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10 Things to Experience On Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island
10 Things to Experience On Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island
1) Mountaintop and seaside hiking trails. The Cape Breton
Highlands National Park has both easy and rugged trails for
both the casual and ambitious hikers. You can hire a hiking
tour...
Guyana’s Quest for Eco Tourism and Lodges
Guyana’s Quest for Eco Tourism and Lodges Read Jetsetters Magazine at www.jetsettersmagazine.com http://www.jetsettersmagazine.com/archive/jetezine/globe02/samerica/guyana/ecotourism.html Developing countries throughout the world especially those...
Living in the Clouds
I have a sister of whom I am very proud. After the kids were grown she found herself divorced after years of unhappy marraige. So she went back to work. She found the job market brutal after all those years as a housewife, but she stuck with it, and...
Planning your next Trip?
Currency movements can affect the cost of a trip. For example, a favorable rate of exchange means that your local currency is worth more and will provide you with more buying power. In fact, travelers whose local currency has appreciated...
Travel Industry Trends and Predictions 2004
This article collects our thoughts about new trends in the travel industry and tourism markets, especially with regard to sustainable tourism. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, and is quite general. These trends are included as an...
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Tourist Season Again!
It is tourist season here in Guanajuato. The streets are once again crawling with pasty-white-legged gringos looking for a good time and wanting to blow a tremendous amount of money.
Here is where I come in as your humble, sincere, and most observant columnist. I would like to offer a few of today's observations on the 2005 Guanajuato Tourist Season.
Tourism—here is how it is supposed to work:
You spend many hours at your job and work lots of overtime to save up enough money to take the family to Mexico. You look at endless travel brochures, watch every special on the Discovery channel that has the name Mexico in it, and even start telling the boys down at Gipper's where you are taking the family this summer.
The summer vacation arrives. You are excited beyond your ability to express. You pack. You put the kids and wife on a plane and fly to Mexico. Your much-dreamed-of vacation has finally begun.
Everyone is sworn to be on his or her best and most humble behavior as a guest in someone else's country. And, that is, after all, what you are, as you all agree—a guest.
You would not go to Grandma's house and fart loudly in front of Granny and all her old crony sisters—of course not. You would excuse yourself and go to the bathroom. You would try using toilet paper as a muffler, mashing it ever so gently unto your delicate rectal tissues, so as not to gross out all the old folks as they are trying to eat their nice bread pudding when they are actually farting themselves but saying nothing.
You are a guest and you will not act in someone else's home as you would in your own. This, you know, applies to being in someone else's country as well.
Tourism—here is how it actually works:
The kids scream nonstop on the streets of Mexico because they cannot have a Happy Meal; the right cartoons are not on the NON-existent television set in a hotel room that resembles someone's bedroom from the 1700's; there are no playgrounds or theme parks. There is only a bunch of Baroque buildings that they think is a
salad dressing when you try explaining to them the word, Baroque.
Their behavior escalates. They pitch a fit a minute, over what? They really don't know since there is nothing to demand to have and for you to deny them. They don't want to be in Mexico because there is nothing to do.
They begin hitting their parents and the parents tolerate this behavior. This typical American child behavior is seen all the time in America. When the child doesn't get what he or she wants they beat up Mom.
The local Mexicans look with horror-stricken faces and yet settle quickly into a kind of facial expression,
"Oh that's America for you."
The mother and father somehow find something to do with the children. I think they get some Actifed for children and drug them, and put them down for naps. Then the pair goes off to a park to have a knockdown drag-out, verbal donnybrook on a very public park bench with all of Mexico listening and watching.
The local Mexicans look with horror-stricken faces and yet settle quickly into a kind of facial expression,
"Oh that's America for you."
The sweet and loving American family finally gets their act together with one another. "It had to be culture shock, or the altitude," they reason. So, off they go to a restaurant.
In the restaurant, the father begins screaming,
"I know somebody here's got to speak that there English and I wants'em at this here table right now!"
The local Mexicans look with horror-stricken faces and yet settle quickly into a kind of facial expression,
"Oh that's America for you."
And that is today's report of the beginning of Guanajuato's 2005 Tourist Season.
About the Author
Doug Bower is a freelance writer and book author. He is a columnist with Cricketsoda.com and the Magic City Morning Star. He is also listed with Ezinearticles.com. He lives with his wife in Guanajuato, Mexico. His newest book Mexican Living: Blogging it from a Third World Country can now be seen at http://www.lulu.com/content/126241
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