What is Travel? A Review of Stuart A Ross's _Lost in Latin America_

I've always been a bit "out of step" with both my friends and most of my generation when it comes to travel. It's almost an article of faith among them that travel broadens. I don't think I've ever believed this. Instead I tend to believe in another credo: some people travel farther walking around the block than others do when going to the other side of the world. The difference between the two is what I think people should think about when they brag about how much jet fuel they've burnt in the modern race to create runaway climate change.  

&&&&

I'm going to anchor this op ed around a review of Stuart A Ross's Lost in Latin America. It's a short little book that has the virtue of being a somewhat unvarnished account of what it was like to be one of those "travel to X on a shoestring" people in the 1970s. It's exactly the sort of book that future historians and sociologists will use as a primary resource for trying to understand what it was like to be a privileged North American traveling in the Global South---something of a Samuel Pepys of the 1970s hippy travel culture.  

 

Ross is a therapist by profession (his short biography states that he was "chief psychologist at the Homewood Health Centre for 28 years") and among the basic, factual description of his travels, he is careful to share concise descriptions of his mental states as he remembers them.

Traveling alone can be lonely, but boredom can be worse. One has a lot of free time with slow travel. Waiting for boats, buses, train schedules, visa offices, etc. And here in Puntarenas, sitting in my dumpy little flat, I was a prime example. Traveling had slowed to a standstill. The 'distraction' of motion had turned into too much time to reflect. As for traveling, what happens when visiting museums, art galleries, historic sights and incredible scenery becomes the norm? The bigger question is what is my life's purpose? With so many things for a young man to do, how does he ever choose? 

Lost in Latin America, p-73

Pay attention to the above quote, as I think Ross alludes to two issues that I think are deeply important to understanding the appeal of travel. 

&&&&

 

I recently signed up with Substack, which is a publishing service for independent journalists like yours truly. I'm offering my posts for free right now, but if you have a subscription, maybe you'd like to read my posts there instead of off the Blogger website. I'll be posting my articles there, but as of now, not the weekend literary supplement. (That may change in the future.) On this site I'm not listed as "The Guelph-Back-Grounder", but rather as "Hulet's Backgrounder"---more about the name change later.

As always, if you like what I write and can afford it, why not subscribe through Pay Pal or Patreon? 

 

&&&&

The first point is where he writes The 'distraction' of motion had turned into too much time to reflect. The is a paradox here. How can someone be 'distracted' at the same time as having 'too much time to reflect'? The answer is to ask what one is distracted from and what they are reflecting on.

Decades ago I sat on the Board of a local NGO and took on the task of looking into the well-being of the full-time staff that worked there. As part of this, I started looking into the issues around 'burn-out'. The statistics were dire. A much, much higher percentage of NGO management suffer from burn out than in the private sector. To that end, I looked into the research on what were indicators of whether or not your employees were suffering from it. 

One of the biggest 'red lights' was how people spent their vacation time. If someone always traveled when they had time off, it was an indication that they hadn't developed an adequate 'work/life' balance. It meant, in a nutshell, that the only way these people could mentally separate themselves from the job was by physically separating themselves from the workplace----and the greater the distance, the better.

The second element that Ross is talking about, the 'too much time to reflect', is something I know all too well. One of the reasons why I hate travel is because I don't like sitting on my ass for long, long periods of time with nothing useful to do. This isn't to say that I cannot do it. In fact, I probably have a much, much higher tolerance for this sort of thing than almost anyone else I know. (That's probably because I've spent so much time doing formal meditation.)

I learned about this traveling back and forth to Saint Louis Missouri on Amtrak, Greyhound, and, Mega Bus. It routinely took more than 24 hours to do this---sometimes a lot more. For example, when I took the Train from Toronto there was a regular 14 hour layover in Buffalo---at a tiny train station in the middle of an industrial area with almost zero amenities nearby. Another trip I ended up being locked into the London Greyhound station when it shut down overnight because I had nowhere else to stay while I waited for my connection.

And the travel itself was sometimes appalling. One trip---in January---someone sprayed some perfume on the bus and the driver was so angry about having to smell it that she opened up the air flow wide open and everyone on the bus froze for the entire journey from Chicago to Detroit---even though we were all in our heavy winter coats. 

 

Another time Greyhound changed a route for a bus I was on without telling me, which resulted in my not making my connection. When I asked for another ticket so I could get home, the woman at the counter said that all the buses were filled up for the next couple days. 

 

(This is a case where I ended up leaning on my middle-class privilege. Instead of sitting on a bench for two days, I got a partial refund plus a ticket to the border. Then I called Via Rail and got a train home. I also rented a hotel room in Windsor for the evening. A poor person would have spent the days in the Chicago station.) 

