So this is Mexico.
What changed? Most obviously, the vegetation. Crossing the river between Guatemala and Mexico that was the first thing that struck me, the change in plant life. I felt like we were in East Texas or Louisiana. All the palm fronds and big banana leaves that make up the landscape between Darién and the Petén suddenly disappeared. Trees like the ones we'd find in the southern U.S. And the food, to a smaller degree. Lots of salsas, picantes (spicy salsas), condiments. We have ecstatically discovered that literally all food is made better with lime. Mexico has given me at least this.
Mexicans are very proud people. They know their history and culture and language much better than I know mine. A sweaty, bespectacled Mexican squabbles with a seated, overweight Mexican in a stretched shirt about the minutia of dates during the Mexican Revolution. And my ponderous ignorance on American history, the forgotten and dusty pages from AP American History in high school.
I hate to say it, and I hate how these entries turn out so negative or critical, but the nature of the beast is that it's all starting to run together, all these towns and plazas and squares and fountains and churches and ruins and indigenous clothing and foods. From the highlands of Peru, to the jungles of Guatemala, from the historic quarters of Panama: most obviously the vast “conquered” swath of territory from Chile to the Rio Grande we call “Latin America”, the rice-and-beans, Catholic, Spanish-indigenous culture that millions call home. It is all starting to blur together. I am in the midst of a small existential crisis with my identity as a tourist.
I wanted for so long to be a “traveler,” separate from those “tourists” who jump on their chartered buses to run out to ruins and churches for their tours in English. But I'm among them. And I suppose accepting that title is a step towards honest self-examination. Stepping off my grand (did you notice?) soap-box about Peace Corps about how I'm now somehow “different” (I've noticed my difference but don't know the details of this difference yet). We fall into the same tourist-traps, the Lonely-Planet-guided path to all the “cool places” discovered as “cool” and then condemned with the golden touch of death, the thumbs up from the guidebooks which simultaneously rockets a town into the tourism industry, while also constraining it with all the problems inherent in such an industry. The loss of authenticity and culture, the sort of sad and sometimes sick parading of culture, the pedaling of history as a trinket made (sometimes in China) for you to take home to prove somehow “I was there.”
Pride. Maybe that's all it comes down to? My vast, idiotic scorecard of “where I've been”: my nausea at adding five to six new countries of places I now “know” (horrifically superficially). To compare with others, to their scorecards, to see who “wins” in this insane race to “see the world.” Why? Why this desire to “know” a place? I ran into an old Australian couple who (deliberately or not) dropped names of all the countries in Asian and Latin America they've been to, and they mentioned that they visited China twice, in the 1970's and a few years ago, and how completely different it was. So even the places we've tagged as “known”, “seen”, “checked off” change more rapidly than we can visit and revisit them. So what the hell are we doing?
Ideas from the smart guys I'm traveling with: Education, Entertainment. A kind of relaxation (I don't always see running around frantically to “see the sights” as relaxing), a different experience from the work-a-day life we are used to. And to get interested in some topic you never considered (the history of Mexico's revolution, Mayan astrological-architectural correlations, the demographic of illegal immigrants to the US, South Carolina history, the comparative strength of the Mexican economy in Central America and its relation to NAFTA, etc). And that curiosity inspiring you to look up/research the facts for yourself. Or, reversed, to see the places you've already read about, to see first hand the ruins you've read a book or two on. If only I could do this research ahead of time.
We saw Monte Alban yesterday. So what? Why, after that two hour tour in Spanish, am I better off? What did I learn or how was I challenged or changed? Did I do that just to add another ruin to the list of ruins I've seen? We took photos and turned down tourist trinkets, we paid our entrance fee and walked around. Cool.
The fact of the matter may be that my appreciation has plummeted since joining this wild adventure in a culture I now feel so at home with, post-Panama. That it's all “ho-hum” now what in two to five years will be “wow!”. I've exhausted my travel-endurance, perhaps in these crazy two years, visiting in two years more countries than I'd visited in my life prior (almost: five/six to five/six, depending if you count Kenya or Costa Rica). But doubling in two years my perspectival horizon may have stretched me too far. And this is the “what are we really doing here?” whiplash.
I'm open to your comments and help to free me from this entangled mess I've inadvertently snagged myself in (acknowledging my hopeless tendency to over-complicate things normally accepted casually by Most Anybody).
Turkey sounds nice. Charleston sounds nice. Family sounds nice. Christmas lights. Sunrises over the marsh. Long visits with family. After almost two and a half years, I'm on my way home. Home.
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