I know a woman, terribly spoiled by doting and affluent parents, who travelled quite a bit. Her head was almost empty, so none of it mattered much to her: history, art, literature, it was all so much guidebook fodder. She rarely had a decent story to tell of a trip. One of the things I noticed, though, was that she became increasingly esoteric in her trips. I mean, it makes sense for a Londoner to go to an obscure Greek island, but a Midwesterner? There are islands closer to home.
Anyway, one time she went on a trip through the Amazon, starting at one end and sailing through. She was not at all into roughing it, so the accommodations were comparatively luxurious. In the nature of the case, the spent a good deal of time behind netting and in quarters, protected from the myriad malarial mosquitoes and the soul wrenching heat. Her travelling companions were mostly older couples, intent on doing something off the beaten path.
That was when I realized that a lot of it was just one- upsmanship, being able to say one has done something unusual, implying that one has been everywhere else and done it......... |
