All you can drink

Sara responds to my post below. Particularly, the part about suggesting the resort in the Caribbean or Mexico. She says that all inclusive resorts are bad for so so many reasons.

I agree. I've never been to an all-inclusive resort, nor even to a country that relies upon them like the Caribbean or Mexico and I have no desire to. Even from a purely selfish personal travel standpoint, the only thing that lies lower on my desires for travel than the all-inclusive is the *shudder* Cruise Ship. Travel that allows you to participate in a country rather than be excluded from it is both a better experience and better for the country itself.

There's also no question that travel changes things: some good, some bad. A great contrast are the cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg. There are lots of tourists technically in both cities but their patterns of behaviour are quite different. For Joburg, people land at the airport and are immediately wisked away to some very swanky resorts near or in Kruger Park. Cape Town, on the other hand, is a city that people actually visit for its own sake. For Cape Town, this has meant that the downtown core is vibrant and diverse--all the things that make a city pleasant for both tourists and locals. Downtown Joburg, on the other hand, is a desolate wasteland with people literally selling peanuts outside of deserted office buildings. Tourism isn't the only reason for the difference, but it certainly must have an effect. On the negative side, the tourists have appeared to have drawn masses of children away from their homes to form gangs to capitalize on easy prey both by begging and stealing. This real example of a false economy appears to be having a really negative effect on the potential for improvement in the overall situation in the future. The contrast with Joburg is striking: there just aren't gangs of kids there. There are many poor people and it can be quite dangerous, but kids tend to stay with their families, allowing at least for the possibility of family support, getting an education, and breaking the cycle of poverty. Tourism is not a zero-sum activity and there are lots of costs and benefits on both sides of the equation.

I suggested europe, mexico, and D.C. only because Andrew did. I'm always cautious about recommending Europe because frankly if you go when you're 65, you can have just as a fulfilling experience there. There's very little age sensitive there. (Well, okay, maybe Ibiza are such are) But then again, it can be just as fun for a younger person. I think that young should focus on more challenging experiences, that will get harder (but to be fair, not at all impossible) for the older.

Also, Sara's right...you (and we) aren't really that old. In fact, we *are* young. While I think we have passed one major plateau on the descent into decrepitude, there's still a long way to go before that point, maybe 50, 60 years from now. My real point is that now is the better time, and it will only likely get harder.

One quibble though with Lonely Planet. The path of the Lonely planet is too well known by now and too well tred and can constitute a type of long amorphous inclusive resort filled with tourists and people catering to them. It's nice to step off that treadmill and find, not necessarily out of the way places, but less trodden. The more diffuse the patterns of travelling are, the less overall negative effect they will have and the more widespread the benefits.

On an unrelated note, MRI's are kind of fun, but much noiser than I expected. I thought I could feel the protons in my body lining up magnetically, but I suspect that may just be psychological.