You see this dude? Cecil Rhodes was his name. The disaster-zone that is now called Zimbabwe was once named Rhodesia - in his honour. If all foreigners can be classed on a spectrum of respectability, from the despised "tourist", through the savvy "traveller", to the glorious "explorer", then it is certainly the latter end of the spectrum that Rhodes occupied. Hacking through jungles, consorting with native chiefs, he was about as involved in his destination as it is possible to get. Cecil Rhodes, explorer par excelence.
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We all want to be Cecil Rhodes. We all want to be the first white man to visit the Zulu tribes of the upper Zambizi.* We all want to learn fluent Swahili for no other reason than because no-one else on the entire continent speaks English. We all want to be the explorer. And this is what makes Rhodes´s state of mind so interesting. Because for all his exploits, Rhodes was the consumate tourist. If he visited Southern Africa today, he would be on the tour bus with the best of them, dressed in a loud Hawaáin shirt, tartan shorts, and wearing an enormous camera strapped across his chest. Rhodes was far more interested in exploiting Africa than discovering it. In other words, Rhodes was the explorer because he had to be.
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Yes, if Rhodes visited Southern Africa today, he would do so on a tour bus. But before you start getting smug, you might like to remember that you would probably be on the tour bus along with him. It is not enough simply to have the "right state of mind". Having a passionate desire to truly connect with another culture will not remove you from the tourist-bubble that has been created for you. You see, the essential fact is simply this: it is the destination that decides whether someone is a (a) "tourist" (b) "traveller" or (c) "explorer", NOT the person themselves.
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In order to explain why this is, I think that it is first necessary to look at exactly what each of these three individuals is trying to accomplish. We can start by recognising that, despite the differences between them, both the "tourist", the "traveller" and the "explorer" are all engaged in the same pursuit; "travel". This word is itself worthy of definition. "Travel" is a very complex activity, but from one standpoint at least it can be defined as "an encounter with another culture". Thus, "travel = the attempt to encounter another culture".
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Within this world of cultural encounter, the "tourist" is a sad and comical figure. The tourist fails on almost all counts. Tagged like children as a member of "tourist group B" in case they get lost, wearing comfort clothing better suited to lounging around the house, bearing their cameras aloft as if to shield themselves from their strange new surroundings, they look helpless, lost and horribly eager-to-please. The tourist fails first and foremost because they never do get to truly encounter their destination´s culture. Shuttled around in tourist buses, cocooned in their tourist hotels, they might as well be watching it on TV.
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There is a further twist in the tourist´s fate. When abroad, exploring strange new cultures, it is always dangerously possible to do the wrong thing, to commit a faux pas, to do something that makes you look an idiot. Stirring a matè, leaving a tip when none is expected, not covering your legs in a mosque - all these perfectly innocent actions will make you look like a complete goon to the locals. It seems hardly fair that the "tourist" - who never really encounters the culture in a real way - should be made to suffer this sort of indignity. But the fact is, they do. In fact they do so even more than other types of traveller. Whereas the "traveller" of the "explorer" are sometimes laughed at, it is only by their hosts. Only the "tourist" suffers the doubly-ironic fate of looking ridiculous in his own eyes. People who are accomplished, dignified professionals when at home become utterly ridiculous abroad, wearing the sort of gear (their ridiculous-comfort clothes, their novelty hats, their oversized cameras), that they would never dream of wearing at home.
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But as ridiculous as the "tourist" is, we cannot hate them for it. Remember!: It is the destination that decides whether someone is "tourist", "traveller" or "explorer"; not the person themselves . If there is nothing but jungle, the traveller dresses for the challenge, and becomes deified as the brave Explorer. But if there is a tourist company ready to ferry them from the airport to hotel, hotel to carefully selected attraction, warning them all the while to "dress sensibly", and eager to sell them extra camera film if ever they should run out, they understandably succumb to the opportunity, and become tourists. In other words, the "tourist" is nothing more than a traveller who has been too well catered for.
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Now, there might have been a time when people defining themselves as "travellers", (in sharp oppostion to "tourists"), might have been in enough of a minority to find themselves not specifically catered for. There might have been a time, in other words, when if you did not specifically choose to travel in the tour group that stays only at the gringo hotel, eats at the gringo restaurant, visits the gringo attraction, you would find yourself obligated to enter explorer mode; learn the lingo, try things for the first time, find yourself alone in a strange new place. Now, however, every restaurant has an English menu, every guide book will explain exactly what strange new foods are made of and how to eat them, every hotel has a doorman who is more than willing to humour the gringos in their incompetent attempts to speak the language.
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These days, "travellers" are just as overly-catered for as "tourists". Tourists have their luxury-travel groups, their disposable cameras, their solicitious guides. Travellers have their SLR´s, their long-haired hostel-mates, their inevitable copies of lonely planet. And while of course "travellers" have a bit more of a "hands-on" experience, the extent to which this differs them from mere "tourists" is no way great enough to justify the ego-boost that they get from this fact. Travellers, these days, are just as ridiculous as tourists. They are either inordinantly proud at being so "real", or they are filled of angst because they realise that they are not so real after all, realising, perhaps, that if they are self-conscious enough to realise how untouristy they are, there is still something seriously wrong with the way that they are travelling.
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To explain further what I mean by this, I think it is necessary to visit our final category; the "explorer". The "explorer" is the one who goes all out. No gang of long-haired hippies to hang out with, no "lonely planet" guide to his destination, he is on his own. Cecil Rhodes was an explorer in an age when this was most possible. He lived just when long-distance travel had started to become possible, but before many people had had the opportunity to use it. It was inevitable then, that in heading out into Africa, he would have to enter explorer mode.
