This phrase greatly bothered me greatly: "I am a traveler, Not a tourist ". It sounded like a mountaineer costume. "Tourists are all who travel", I hastened to answer. And we are, certainly, But the thing is getting so complicated that today I would add some nuances. I am a tourist who bothers the rest of tourists. Ergo, I bother myself. But since I can't stop going to my escapes, It turns out that to enjoy them I begin to flee from you. Or some of you, rather.
“Tourists, clear, are indescribable. They say ‘oh’ at thirty seconds and every five minutes they shout at each other: 'Tell me, Don't you think everything is always the same?"Then they play the Criquet with a broom handle until an unusually beautiful landscape makes them interrupted to shout‘ Oh ’once again”, Rudyard Kipling Indo-British writes in "Japan trip", A text of 1889. Classic texts have the virtue of reminding us that what we think is very new is already very old.
Should the tourism industry model? Seeing a row of people climbing the top of Everest is a heresy? Is it sustainable for the environment? Have we turned the world into an egos trail, of people traveling to make videos and take selfies like the one collected? Are there tourist behaviors and there are traveler behaviors?
I start choosing very remote places, or dates where I know that less people are going because it rains or makes an intense hot, or to pay more not for the bed in which I sleep but for the exclusivity of going to a non -massified place.
The debate comes from afar, But really unsustainable situations are achieved. In my case, Traveling is ceasing to be sometimes a pleasant experience. I start choosing very remote places, or dates where I know that less people are going because it rains or makes an intense hot, or to pay more not for the bed in which I sleep but for the exclusivity of going to a non -massified place. The three solutions seem wrong, elitistas, patches for a wound. I leave out some trips that I make as a reporter and that concern dangerous sites or that go through dangerous moments. In any case, Some examples of when my teaching of tourists did me may serve better to frame the debate.
Ha-Long, Cruise parking lot
Southeast Asia represents perfectly what I intend to count. In this environment, From Pakistan to Japan and from South Korea to Indonesia, Live more than 50% of the world population. To that massification of local population add a low -cost tourist model where the quantity prevails on quality.
Ha-Long Bay, In Vietnam, It is one of those travelers fetish. In April 2024, We went to the country without reserving anything previously. We had to pay a fortune to sleep one night on a cruise. You go by Bus from Hanoi. All vehicles stop on the way in the same souvenir stores. A herd of sheep to which they release 30 minutes to drink the same coffee or take the same brand bag imitation. After that, To the ship.
We climb. The environment was beautiful. The mountaineers leave the water as fungi. The ship threw the anchor for dinner. And then, on the deck, I counted to the naked eye until 60 Cruises around. It was not the paradise of the photos that teach the advertisements, It was more similar to a parking center full of bus. The music of other cruises was heard: La Macarena, Bamba, Slowly…
Garbage floating everywhere. I spent grouped. Bottles, bags, Packaging, With its oil spots and its foam of excrement.
Worse was dawn. We went to our terrace and saw garbage floating everywhere. I spent grouped. Bottles, bags, Packaging…, With its oil spots and its foam of excrement. It produced penalty to see the image. Have paid 400 euros for that experience bothered. Someone should rethink that model, But who will question something that works. On the dock when we arrived the day before there were hundreds of customers waiting, sitting up, To climb to the ships. When we left, The amount was the same.
June of 2023, Ha Long Bay, UNESCO Heritage, He jumped at the first page of all media. More 10.000 Cubic meters of plastics were removed from their waters. More than half of their corals had disappeared. It was denounced that all the new residential areas that rise throw the fecal waters into the bay. A paradise turned into a stercolero to continue squeezing. The business is profitable and the tourist only has to choose the framework of his photos well. There is always the possibility to ignore the rest of ships, garbage floating in waters, and get an idyllic photo of the idyllic ha-long bay. Can, I did it.
The Leopard show
In December 2023, We enter the Yala National Park, Sri Lanka. From my time to live in southern Africa I have been an almost compulsive obsession with the natural spaces where beasts live in freedom. They told us that we should get up very early to go to the door. "You have to try to get from the first", They warned us the previous night.
Our car was old, So on the way to the entrance many vehicles advanced us. We understood when those hurries arrived. There were a row of dozens of cars waiting as in the supermarket boxes. To pay permission we were almost 20 minutes of push -up to access the box office.
Within, The landscape was beautiful. A tropical jungle with elephants, crocodiles, buffalo and facóqueros. But the star was the leopard, The coveted piece. At sunset the radio notice came out. That is the same in all parks. The guides alert that Bingo has sung. We started seeing that cars flew along the roads. We were always the slowest, But we arrive at the jam. It was that, A jam.
I saw even a girl crying, who said he wanted to leave, who was ashamed to have participated in that show.
