. The stereotype is the Asian tourist at Epcot. Dig it?

A traveler is someone who goes to a different place with no set agenda, usuually in small groups. There are places that she would like to see, but these more serve as things to be checked off a list, which is arranged in no particular order. Travelers rarely work with time limits, or if they do, they are very broad. They carry all their belongings in expensive backpacks. They go for long periods of time without showering. They grow bad beards. (Sometimes they have beard growing contests, and these are often tims rigged becase the competitors have had previous relationships with the judges. I digress.) They stay in hostels, places where they are never short on company, but in which the conversations inevitably turn to questions like "Where else have you been? Peru? Yeah me too. No I haven't been to Brazil yet, that's next on my list. Maybe sometime next month. No I don't have any pot." It is a romantic existence, but not a perfect one. Things go wrong. Travelers have horror stories, and love passing on new warnings and information to other travelers: "Yep, I got my passport stolen in Cambodia. Don't buy pot there." That sort of thing. Rick Steves is the stereotype. Am I painting a picture? Does this make sense?

Iguazu

This is a trip that I had paid for months in advance and that was totally arranged by my summer school program. Knowing about a trip well in advance is a big element to being a tourist. (Side bar: The waterfalls are prominently featured in the movie "The Mission," with Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons. In that pelicula, the first scene is of this Jesuit strapped to a piece of wood and getting sent over these falls that are ridiculously huge. I showed this clip as part of a presentation at my Jesuit high school in 10th grade--I don't have to tell you it caused quite a stir. B plus material. No big deal). So how were they in real life?

People

My group consisted of 20 kids from my program, 33.1% of whom I actually enjoyed spending time with. Lots of complainers. Good amount of partyers. Also, there were 2 adult women coordinators who work for the program who catered to every complaint and allowed us to party pretty hard. Leading this crew was a series of tour guides from some Iguazu company who knew broken English and made bad jokes. We traveled on a plush bus to get from place to place. It was apparent to anyone that we were American. We were a force to be reckoned with.

One thing about my group that I did not expect was that there is a significant amount of kids from Texas. This puts the Southwestern kids at about 50% of the group, and Texans comprising the other 50%, with me straddling the gap in the middle. I am like the Henry Clay of this crew--ready to facilitate compromises (i.e. Who is better, Rockets or Lakers, compromise being the Mavs, etc.) and ready to hang out with almost anyone. If for some reason we had run out of things to talk about, we all had the common bond of being in law school. The point here is that I was in the middle of this 20 person bubble. This was great because I never ran out of things to talk about, but I was trapped if the LA girls started to complain about the weather or if the Texans started chanting for secession. My social circle was contained, for better or worse.

Places

Iguazu is the most awesome natural sight I have ever seen. But it felt like Disneyland. The economy in that area of the country is totally dependant on the massive amount of visitors who come there to see the falls, and wind up paying for things like blow dart guns (which I did, and which is totally awesome). For this reason, the country has built up the area around the falls to make it accesible to anyone, so much so that you hardly feel like you are in the jungle. For instance, there was a tram to the top of the falls, which felt a slightly more rustic DART rale. There was a wheelchair accessible path that lead to the top of "La Garganta del Diablo" (Look it up). There was a boat tour that went underneath the falls, driven by a captain who looked like the fishsticks dude if he started giving the jungle cruise tours and suddenly became burnt out from the job. Does that make sense? At night we stayed in a really nice hotel just outside the park. They had cheap drinks, they had American tv (we watched the NBA championship), and if we needed taxis to go to town the front desk ordered them up for us. We were totally hooked up, totally safe. Even the complainers were running out of things to complain about---but they never went totally dry in that department.

Feelings Afterward

By the end of this trip I was tiring of the group, the food, the blow dart guns...ok not the blow dart guns. Every meal was a huge buffet, pre-paid. Much of it was gourmet. However, if variety is the spice of life, then logic dictates that monotony is the ...I can't think of an analogy right now. But it isn't spicey. There is only so many times you can eat deliciously seasoned meat in one day, ok? This situation lead to the complainers complaining even more, which led to the texans complaining about the complainers, which led to me complaining about compromising, which led the group coordinators to complain to our tour guides, which I am sure caused them to complain to the waterfalls. When I got home, I thought to myself, what just happened? The waterfalls don't care. Why do I feel like I had a bad time even though I witnessed pure awesomeness?

OK this is going to be really long, so I will include the second installment in a second post.

No comments:

Post a Comment