A Whole World Away

Today

Paul and I have recently returned from our South and Central American holiday. We visited Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia and Honduras.

My brother Chris prefers the world's wilder places as destinations because he thinks that all cities are pretty much the same, and in fact in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay the cities had so much in common with Europe that we hardly felt we were abroad.

We didn't feel like this in Tegucigalpa. What with armed guards at every supermarket and cafe, the necessity for even well-to-do families to have their water delivered twice weekly, and the injunction not to enter into the city wearing anything resembling jewellery, we felt we were stepping into an alien place.

My Honduran cousin Ernesto pointed out to me rather tartly that most of the world lives the same way or worse than Honduras; the way we live in Western Europe being reserved for a very small and privileged sector of the human race.

In My Day

When did foreign places stop feeling foreign? Was it as a result of our desire to travel without being inconvenienced by the strange? Or are we simply all subject to globalisation?

When I did my great hitch-hiking tour back in 1969 many places even on mainland Europe did feel very foreign indeed. There were not the ubiquitous fast-food chains in every city, nor were there supermarkets selling roughly the same food everywhere.

This made for an experience that was unsettling, challenging and exciting. In Florence we tasted Pizza for the first time; bought from local pizzerias in large square slabs. In Athens we bought Souvlaki from roadside stalls - full of fresh tomatoes and flat-leaved parsley. Even eating parsley, usually at that time in England a throw-away garnish, was new. Plumbing was different and we became accustomed to the hole-in-the-floor variety. And, of course, you took your life in your hands if you drank the water!

When we arrived in Crete, courtesy of an overnight tramp ferry from Piraeus, the difference was even more marked. Crete is now a playground for holidaying Brits and bristles with high-rise and Macdonalds. Then it was a dusty, forgotten  corner of Greece. One day, eating our lunch and awaiting our bus to Matala, we were invited into a little local cafe. It was dark, dingy and pretty well empty. The owners offered us a bottle of local red wine to go with our sandwiches, indicating that it was on the house. As we finished, music started up and we were drawn into a circle of dancing locals, where they kicked up their heels in true Greek fashion. When we got to Matala we found that the local cafe did amazing omelettes for a few Drachma and had no objection if we took in tomatoes and onions bought in the market to slice over them. We often brought in our own wine as well. People picking over fruit for sale in the market place would offer us bunches of grapes as gifts.

And we slept on the beach or in the artificial caves without hindrance or fear.

I seriously doubt that that would happen today; Matala boasts luxury hotels and restaurants whose owners would be much too keen on their profits and too used to foreigners to spend time on a Sunday, leisurely picking over grapes and handing them out to hippies.

I'm in a poor position to judge whether what is gained by adopting the Western European way of life is greater than what is lost. Perhaps it's possible to have potable water without adopting global blandness. I hope so.