I never saw in any park a similar scene, And I have seen Dantesque scenes in the Kruger, Madai Maua of Ngā Tortories. It was a embarrassment. The drivers did not respect the unwritten rule of not hindering the vision of the others. The cars were advanced back, closing, almost hitting. Everything was allowed. No respect or education, A gross hunt in the photo of a majestic leopard that we contemplate between dozens of cars. We enjoy feline fleeting, much, And the rest horrified us.
The funny thing is that reviewing my photos I see that I avoided framing those that showed the dozens of vehicles. I captured a moment when the feline looked only between the jungle. The photo is moved, But at least it was alone. Those are the ones published by tourists, And those that other people will see that will go there to see the imposing animal without knowing that when contemplating it, dozens of clutches are not heard.
Would nature survive without the profitability of the parks? That leopard may exist because many people earn money thanks to him. Without that there is no park, And the feline leaves their habitat and hunting chickens or goats, easier to catch than rabbits or gazelles. And that ends with someone who kills that animal to preserve its pot.
The man retains when it is profitable. Tourism has saved many species around the world. But you can rethink the system. An animal between dozens of cars should not be cornered, nor is it a gratifying show. Many voices of various vehicles began to complain about the scene. I saw even a girl crying, who said he wanted to leave, who was ashamed to have participated in that show.
Venecia, sick
My partner is from Treviso, A small city to 30 kilometers from Venice. I have gone to the city of the channels many times. In December 2015, I promised not to come back. You couldn't walk, literal, For the Grand Channel without entering a trail of people who advanced like a worm. There were pushing, elbows, ranks of people to eat a bad pizza, And thousands of people struggling to get selfies in Rialto, San Marcos or uploads to a gondola.
I missed my word. I have returned several times. How not to return to such a beautiful place? One was just the 5 June 2020, The first weekend after the confinement of the pandemic. He lived in Rome. I went to make a report on the city of empty channels. That weekend the high water phenomenon occurred, When the streets were flooded due to the sea climbing. We were at night with our feet soak in San Marcos Square. ¡Solos! There was hardly anyone in the streets. That venice of the pandemia will never forget.
I interviewed several people. I spoke with Michelle, A Venetian friend we met when we lived in Mozambique. To their 70 years, had turned his life into mere resistance. “In my building there are eleven apartments and there are only three permanently occupied: one for my son, another for my brother and the one who occupies me ", He told us walking among the channels.
None of my school friends keep living here. Everyone has left, This city is uninhabitable
He was recalling the city of his childhood that had evaporated by the huge leisure center in which they had converted it. “None of my school friends keep living here. Everyone has left, This city is uninhabitable. I don't go out to the street almost never. I read in our little garden and listen to the passing off the hordes of tourists », He narrated us as he was listing ghosts. "This was before a hairdresser… Here was a fruit shop… And that was the fish market ... ".
Official data assured that every day 2,6 Media neighbors left the city. "The balance every year between dead, born, People who leave and people who settle in Venice are less thousand people ”, Marco Gasparinetti explained to me, group spokesman 25 of April, The most numerous civic platform in the city.
The city had become penance. Having a house cost a fortune in spills. Basic services were missing. Making the normal purchase was to go further and further. Its waters had a serious pollution problem through the diesel of the boats and the fecal discharges. All that had generated a diaspora. And 1950, They lived in the downtown area of Venice 170.000 people permanently, in 2020 The figure was already only 52.000. Most inhabited in the Cannaregio neighborhood, while San Marco and San Paolo, The most visited, They were a travelers' ghetto.
But Covid left the city without them. And an agreement between neighborhood associations was reached, City Hall and Private Associations to offer houses to the students of the University of Architecture. They loved them back. Most young people, as of workers, They live in the continental part of Venice Mestre. Rooms were offered by 300 euros per month and apartments for 700. The offer lasted the fear of sneezing. What owner would you rent a house to 700 euros a month if in some cases they even charge that for one night?
Rooms were offered by 300 euros per month and apartments for 700. The offer lasted the fear of sneezing.
Because Venice, like the rest of the world, has returned to business pandemic. The houses are rented again by 200 euros average night. Its streets are overcrowded. Michelle has returned to forced seclusion. The city is a collection of places that offer a Venetian mask made in China, An express paste and a boat ride through the channels dodging gondolas. It does, Do not worry, You can always take a wonderful photo on the Rialto bridge. It takes a little patience, But with a good framing one manages to go out alone and smiling with a very blue background, It is convenient to saturate the photo, although with a face of a hurry since you have to fly to get to the table reserve to eat a real Italian pizza that will cook a Nepali.
Is it worth traveling like this? - Preserve El Heritage Natural and Historical? Is gentrification to expel citizens of their cities and will convert the most iconic places in the globe into an immense set? The place wants to make money to live better, And that paid it up to that Ha-Long ship, portraying felines in the jungle, eating a paste with clams in Murano. But I am a pain, a termite, angry with you who don't stop giving me elbow and get into my frames. How do we do to avoid? I have no answer, Do you have it?