 

I also learned that once you crossed the border the nice Canadian buses were exchanged for worn-out American ones that were a lot less comfortable. By the end I was traveling with one of those circular, inflatable cushions that pregnant women often use because my butt hurt so much after extended periods of time on worn-out bus seats. 

I could mention a lot more, but the point is that if you are poor (or traveling like a poor person---which Stuart Ross was doing in his book), you have a lot of opportunities for introspection. But even if you are well off, anyone who can't fly on their own personal executive jet is bound to have to spend a lot of time waiting in lines or sitting on their butts waiting to have the opportunity to sit on their butts for a many hours more.

Why do people like to travel if it is like this? I would suggest that beyond being separated from an all-encompassing job, this 'enforced boredom' is the only time that a great many people have to engage in introspection. I'm not saying that people who travel consciously understand this, but rather that there is an instinctual drive towards introspection that manifests itself in people's willingness to continue to travel---even though they would go absolutely berserk if someone told them that they had to undergo all this waiting as part of their ordinary, everyday life.

&&&&

There's another part to travel that bears talking about. There's the randomization. When people travel they often find themselves in the situation of having to think fast to respond to a totally unexpected situation. In Ross's book, he is following a guide book that recommends a trip down the river by boat to a place called "Porta Plata". Without sufficient Spanish to really understand what is going on, he takes passage on a boat and finds out that it has gone past his destination without stopping. When he starts freaking out to the boat's captain by repeating the words "Porta Plata" over and over again, he is dropped off on the bank of the river with a finger pointing upstream.

A fellow walks out of the bush carrying a gun and wearing a couple bandoliers of ammunition. Fortunately for Ross, he turns out to be a helpful local who provides him with supper and a place to stay for the night and then walks him up a jungle trail towards Porta Plata and then leaves him. Before going, he points to a smaller jungle trail and utters those magic words "Porta Plata". 

The early evening was approaching with me expecting to have found something by now. Lost, helpless, terrified. Jungle noises building to a peak with my anxiety. Claustrophobia, thick as the tangled vines I was pushing through, stumbling ahead without clarity. A metaphor for my current life, as well as my only option. Nowhere to hang a hammock. Too wet for a fire. Too dangerous to lay down for a sleepless night. The remaining daylight dimmed to darkness. I felt lost. Rather than stopping, I chose to keep going, praying I was still on the path and that I would survive.

Lost in Latin America, p-53

At that point, Ross hears the call of a rooster----which means that there is at least a subsistence farm nearby and heads towards the sound. Eventually he stumbles into a clearing while in total darkness. Exhausted, he pitches his hammock and mosquito net between two conveniently-placed poles that he finds by touch, and goes into a deep sleep. When he wakes up, he finds that he's been sleeping in the Porta Planta farmer's market and one of the local vendors wants Ross to take down his hammock so he can set up his stall.

Everyone who's done any traveling has had this sort of experience. In one way or another you will find yourself having to make a very quick decision to deal with a situation that you didn't expect to happen. And when you are in the grips of it, you will think that the stakes are extremely important. I think that paradoxically this is also one of the appeals of traveling. 

There is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Winston Churchill

There is something in human beings that likes being thrilled by danger. That's why people ride roller coasters. 

&&&&

Moreover, there's a social element to this too. Not only is there an adrenaline rush in trying to make your connection or find a work-around, there's also a secondary mellow that comes from talking about it with your friends afterwards. This is such a common phenomenon that it has an English phrase to describe it: dining out. The idea is that someone who has had an extraordinary adventure is in high demand at dinner parties because the host and other guests want to hear the story.

This is such a common experience that Phillip K. Dick wrote a short story titled We Can Remember It For You Wholesale on the premise (it has also been made into two different movies titled Total Recall). The idea is that if the only reason people go on trips is to remember experiences that you can later relate to your family and friends, why actually go on a trip when you can just download the memories of someone else? That way you can dine out on the experience---but not have to worry about actually being stuck in the middle of a jungle to feed the mosquitoes and worry about ever getting back to civilization. 

But this isn't just about having a story to relate over coffee at a dinner party. Modern society is so complex that it requires an enormous amount of regimentation to even work at all. (That's why whenever something unexpected happens---like a plague year or the war in Ukraine---the economy goes through spasms of things like inflation or labour shortages.) The problem for people is that we just aren't constructed to live the same old life day after day. Being a hunter/gatherer is about doing a lot of very different things according to the time of the year and the specific circumstances of any given moment. We are hard-wired to deal with the odd 'out of the blue' event---large predators, wild weather, etc. If life is too predictable, the part of our psyches that evolved to deal with such things seems to get itchy and needs to be exercised. For a lot of people, I suspect that this is what travel is all about---whether they know it or not. 

