Or, one great replacement deserves another.
We must begin with the misrepresentation and transform it into what is true. That is, we must uncover the source of the misrepresentation, otherwise hearing what is true won’t help us. The truth cannot penetrate when something is taking its place. – Ludwig Wittgenstein, quoted in Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Children of the Sun
In the wake of the 2005 bombings in Bali, tourism plummeted. Two years later I braved the residual threat, to scout remote sands on the north coast, only to be besieged by (mosquitoes and) a covey of touts laden with merchandise to sell, and no buyers (except me, finally bargaining for one shirt, suitable for samba). The experience inspired the title of my travel book, The Last Tourist, as it seemed I was the last of a breed of international travelers seeking exotic lands, at the end of an era of carefree globetrotting and jetsetting.
As fate would have it, I found myself in Bali again in 2020, lucky to board one of the last flights out before the Great Scamdemic shut down borders worldwide. Was this really it, then, the last fling of tourism for real?
Not so fast. It took a couple of years of pushback and greater awakening, but at last international travel resumed, even mask-free, and despite renewed warnings of this or that new improved plague, financial crash, war and rumor of war, here I am on Mexico’s Nayarit coast, soaking up sun and watching the Super Bowl like all the other snowbirds from Canada and the US, speaking English everywhere and paying North American prices for food and accommodations.
Yes, maybe tourism is finished, as tourism. Instead the consumer culture itself has migrated south, replacing the culture that was here like a great wave or relentless series of incoming waves, even as the waves of global migrants pour the other direction like an unstoppable undertow of commensurate replacement—south-to-north to equalize the flow north-to-south.
You might say it’s a kind of tourist karma. Tossed in a word salad composed of Spanish and English, we are drenched in a dressing for World Salad, mixed like oil and vinegar, now stirred, now shaken.
The once-peaceful, hippie-chic village of San Pancho, which I first visited ten years ago, now is thumping and bumping with nightly street bands, churning out an eclectic mix of Steppenwolf, Billy Joel, Santana, Cuban rumba. A block from the bucolic lagoon, the din of construction and deconstruction drills, sledgehammers, and saws prevents any afternoon napping; while the nights are still interrupted by roosters crowing at any hour, and mornings full of salsa chatter from the hotel staff in the courtyard.
We trade the cold rains of the Northwest coast for humid warmth, mosquitoes, a hard and lumpy bed. It’s a vacation! Elbow to elbow on narrow sidewalks and crowded restaurants, with others of our kind, sunglassed, sandaled, looking for a working ATM. The Tuesday market is basically Boomerville. The surf is rough but no worries, if you’re super careful you can get out as far as knee deep before getting pummeled with a violent slurry of sea and sand. But sunsets! When it’s not too cloudy.
Sittin’ on the beach of the bay, watching the waves roll in: a perfect abstraction of constancy and variation. An unceasing demonstration of nature’s omnipotence, and grand indifference…
Mind on idle, or gathering mold, is this the last time I will be a tourist? In the two-hour lineup at the aeropuerto on arrival here, the bison-farming couple from Whitehorse moaned, “Never again.” But as perceptions and demographics shift, soon we may feel like tourists in our own land.
Our land? Who am I kidding? We’re all tourists there, and here, and everywhere now.
Can’t you hear it in the crow of the rooster, the buzz of the mosquito, the roar of the chainsaw, the groaning traffic, the constant human chatter, the barking dog, the chest-throbbing bass? Can’t you see it in the NY baseball cap, the gangsta shorts, the flowered shirt, the menu in two languages, the wine list, the license plate, the hotel lobby, the hospital ATM on the blink blaring a shrill alarm?
Who’s complaining? Not me. I get to write about it, snap some pretty pictures, and fly home to my snug and quiet northern nest.
