Ages and Stages of Travel

One evening in 1973, as Ruth and I were traveling in Latin America for our honeymoon, we were contemplating dinner in Lima. As sometimes happens, other travellers in our cheap hotel were similarly contemplating, but they chose to make dinner rather than check out the restaurants on the street. As always, things grew. The Swedish girls had some beans. The Australian had a lot of beer. We were traveling with rice and oatmeal - OK, forget the oatmeal. The organizing couple were making a big salad - lots for everybody (especially if you add in beans, rice and beer). "Big salad?", we wondered, "where will they get a large plate or pot?". Voila! With a satisfied flourish they produce the salad - all nicely chopped up into the chipped chamber pot that was under the bed!
Bleah! How many syphillitic and tubucular travellers had used that pot before? Three minutes later and Ruth and I were down the stairs to check out the restaurants on the street.

This event came back to mind last week. Then, as 37 years before, I was staying in a basic hotel filled with 20-somethings and 30-somethings traveling on the cheap. Then, as 37 years ago, there was talk of a big communal meal of hotel folks who didn't want to check out the restaurants on the street. Only this time the organizing crew were level-headed Canadians and the resulting food was delicious.

But some things don't change when, as I did with Elie, I found myself back in that age group. There is always at least one wasted stoner - in this case a Norweigan with incredible capacity for intake. There is always the Australian spending three years seeing the entire planet before going home and never leaving Oz again. (Imagine a country whose entire foreign affairs is shaped by generations whose perceptions were gained at age 27 and never modified since.) There is usually "the lost girl" - cute but silent and being dragged everywhere by and being spoken for by her boyfriend. There is one 50-something bedraggled longhair who left Denver 28 years ago and hasn't quite figured out yet where he's supposed to be. And all these people are scraping by on minimalist budgets, convinced all they need are cramped unsafe busses for travel and greasy tough meat with overcooked rice for food.

None of that has changed - though not everything is as it used to be in the closed world of open travel. Any of us who moved around Europe in the 60's and 70's can recall lining up outside the American Express office for 2 PM when we could pick up mail. Our families had Amex addresses and expected arrival dates and so we relished getting the latest news from three weeks ago. Not to mention the social cement among travellers - that group from Toronto you saw in Marseilles and Rome were there again waiting outside the American Express in Athens. But all that vanished with the arrival of the new Holy Grail of travellers in the 90's whose first question of the hotel staff was "where is the nearest Internet Cafe?" And as surely as ATMs supplanted travellers cheques, the great American Express Rendezvous was no more! But change is constant, and today the local Internet Cafe is a seedy place frequented only by locals who can't view porn at home. Today every cheap hostel has wifi, and every minimalist backpacker has an iPhone or mini laptop in their gear.

But this has a social cost. Look in a typical cheap hotel common area today and see a half dozen people peering over their screens or lost in their headphones. Few are those moments when the two girls from Japan are swapping stories with the guys from Denmark. When the Kiwi, the South African and the Brit are making fun of the Yank for being unable to tell the accents apart. When the guy from Winnipeg, waiting for the lone bathroom, chats up that girl from New York.

And who knows where all that can lead?

They're older now, that Winnipeg/New York couple. Now they pay a few extra bucks to ride in busses with legroom. They still eat cheaply in the markets - but then they go spend twice as much by treating themselves to a good dessert. And rather than waiting for the lone common bathroom, they only book rooms with a private bath.
But look at what we don't have as a result. We don't have a community of travellers down the hall. We don't have the easy opportunity to swap information, funny experiences or horror stories.

And we don't have chamber pots.