Well, finally after 6 weeks it happened. Monteczuma, in the form of two Zapoteca girls serving us tacos at the side of the Puebla-Oaxaca Expressway in between laughing at our Spanish, took his revenge. I woke up at 5am in general discomfort, and spent the morning issuing forth from various orifices. Unpleasant.
Actually, although I felt generally pretty grim, and didn't get out of bed much for a couple of days, really I had it pretty mild. I'm not sure whether the lesson is not to buy street-food from laughing Zapotecas, or just not to care too much about getting ill. tbh, getting ill for two days in what is now four months of travel is probably better than i average at home, over the winter months.
So yesterday I finally got to see more of Oaxaca than the inside of a hostel. It is totally unlike everywhere else i've been: it's "Gringolandia" as somebody said. Full of american seniors in luminous orange shorts and Europeans in ridiculous holiday-chic "indigenous" clothing sipping lattes in absurdly overpriced restaurants. pretty funny really, a good diversion from the rest of my trip. There are about 10 hostels here at least, and the HI one is huge and as clean and organised as any I saw in the US. So there are a lot of travellers here too, so plenty of interesting inter-beer international chat.
Tourists piss me off though. Blundering about, looking at stuff even though they don't know why, just to fill up their day. And make no mistake, I include so-called "travellers" in this too. What the futtock are they doing? Don't they have homes to go to, jobs to do, like normal people? What do they expect to find inside a 17th century cathedral, at an indigenous market, or among pre-Hispanic ruins? I mean, if you're really interested in some subject, sure, read books about it, study it properly from home, see photographs, and perhaps culminate many years of study with visits to specific sights. But coming to a country, following a set path through a set of historically and culturally unrelated "sights" which just happen to be within bussing distance of one another, loitering aimlessly in the streets and squares of some poor town, spending absurd amounts of money buying rubbish that you will only use to clutter your stupid homes, using people's genuine poverty and culture ancestry as a backdrop for your idiotic notion of the perfect holiday. Bleugh. You all make me sick. And what the hell will you do with all those photographs of the inside of churches and ruins and buildings? You're not a professional photographer: your pictures will be rubbish. A church is the house of God. It is a sacred building where people go to pray. Ruins are just old things that haven't been used for a while. Buildings... are buildings! Where people live, or work. They are not freaking tourist attractions! Go home, I say, go home!
Somehow, I manage not to include myself in this group. Just because the stupid tourist clothes I wear don't happen to be luminous orange, or because I speak a few words of broken Spanish, or because I look at things instead of buying or photographing them. Interesting hypocrisy.
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3 comments:
Paul,
As the owner of a pair of luminous orange shorts, I feel a reply is warranted.
We visit 17th century cathedrals, indigenous markets, or pre-Hispanic ruins, because they provide us with experiences we have never had. They tell us about the peoples that lived or still live there, on a land thousands of miles from our home.
We didn't study the topic before we went, because we didn't know it was interesting until we met it; often we study it on our return.
Sights within bussing distance of each other are related: geographically certainly, but also they were built and inhabited by the same people, or neighbours. Why did the invading peoples build an ornate cathedral ? Why did the invaded peoples build a stone pyramid ? Where are they now ? What's for dinner ? Is she single ?
The tourists are thinking and living the same things as you, just on a smaller scale.
Graham.
PS: I love reading your dispatches. Please keep em coming. Happy trails.
I went to see Michael Palin talk about his Himalaya journey recently, and he said something interesting about travel. He said what do we do with an indescribable landscape which is spread before us? We can photograph it, try to describe it when we get home, try and fit it in to our bordered perspective and make it ours. The wisest thing is just to exist in it for that moment you are allowed to.
Simone
... or we can write a blog entry about it. i know.
you know, i try really hard to live things as themselves not as future anecdotes. it's hard to avoid the temptation to construct stories though, i suppose it's a natural human inclination.
i have seen so much beautiful, amazing, interesting, worrying, thought-provoking stuff. nearly all of it has not been turned into anecdotes :).
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