I spoke note a word of Spanish, had no credit card, had about $100 in my wallet and had never been outside of Australia, never taken a taxi, never stayed in a hotel, ... and a bunch of other "never befores"....
And there was no one there at the other end of the flight to meet me! ...
When I did manage to get to the place I was meant to be in Buenos Aries, the people at the company office were "less than sympathetic"!
International phone calls were very expensive and I had no idea how to make one anyway and, well, ... I was EXTREMELY "Cut-off" and WAY outside my "comfort zone"
All in all, it was a bit of a "traumatic experience"!
Not surprisingly within a week I had decided that Id made a bad choice and I told the company Id had enough! ... And I flew back to Australia ... There to, lick my emotional wounds, and start a more or less normal graduate engineers working life :)
Really, the point of that little story is to set the stage on the things we humans need to feel "connected", and the rate of change in the way we are connecting.
We humans are social creatures... And its way more important than most of us ever recognise... Mostly because we are more or less all "Urban" and never get to be truly alone for more than a few hours. Even country people who live in small towns in remote places still live in "communities". The very few people who do spend lots of time alone end up being quite "Strange"... Like the sheep that lives away from the flock, the independent thinking creates a wholly "different animal"!... and in Humans, that "different animal" is usually different in ways that make them no longer "socially compatible"... and thats usually a bad thing!
That first travel experience of mine shows the core elements of what we need socially though:
We use other people as our reference points... We need the "emotional anchoring" of being able to communicate with other people so that we can feel "supported" and secure when the rest of our world changes and we are no longer in our comfort zone...
Over the millennia, we have evolved social systems to cope with "new situations" that are beyond the individuals or even the communities experiences...We fall back on the "wisdom of our elders" or we take a bit of a "group consensus" to gauge the group emotional response etc...
In strange and stressful circumstances we crave our "community" and we want to band together with a common front to face the problem...
All very evolutionarily sensible, and written very deeply in our emotional/psychological make-ups.
Back to my little story; Even in the modern world of just twenty five years ago, when I went travelling in a foreign language country, alone and without "resources", I was really "in the deep end". I had no "anchors", no "safe ground" or "reference points" other than my own previous experiences... Which clearly, and understandably, were not up to the task!
Since then, I have sporadically travelled to other countries over the years and things have steadily been getting easier. Certainly on the communications front... Calling people back home has been getting cheaper and cheaper over the years and while back then it was dollars per minute, it is now little more than a few cents a minute from/to anywhere in the world.
More recently, two years ago when I went on my first ride through Central America, I stayed at much the same sorts of places as I am staying this time. I met the same sorts of other travellers in about the same quantities. This time though I have noticed a big difference in the way We travellers are "communicating" with the rest of the world.
Two years ago, pretty much all the travellers were using the internet to stay in touch with family and friends on a regular (if not daily) basis. Likewise, most of them were also using Skype to have in-person conversations with their loved ones rather than the more expensive "phone booth" parlours that had prevailed before skype and the inter-net.
But all this was being done in "internet cafes" and the usual experience was that you had to put up with half a dozen people smoking cigarettes and having loud "skype" conversations within a few meters of you and your email/skype conversation . Note: There are lots of inter-net cafes in the developing countries now and fewer and fewer "phone booth" businesses ... for international phone calls.
This all makes a HUGE difference to the way travellers feel and behave! They have a good regular connection to that "social support network" and it makes them/us behave in a much more confident way. We get much "braver" as individuals, and that means that a much larger proportion of people are now willing to go travelling to "remote" and exotic places... In effect, those places become less remote and the travel becomes less daunting.
Two years ago, there were also some travellers though (maybe 10%), who were travelling with their own computer and were hooking up to Ethernet cables in the internet cafes or using WiFi in the same spaces.
But in the last two years that has changed again ... drastically!
This time round, the advent of the "net-book" computer and the "iPhone" type devices, as well as "social networking" systems like "Twitter",and "FaceBook" has meant that about three quarters of travellers that I meet (myself included) are more or less Constantly "hooked in" to their social support networks.
And its now not in the internet cafes... Now its in a private or only partially public space in the comfort of the hostels where the travellers are staying... Like the phone parlours, the internet cafes days are definitely numbered!
And it means that anywhere with telephone connectivity (which is just about everywhere these days) is no longer "remote and scary"! Its all "fair game" for the modern "adventure traveller" who in the past would not have dared to step far outside of their own home towns!...
And this "Connected effect" is happening faster and faster. There is so much broadband connectivity these days that the developing countries are bypassing the whole "wired" stage and going straight to the"wireless and where ever" stage. The "antenna proliferation that supports this wireless connectivity that I am seeing is insane!
Its all very "consumer" and it has BIG consequences... The world is BEING changed by this "wave" of tourism by a new generation. Many of them are just young adults who are looking for something "exotic" to entertain them. Some of them are "eco-conscious" and try not to do too much damage to the world; But none of them are what I would call "socio-conscious" and are trying not to change the cultures of the places they visit! They all want to go to the "most remote and traditional villages" that they can get to... Preferably one that is not in any of the guide books yet... and that means that those places get changed by these visitors who all want their lattes and their hot showers and most of all, their internet access!
Now, Im travelling too, and Im changing the world too, and sure as eggs, even if I didnt travel other people would and the world would change anyway...
Actually, I can freely attest to the STRONGLY "addictive" nature of this "connectivity"... but as with anything addictive the effect is not all good...
But, I dont believe it can be stopped!... And Im not even going to start in on trying to decide if it "Should be" stopped or not (which is of course a moot point given that it clearly will go ahead as it currently is).
Im also sure that there are "unpleasant consequences" from it for the places/peoples being visited as well as the tourists themselves... But there are also good effects for both the visitors and the visited too...
Its a complex phenomenon and Ive made several posts on some of the issues in the past.
But what really gets me; and that I DO think is a very bad thing, is that no one seems to be at all aware of what they are doing or the effects they are having...
When I try to suggest to people what Im seeing, I usually fail completely, but on the few occasions when I do get my point across, the usual response is "Well, if I didnt do it someone else would, so Im gonna get my share"... And its true enough but its pretty much like a paedophile trying to justify child prostitution with the same argument!...
OK, maybe thats overstating it a bit, but just because other people do something that has a "dubious" impact on other peoples lives, doesnt mean that its OK for me to do it to....
All I really want is for people to "THINK about the consequences of what they are doing"...
... ahhh, but there I go; Dreaming again!
Ive written it down now and got it "off my chest", so now, I guess Ill just watch and wait and let what will be, be :)))
Interesting times we live in!
