The Last Frontier

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading lately with regards to travel destinations. First and foremost are a few travel books I picked up last year, namely one on Montenegro. But I also have books on Eastern Europe and various city destinations such as New York City.

Reading them though one can’t help but feel that a lot of what made these destinations unique has slowly eroded over time. For example, you’ll find english speaking people in almost every city nowadays. I always like traveling to a remote destination and trying to speak in their language, but even on my trips I could always fall back to english if I wanted (which is nice sometimes, but takes a way a bit from some of the mystique). A generation ago you could head down to Costa Rica and find a little hut on the beach for few dollars a day. Now you’ll find $300-$400/night hotels where those used to be. Want to go see a wonder of the world like Machu Picchu in Peru? Well, there’s a big hotel complex within sight of it nowadays, so I’m sure you could sit and get tanked in the hotel bar within sight of it. Long gone are the days where’d you’d be expected to hike the Inca Trail into it, only camping here and there along the way.

I’m sure there are still quite a few destinations that haven’t been globalized yet, but I expect that those are the exceptions and not the rule these days. I wonder how many generations we have left to go until the world truly does seem flat again.