&&&&

If you've been following me up to this point, I'll recapitulate. To my mind there are four key parts to the 'travel experience':

1. Getting away from whatever usually dominates your consciousness
2. Long periods of time with nothing to do, which forces introspection
   
3. The odd scary, unplanned event that forces people to act instinctively
4. Gaining social prestige that grants status at social events (ie: 'dining out')
   

This brings me back to the saying some people travel farther walking around the block than others do when going to the other side of the world. What I understand this to mean is the items I've listed above can be achieved without actually physical travel. Moreover, the corollary is also true---it is possible to travel without experiencing each of them---and many people actually do so. 

The second point is relatively easy to illustrate. If you are able and willing to pay a lot of money, you can minimize points 2 and 3. If money's no object, you can travel by the fastest way possible which goes from express flights all the way up to private jet. In addition, you can avoid boredom/introspection by spending the extra money for things like privileged boarding arrangements and first class/VIP seating. This includes things like lots more room to spread out and work, plus entertainment like being able to watch movies while burning lots of jet fuel. In effect, with enough money you can change your travel time into working at a desk, sitting on a sofa watching tv, or, even sleeping in a bed.

As for getting adrenaline jolts because of unexpected events, if you have enough money you can hire 'minders' to make sure that your experience is flawless. You can stay in first rate hotels that are booked in advance. And you can stay in gated resorts where the 'riff raff' are never allowed in---and the only random locals you will meet are servants.

As for 'dining out' on your experience, once you get rich enough that ceases to be an issue. No matter how boring you might be, the fact that you are rich will bring more than enough fawning attention from people who want some of your money.

Even among the more well-off, however, there are folks who really do want the 'full' travel experience. But I would argue that even these people's needs can be serviced without burning a gram of petroleum distillate.

&&&&

Let's look at the first item on my list: "getting away". This really is another way of saying that people need to balance what they do for a living and everything else in their life. This can be better achieved by deciding to set limits about how much work is going to intrude into your life---and sticking to them. To be fair, there are a lot of careers where it is expected that you will not have a life/work balance. But people should be more ready to fight to diminish these expectations on the part of employers. (One friend of mine in the computer industry told me about being so angry about this that he threatened his boss by telling him that he knew where he lived and if things didn't change at the office, he'd be sorry---not my preferred option, but it seemed to work for him.) And if it simply isn't possible to get the management to be reasonable, then I'd suggest that you shouldn't be working in that environment. We only have one life to live and wasting most of it for prestige or money is a fool's bargain.  

(Anyone who is forced by poverty to work at whatever they can get isn't going to be spending a lot of time traveling, so this issue just isn't going to arise in the first place.)

Even if you have a high stress job that eats your consciousness without intruding too much in the hours of the day, it is possible to find something that will 'take you away' from it. Many people devote themselves to hobbies, passions, nature, politics, charities, etc, as a 'respite' from the idiocy they have to endure as a means of making money. But in these cases too, there needs to be some sort of willingness on the part of employers to leave workers the time and energy after work to be able to do something productive. (I've had jobs that were so tiring that on the way home I'd get some take out, eat, fall asleep listening to the radio, and, wake up in time to make the next day's lunch and then go to bed. I'm lucky---this was just a summer 'vacation' gig while a student.)

As for the need for introspection, I'd suggest that this can be dealt with through a regular meditation practice. This needn't be a heavy-duty practice of Zen meditation. It can be exercise---something like yoga, taijiquan, running, pilates, etc. It could also be not much more than undertaking some sort of repetitive work that most folks would call "boring". (I did a lot of thinking as a child while hoeing in the garden and ploughing fields.) A little 'boring work' can be a good thing to center yourself. The problems arise when our workplaces are organized to separate jobs into slots of 'knowledge workers' and 'drones'---with the former getting all the stress and latter all the boredom. (When I'm writing and hit a bit of writer's block, I often do some housework or go out and pick a bucket of weeds in the garden.)

As for trying to get the thrill of the unplanned in your life, I've had so many "thrilling/terrifying/horrifying" experiences in my life that I tend to lack much interest in adding to the list. But it is possible to dramatically increase the 'spice' in life without burning tons of jet fuel. 

