tourist and traveler

#Tourist_and_Traveler

All this time I felt like an ordinary white tourist. Visiting the standard, overused-by-everyone-who-can't-be-bothered attractions — Chichen Itza, Ek Balam, Monte Alban, Teotihuacan. Tourists everywhere, groups all around. Everything everywhere is polished, prepared — take it and use it. You pay money — you get it. A pyramid, a souvenir, a swim in a cenote. Everything for you.

A month later I started settling in and gradually began turning from a tourist into a local. I started going to training sessions, and visiting various ruins stopped inspiring me the way it did in the first week.

To spice up my tourist menu a bit, I went looking for crocodiles. Didn't have to search long — they're freely accessible right within city limits. If they want, they'll crawl out into the city onto the roadway. They swam near me at a distance of 5 meters and there was nothing between us but air.

It was getting dark and as a last thing before heading back to Playa I decided to feed him a burrito. But he probably didn't like it, because he didn't even crawl out or sniff what I'd brought him. He'd want it with a stink, I know... But where would I get that? You'd have to prepare it in advance.

I don't remember, did I post the crocodile videos on VKontakte?

More and more often a premonition of some changes washes over me... A taste of something unclear. Tourism slowly started turning into a journey. And yes, between these concepts there's an abyss.

A tourist arrives to something ready-made, wanders well-trodden paths, while a traveler paves the road himself. Путе-шественник, that is literally — "one who strides along the path."

Separately it's worth adding that any path presupposes a goal. In this regard it's simple: lose the goal — lose the path. And along with it, the one who strides along it.

The word "tourist" is probably derived from the word "tour." Actually, it doesn't really matter where this word came from — it's borrowed either way.

Here's what we have: a tourist buys a tour package, or saves money and gets the same thing independently — without a package. But he's still the same tourist, just slightly freer.

A tourist can travel halfway around the world and not end up a traveler. And at the same time he can never leave his own country's borders and still call himself a traveler.

If you philosophize a bit, then to stride along the path and proudly 👻 call yourself a traveler, you don't have to leave the borders of your own home or city at all. Because a journey is about a state, a state of the soul. Just like feeling like a tourist is also a state.

Something is in the air...

🌎🌅🏜🌵

Arthur O'Harra.

#AroundTheWorld #JourneyThroughMexico #AroundTheWorldTrip #Catemaco #WitchCity