The Travelling Heirarchy

One thing you quickly recognise when travelling are the different types travellers accompanying you around the standard South American ports of tourist call. At one end of the scale you have your wannabe hippies - generally drop-outs of life and clothed in the baggy stripy trousers known locally as 'happy pants'. They seem to have 'settled' in a peaceful town making a living out of selling homemade jewelry, keep the local pot dealers in business and for some reason like to own puppies.

Next along you have the 'restless mid life crisis' traveller who, in the absence of a family or any more unrealised ambitions, packs it all in and disappears around the world for a year or so. These travellers are harmless and generally quite interesting though the 'been there done that' arguments you get when you put two of them in close proximity can be tiring.

The category that I think we place ourselves in is the 'we just want to be at one with you' category, eager to interact with the natives and be absorbed in the culture. We have met many wonderful people along the way who have embraced this philosophy including for some reason a lot of med students burnt out by school and taking time out to explore a use for their skills. We are of course the best and look down upon all the other travelling species.

Then there are the tour buses, large groups of middle aged people doing the tours in style and comfort. The buses tend to pick them up at their nice and sanitary 3 star hotel and drop them at the gates of the tourist traps with the minimal amount of interaction with anything in between. Both me and Millay agree that our biggest fear about getting old is not that we'll end up in a wheelchair or incontinent...... but in a tour bus.

Finally you have the bane of our lives which is the 'rich kids on tour' genus. Generally speaking these are gap year students just turned 18 with a mental age half of that on their passport. Usually named Alfred, Rupert or Lottie, South America for them is one big cheap beery night out with even cheaper drugs, you find them bouncing between the ex-pat western bars in the various major cities proclaiming various thinly veiled racist views about the locals and working out how to get more money off Daddy. Sad thing is that these are the people who will probably be running the country in 10 years time - you have been warned!