My recent, very very short trip to a little island in the southern Caribbean (Curaçao), inspired a number of personal and anthropological thoughts that I will try to cover over my next few blog posts. First, and the one that hit me hardest toward the end of my 5-day (2 of which were spent travelling) excursion, is the idea of growing into a new identity as an "adult" traveler and thinking about what this means for travel and cultural experience in general.
When I was a kid, I had the fortune of riding my parents' coattails when it came to travel. I took my first steps on a boat off the island of Capri, was kicked unceremoniously out of London's pubs while still in a stroller, and lived in Strasbourg, France for a year as a toddler. In the years that followed, thanks to my father's francophilia and my mother's love for movement, I travelled repeatedly to Europe as well as travelling and eventually living all over the United States. When I hit my early twenties, I began to cultivate my own preferred style of travel. It involved working, sort of saving money, quitting my job and impulsively "moving" somewhere (to another state, another country, whatever made most sense at the time) for anywhere from 3-15 months but never more. In this vein, between the ages of 21 and 27 years (when I moved to Colorado), I lived in six states within the US, three countries outside it, and on three continents in total:
* New York City
* Charlottesville, VA
* Fes & Essaouira, Morocco
* Tempe, AZ
* Streitdorf, Austria
* Montreal, QC, Canada
* Rawlins, WY
* Cleveland, OH
* and finally, Fort Collins, CO.
While this movement was eventually exhausting, it was also exciting and enabled me to really get to know places and their people. It was my recreational release for my inner-anthropologist. I used travel as an occasion to get to know a culture on some level.
Since coming to Colorado, I have lived in one city. I have now been here for longer than I remember living anywhere in my entire life, and for personal reasons, I suspect I will live here for at least the next twenty or thirty years. But my feet still get itchy, as in, I still get intense urges to "get out of here". Which is where this trip to Curaçao came in - I needed to celebrate my successful dissertation defense and I needed to do it away.
Unfortunately, in the past five years of rootedness, I've learned that I don't particularly enjoy this type of travel that many of us participate in for vacation and relaxation. After three days on this beautiful little island, I felt like I was just starting to hit my stride and get a sense of the island's own personality and pace. I felt that I knew more about what the tourist agencies wanted me to know and nearly nothing about what real life looked like. A couple of years ago, I visited Costa Rica with a good friend and had a similar experience. It was a great trip and the scenery was mindblowingly beautiful, but it was impossible to get into the rhythm of the country - which is the main reason I love public transit! - and still see what we wanted to see. We just didn't have enough time for both, a problem that was in part due to the fact that we only visited for a week but that was exacerbated by the fact that I am a poor planner and a horrible rusher. Apparently, I prefer to just move somewhere, hang out for three months, and call that my vacation. But as an adult, in my current life, that kind of travel doesn't seem realistic. So, I am searching the landscape of less lengthy travel patterns to find something I like, that perhaps I can learn from if not emulate. But I'm struggling as most of what I've seen simply does not fit with what I want to get out of a "vacation".
I remember being shocked while visiting a dear friend in Egypt. When we went to one of many of the amazing historical/tourist sites, a bus full of Italian tourists had stopped as well. Many of the women wore only short-shorts, flip flops and bikini/bra tops. None of this was culturally appropriate, but more importantly, it was explicitly disrespectful. There is certainly room for critiquing cultural relativism when over-simplified and over-applied, but it seems to me that if you have the choice to visit a country on vacation, you should select a country whose culture you are capable of respecting, at least outwardly. After all, you are funneling your money into their economy so it may as well be something you support on some level or at a minimum can live with. Many people I know travel exclusively for the very reason I went to Curaçao - relaxation & escape - and so they plant themselves at (all-inclusive) resorts or get with a professional tour company that arranges everything and whisks them from site to site providing carefully selected historical and cultural "context" (I'll talk more about this in a later blog). And, while it's not particularly my preferred way to travel and I am sure there are myriad culture and economic issues associated with traveling this way, it may not be all bad either. At least the people on tours are attempting to learn about their context even if it's typically done in a highly sanitized, voyeuristic way. And those who are going to all-inclusive resorts or refusing to leave the tourist zone are being honest with themselves and what their travel intentions are and may have set themselves in an environment where they won't offend local sensibilities.
But the lurking question persists: Are we doing ourselves, our home cultures, and those we visit a diservice when we insist on traveling at the constant rushed pace of an American or with the cultural ideals regarding modesty of a "Westerner" (whatever that means)?
I know that what I love about travel is slowly learning the rhythms of a new place, whether it's in the US or further afield. I find that it fosters the kind of experience that is life-changing even if it's not always as photogenic or as impressive on facebook. Unfortunately, my current life doesn't facilitate this kind of travel. In order to sit peacefully in one place for the next thirty years of my life, I had to settle down. I have a partner, a dog, a horse, all of whom make it difficult (emotionally, as in I would miss them all terribly, more than logistically) to just pick up and leave for months on end. I have a job that is flexible, but, at least at this point, perhaps not that flexible. So I resign myself to movement-packed travel that often feels like it is more about the principle than about the experience, and I have not yet figured out how to mix my need for cultural immersion with my reality. What I fear is that this new way of travel is simply my new normal, and that a tender part of my soul will just have to wait until I'm retired.
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