Before leaving the Green Isle I was a little unsure about taking off on my own. Up until this trip I had done very little travel solo. Holidays for me were always more about the company I was in rather than the country I was in. In terms of this trip I was a little concerned that I might disappear into that aloof space that is my head and never be seen again but thankfully that hasn't been the case. My cousin allayed any fears by effectively describing travel as this parallel dimension. Indeed, it is incredible how many people there are in the world coasting in this dimension while you are all being productive in the other ... or at least pretending to be. As my trip was more or less organised on a whim I didn't really have a chance to develop any pre-conceptions. I suppose I did expect to meet a fair few hippies, a fair few people on the run and some complete wackos. All in all I have been pleasantly surprised at how natural everyone is. For sure there are some crazies around, You can spot them a mile away but they generally don't engage in conversation. In terms of people on the run, I have seen an awful lot less than I expected. Certainly there are people who are using travel as a get-out-of-jail card from some personal prison sentence but they seem to be more reflective than burdened. Whatever personal baggage they are carrying doesn't seem to stop them from having a good time. In terms of the hippies, there are some of the grungy set in the cheaper hostels wherever you go but the core group of hippies is lost-in-transit in India due to its perceived 'spiritual' dimension. In the main, the global tour bus is packed to the rafters with middle-class white-folk. The Asian middle class travel mainly in Asia and the South American middle-class usually travel in Latin America. Naturally, this is international travel but not quite the global travel that mostly privileged Europeans, Canadians, Americans, Ozzies and Kiwis aspire to.
I expected that travel would introduce me to various cliques, as if travel was part of the US High-school system but in fact there are only two cliches; the travel-snob and the backpacker. Everyone else is somewhere in between or else mature enough that they are totally open and engaging to all and sundry. The travel-snob is akin to the music-snob, they get a kick out of discovery and instead of roaming the virtual world of MySpace they are roaming all these obscure places in the real world. The music-snob spends more time listening to bad new music than to good music that is already out there. The kick is in being first or in knowing more as opposed to enjoying what is already known. It is interesting that the internet has expanded the musical universe whereas it has narrowed the travellers' universe because so many images and blogs of places are now online that it is very easy to travel the world without actually leaving your house.
So, who are these cliches? The snob tends to have a lot of pre-conceived ideas about what travel is supposed to be like, the backpacker just focuses on enjoying himself. The travel-snob tends to be fall back on their vast experience to justify their point of view, the backpacker doesn't really care. Snobs tend to think of travelling as an art, backpackers sometimes come across as lemmings just following each other around. The snob would never be seen with a Lonely Planet guide-book, the backpacker is stressed-out or lost without the short-cuts and hints. The snob is carrying a compact 45 litre pack, the backpacker has an 85 litre pack with stuff hanging off it. The snob tends to have a nice camera and a neat net-book, the backpacker uses a point-and-shoot and no lap-top because they believe that electronics are stolen. Snobs see themselves as explorers in the middle of nowhere, backpackers are on the global tour bus heading to the next party hostel in the next token tourist city. Snobs are out there trying to mix with the locals, the backpackers are speaking English to the locals working in the hostel. The travel-snob would never say that somewhere is crap for fear that they might be seen to be culturally insensitive. The backpacker doesn't really do culture, if they didn't have fun then the place is black-balled.
The reality is that while it looks like there are two opposing points of view the difference really comes down to the nature of a person. The back-packer whose trip is defined by the parties and the various peoples of different nationalities that he meets is really just an extroverted people-person. For sure he visits a tourist attraction to just get the photo but he is likely there with ten other people from the hostel and enjoying the chats. The travel-snob is likely somewhat more introverted and somewhat of an observer type. Naturally they will enjoy company but they are trying to get away from the backpacker-set so that they can observe and get under the skin of a place, as if it was in its pristine state before the arrival of global tourism. Everybody else is between the two extremes and problems tend to arise when the travel-snob is travelling in the wrong camp or vice-versa. It must be quite frustrating to be amongst the wrong crowd but people usually self-correct. Backpackers who find themselves alone in out-of-the-way places usually revert to the security of the cities where there is plenty of company. Likewise the travel snob who finds himself in a party hostel with grubby showers and no chance of shut-eye due to the loud music and comings and goings, usually checks-out and into another quieter hostel where they can get a good night's kip.
