The traveller vs. the tourist

It hurts me deeply to admit this, but the time has come:

My lithe, athletic, 23-year-old athlete body and over-educated young mind cannot keep up with the travel plans of my parents.

After two and a half weeks driving past beautiful scenery, spending only a day or two in each place (and in the case of Lake Taupo, about two hours), I cracked.  I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't watch more potentially interesting places go rushing past while I got sleepier and sleepier in the back seat.

Which brings me to the traveler vs. the tourist.  The tourist, I feel, is happy to "see".  To drive, to take pictures, to take tours, to stay on the marked pathways.  To maybe try something new, and to make a couple of single-serving friends (thank you Fight Club), but not get too emotionally involved.  The tourist can look at a snow-capped mountain looming over a surf beach and think, "Wow, that's pretty." They can locate exactly where they are on a map at all times.

The traveler, on the other hand, goes without an itenarary.  Sometimes only with a vague idea of where they may sleep or when they will arrive at the next town or how they'll even get there.  They don't just make single-serving friends: the traveler will rely on them after knowing them for a grand total of two minutes.  Sometimes less.  The traveler will fall in love, get their heart broken, learn new skills, meet and even live with people that they might not even consider talking to at home.  The traveler learns more about themselves than the place he/she visits (to get closer to the proper grammar.)  but the traveler learns through contact.

I aspire to be a traveler.  On the other hand, trying to keep up with my parents on their "land cruise" has shown that tourism is far too tough for me.  And can one be a traveller if one can't keep up with the tourists?

Or maybe that is the point of traveling.  Not simply an over-dressed matter of depth, but a matter of speed.  Of slowness.  Of losing oneself in order to find oneself. Finding what one can and cannot do without.  Learning about how one copes with new places and things and people and applying this to the "more familiar" life back home.

Or maybe traveling is simply a poor backpacker's way of trying to make herself look better for not being able to see a country in three weeks when her nearly-50-year-old parents (sorry Mom and Dad) have no problem with this.

Next week: To Raglan and Beyond!  Or, leaving Gizzy and surfing everywhere else.