I once came across a strange little book once that described an experiment that a retired factory manager in India pursued. When retired, he decided to live like a street Sadhu or holy beggar in India. He decided that he would take a vow to view everything that happened to him as 'a command by God'. For example, if no one gave him any food on a particular day, it meant that God wanted him to fast. One of his things was to get onto trains without a ticket and when the conductor came by, he'd either stay on the train or get off as the conductor demanded. As a result he traveled all over India---but without any idea of where he'd end up. He did this for a year and then decided to going back to living the life of an ordinary well-to-do retiree. But he said he found the experience quite interesting, although he wouldn't recommend it for just anyone.   

This is a Sadhu from India.

I've also read about a American Zen Master, Bernie Glassman, who used to take people on urban retreats where they'd have to wear grubby clothes and beg for their food in urban US cities. 

I tried much the same thing in Guelph once. Oddly enough, all I had to do was simply tell myself to say "yes" to whatever came my way and within a few days I found myself going through a series of minor adventures. The one that sticks in my memory was a woman who drove up to me when I was walking down the sidewalk and who asked me if I wanted to shovel her driveway. I said "sure" and jumped in her car. She drove we way out in the boonies, only to see that someone else had already cleared her parking space. At that point she said that she didn't need me after all. She didn't want to leave me with nothing, so she gave me a ticket for a free bowling game (?), and, drove off to do something else. (I had a fun-filled hour or so walking to the nearest bus stop in the cold and snow.) 

I think the point of all of this is that modern people have developed a lot of defense mechanisms that keep other people out of our space. We've internalized them to the point where we aren't even aware of what we are doing. If you doubt me, I'd ask readers to do two things. First, get out of your car and walk around the downtown. I had a friend who gave up her car late in life and moved downtown. She said she was flabbergasted about how many beggars she saw. She never noticed them as a driver. (You won't see them at shopping malls because the security shoos them away.) Second, instead of just walking by and averting your gaze, make a habit of looking each and every beggar in the face. If you really want to follow Alice down the rabbit hole, why not actually give a significant amount of money to the person (ie: between $5 and $20) and ask them how they ended up on the street?

People have to make their own decisions about what their comfort level is with regard to their own personal space, but it really isn't that hard to have local 'adventures' without having to travel to Kookamunga first. It's a question of your headspace---not your physical location.   

&&&&

I'm not really opposed to travel per se. Perhaps in a future world there will be electric airplanes or Star Trek transporters, but in the face of the Climate Emergency it just seems ridiculous to me for people to help make things worse for such a frivolous reason. This seems especially so nowadays when things like universal literacy and the Web have given us all access to the literature and culture of the entire human race.

Having said that, I would like to add one more point. By the end of Ross's book he also seems to have been rethinking the entire travel thing.

What had I learned so far in my travels? On the one hand, wherever I stayed for a few days, I appreciated how cool it was to wake up, go out and sit at a sidewalk cafe, sipping coffee, watching the world pass by, immersed in a foreign culture. After studying the city map and several days exploring, I could stride confidently down the street, knowing a few shortcuts back to the hotel, my momentary home. These first few months had their frustrations---finding myself disoriented looking for a bus station, hotel or restaurant, pretending to understand what people saying while comprehending about 10 per cent of what they said. I had learned to be more compassionate. When I get back to Canada I thought, I'm going to help any lost-looking traveler I meet and be patient if their command of the English language is as limited as my Spanish.  

Lost in Latin America, pp 98-99

When I read Ross's line 

---I appreciated how cool it was to wake up, go out and sit at a sidewalk cafe, sipping coffee, watching the world pass by, immersed in a foreign culture.

I had to mentally ask him "but were you really 'immersed in a foreign culture'", or did you just fool yourself into thinking you were? Tourism suffers from something like the uncertainty principle. The more people go to a place to immerse themselves in a foreign culture, the less foreign it will become as it adapts itself to cater to tourists. I'm reminded of the common anti-Vietnam war poster I saw as a kid. 

I'm not suggesting Ross was trying to kill anyone, but when more and more tourists show up anywhere, the economy, culture, etc, inevitably change---which often means that whatever people like about the place is often destroyed forever.

And if you read the book, it becomes pretty clear that most of the the people that he spent time talking to weren't the locals---it was the other tourists he met in the hostels. As he freely admits in the above quote, he didn't know enough Spanish to understand more than 10% of what locals said to him. And the bits where he really seems to have long conversations were with other tourists. And these (often stoned) rap sessions don't really appear to have been anything that couldn't have happened in Canada.

&&&&

To sum things up, the book is a useful window into what it was like to travel in Latin America during the height of the "counter culture" of the late sixties and early seventies. It's well written and seems to be a fairly honest account of one man's experience. If you are someone who would like to know what it was like to 'travel X on a shoe-string', I'd recommend it. Reading the book will certainly be a lot easier on the planet than trying to recreate the experience.

&&&&

Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!