Where does his dudeness fit into all this? Well, I either straddle both camps or fall between two stools, I'm not sure which. The snobs embrace me because I am traveling under my own steam through the middle of nowhere without a guide-book. However, the reality is that I'm just taking a hell of a long time to get to the next party hostel. I love the global tour bus because I can have a proper conversation in English, as opposed to having to beat myself up for not having enough lingo to engage local people in the countryside. And the reason I don't carry a guide-book is two-fold: i) A guide-book is packed full of stuff that I'll never be able to see, thus, I'd rather not know what I am missing, and ii) I'm fed up with having my hopes dashed based on the enthusiasm guide-books have for every part of the world no matter how bad it is. I prefer to take each town as I find it as opposed to relying on someone else's opinion. This is not the same reason as the travel-snob who laments the homogenisation of tourism. Lonely Planet is now guilty of that dirty word 'globalisation' ... ironically. The way I see it is that we all have different bars that we like to go to in a city, we tend to belong in some bars more than others. Just because the guide-book likes a certain bar doesn't mean that it's going to be my kind of place or your kind of place. Thus, guide-books need to be taken with a large pinch of salt.
For me travel is very simple, it is movement by a person between two points for any amount of time, by any means and in any capacity. As far as I'm concerned commuting to work is even travel. While it is not exotic enough for those people on the Luas who have their eyes closed in an attempt to grab some extra sleep or for those people lost in the shuffle of their iPod, there are people on the Luas who have their eyes open and are noticing the amount of crazy people, over-burdened people or free-spirited people there are in their town. I guess that is the essence, it's nice to see places that are foreign but it helps if you have your eyes open and can keep an open-mind. I think this is where both travel-snobs and backpackers can fall down. The backpacker is too immersed in the whistle-stop tour with all these other nationalities that they can be guilty of missing the essence of the country they are traveling through by not really engaging it. They stay within the boundaries of the token tourist attractions and they don't engage the locals. However, the snob is guilty of being a bit closed too. They always throw in that token 'each to their own' comment after they have gone to town on some poor backpacker but they don't really mean it. They see their world-view as being infinitely more informed and like the explorers of old they take great satisfaction from seeing places that others never see. They have an attitude of superiority but likely don't realise that most exploration in the past was undertaken for profit and empirical land-grab as opposed to actual discovery (save for the Scott and Hilary types). Indeed, as much as the travel-snob likes to explore all these unknown places it ultimately remains difficult to get under the skin of the world unless you can communicate. Having seen a lot of small nowhere places I can only say that it is pointless visiting them unless you have the language to meaningfully connect with the locals. Language is the key that opens up new experiences, simply being there doesn't really count so much in my view. In addition, going to all these small places alone is not so great either. Unless you have the language then you are better off travelling wherever there are new friends to be made with whom you can share the experience. Indeed, there is often no real reason to see these places and that is why they don't make it into the guide-books. No disrespect to these small nothing towns who generously welcome the few travellers they do see with great curiosity and appreciation, however, if a traveller is on a budget of time or money then it is totally understandable to tread the beaten path. Doing so will allow you to have the generic Buenos Aires, Florianopolis, Rio conversation with whomever you meet on the road. Any tales I regale down the road risk sounding just like 'band-camp' ... i.e., little action to speak of that regular folk can relate to. When I exit South America I will have had all these experiences but I'll have made no lasting connections and I'll have shared them with nobody that is close to me. It doesn't detract from how wonderful the experience is, however, it would be more rewarding if I had the language or if I was going at the same speed as the backpacker whose itinerary is based on the international friends he meets on the beaten path as opposed to the places that interest him. For the backpacker it is better to be in good company than in a good country and I can relate to this a lot. I really seem to fall between two stools; as cool as the biking is the overall experience would be much more rewarding with solid Spanish. While the bike is nimble in the sense that it allows me to travel any road, in any direction, at any time and without the need for booking tickets and beds ahead ... the reality is that it can be a bit of an anchor in the sense that I can't easily just take off to Florianopolis to hang out with the cool people I met in a hostel the night before. The speed I travel at is very slow and so it means that I don't really make the lasting connections that people on the global tour bus manage to make. It is rare that I might meet the same person twice.
The coolest tourist is the multi-lingual person who has the knowledge and experience of the travel-snob but has gotten over himself such that he is more interested in everyone else's experiences. He has effectively exhausted his own voyage of self-discovery and while the world remains infinitely interesting, friendships are more meaningful to him. This person is quite serene and sees the world as a good friend as opposed to an object to be conquered. His language skills allow him to spend time off the beaten path engaging locals or on the beaten-path having fun with the international backpacking-set. His ability to communicate allows him to have many different experiences and many friends from all over the world and from all walks of life. Indeed, if he likes a place he can stay and integrate quickly eliminating the suspicions that local people tend to have of transients.
Make no mistake, the bike is a wonderful way to see the world and I enjoy being able to mix my travel experience up. However, for all those kids in school out there; as interesting as geography class is I can't emphasise how important foreign languages are.
Felices Pascuas
Che Marco