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I have put the word "inevitable" in bold, because I think it is important. Cecil Rhodes lived at a time when "exploration" and "travel" where inexorably entwined. To travel through Africa was to explore. This is no longer the case. Africa is signposted for the tourist. South America too has a well trodden "gringo trail". Asia´s hippy trail serves much the same purpose. The modern day explorer is different from Rhodes in that his exploration is studied, self-conscious, deliberate.
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Like many people, I have tried my hand at exploration. When I was in Bolivia, I left Uyuni, the city that I was in - which was full of tourists - and headed out into the neighbouring towns. They too had their share of gringos, so I headed out into the surrounding villages, and after much searching, came across a village in which they had probably not seen a gringo in a long time - if ever. And it was there that I realised that the age of exploration is over. We live in an age when the things most worth seeing - the falls at Iguazu, the glaciers of Patagonia, etc - have all been mapped out for the traveller, made comfortable for the tourist. If a traveller finds themself alone in an unchartered landscape, it is usually because they have deliberately sought out a place where they could feel themselves to be an explorer.
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And I think that this is sad as well as dangerous. Those small towns around Uyuni had nothing to reccomend them to the traveller. They were boring places, and the only reason that I found them full of gringos was probably because they were doing exactly the same thing as me - heading out and away into virgin territory. This is sad because when we explore simply to be explorers, we are too self-conscious of our actions for them to be really noble. We are playing to the camera. There is nothing for us to see anymore that has not been signposted by "lonely planet" - if we insist on going out on our own, it is only because our ego´s are desperate for more. And if we do not placate our ego´s by other means, we will eventually destroy the world with our ceaseless "exploring". The more we search for untouched territory, the more it ceases to exist.
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As I have hinted above, I think that the "traveller" suffers from much the same neurosis as the modern day "explorer". They have become distracted from travel itself, and have come to focus on appearances. It is not that I think that the first instincts of either the "traveller" or the "tourist" are un-noble as such. I simply think that both have been naive enough to think that the world is still open to genuine "traveller" or "explorer" experiences. Both are trying to keep up appearances in a world which is fast wearing those appearances away. And in the process, both become distracted from what little travel has left to offer us.
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Not only are the modern "traveller" and "explorer" susceptible to this sort of distraction; they are also susceptible to hate. If one tries to keep up the facade of the "traveller", one inevitably comes to hate "mere" tourists. Travellers hate tourists because tourists are a threat. Just as it is the destination that makes the tourist, it is also the tourist that makes the destination. The more people that are willing to be ferried from attraction to attraction, the more destinations adapt themselves to this new lucrative form of income, and the more the traveller finds themselves in a destination full of photo-opportunities and tacky soveigner stands. And as I have implied, anyone travelling through tourist-land...is a tourist. But travellers don´t merely hate tourists. They hate other travellers as well. Just as a proliferation of tourists has the effect of turning a place into a part of tourist-land, thus spoiling it for the traveller who wants to experience it "real" and first hand, so too does a proliferation of travellers turn a place into part of traveller-land.
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This is just the tip of a giant iceberg; the fact is, the whole world of travel is knotted into an intractable paradox. We Europeans live in a mass culture, and in general we are aware of that. If we fancy going down the mall, we are aware that several hundred people have probably had the same idea. If we like a band, we are aware that several thousand others probably do so as well: we do not expect to be the only audience at a rock concert. And if we feel the need to free our countrymen and immerse ourselves in a new culture, we should be aware that several thousand others will want to come with us.
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We should be aware, but we aren´t. We aren´t aware enough of this because, for one thing, getting away from our fellow countrymen is an unstated assumption implicit in the idea of immersing ourselves in a new culture; and like all unstated assumptions, we never take the time to examine and question it properly. And furthermore, we are living in a world the like of which has never been seen before. Mass travel has excelerated far too fast for our cultural expectations to be dampened accordingly; we still have the heritage of such relics as Cecil Rhodes, in an age when he could not possibly exist.
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So what do we do about all this? Whether tourist, traveller or explorer, we are equally doomed. But if we are still dedicated to travel, we must decide which of these figures we are to be. Well, my choice can be seen in the title of this note. But don´t get me wrong. Being a tourist, in my book, does not consist of travelling around in an air-conditioned bus. Being a tourist means never being prey to the pretension of the "traveller" or the "modern-day explorer". Being a tourist means forgetting the fact that you look like an idiot, and just concentrating on enjoying yourself.
Being a tourist means forgetting your appearance and concentrating on your experience. Being a tourist is realising that we all look like fools now and then, and you just have to take it. We are all tourists.
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And I qoute: "We are all tourists. We learn by doing. Our knowledge comes by the fine art of making our screw-ups something beautiful. And unless you’re willing to go down roads unfamiliar to the cowards and cynics, the art never arrives.It is upon these roads where we are made travelers.As the Global Village becomes more neighborly, the future will belong to the fluent - the ones able to accept the unknown and welcome it.The test of that fluency will rest in our patience: not how well we speak, but how well we listen.Outside the limits of preference and convention await new possibilities, the “undiscovered country” of our potential. Only by asking questions do we encounter anything new; only by challenging our assumptions of the world will reveal our place within it - as one voice in a chorus. And only by honoring differences of those around us will shed light upon the ignorance that keeps us as tourists in our own lives."
*Yes, there are no Zulu tribes in the upper Zambizi. Get over it.