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To guide or not to guide

 

The mobile phone has made travel easier. Not only can we contact our loved ones more easily, tell them we’re in trouble, ask for help, or simply tell them that we miss them, but the mobile phone gives us access to maps, a compass, and guides on where to eat and places to stay.

When I began travelling, which was in the dark ages before the internet, I would write to a country’s tourist board and tell them what part of their country I wanted to visit. They would send me a stack of brochures, and I would pour over the photos and the text for months ahead of our trip. My friends were not so engaged. All they wanted was sun and they left the planning to me.

Looking back, there wasn’t a lot of planning. We’d take the bus from the old airport in Athens to Piraeus, step into any of the ferry offices and buy a ticket to an island. We didn’t ask where to find the ferry but would walk along the port side yelling at anyone on board each boat: “Paros”, “Crete” or wherever. Most times we were sent further on to yell at the next ferry.

It is amazing that we made it anywhere, but we did. We were even able to rendezvous with friends. We were camped out at a youth hostel in Iraklion and knew only that two other friends would join us, but we did not when they would arrive. Every morning we would rise at 6.30 am, walk out to meet the ferry that came from Athens, watch the arrivals stream off, not find our friends and go back to the hostel and bed. Then one day, they did arrive and it felt like a miracle. Five girls and we’d found each other. The high-pitched chatter at the youth hostel that day must have sounded like birds seeing the sun on the first day of spring.

However, we had no idea which direction to travel next, although I had an inkling. I’d seen a photo on one of the tourist brochures of a steep cliff face, tipped with white houses that hung over the beautiful Aegean. My friends hadn’t seen the photo but they trusted me, and we took the midnight ferry heading to Santorini. Arriving at dawn, the houses above us, the sea below, we thought we had landed in heaven. A bus at the top of the steps was labelled “Kamari Beach” and that second word drew us. We knew nothing of what was there but we camped on one of the black beaches, eating at the home of a local family. A few other backpackers were camped nearby, and we knew that we were fortunate to be there. Today Kamari Beach is a congested compilation of hotels and traffic.

After a hedonistic time (I can’t remember if it were weeks or days) we felt the need to move on. We took a ferry north to Naxos where the beaches were windy. Growing weary of sand in our hair, we took a local ferry to Paros and gloried in its sandy beaches. Life felt wonderfully easy. Most times we slept on beaches or in youth hostels but once we were given beds in a monastery. Having clean clothes and nice hair were important to us but I don’t remember fretting about any of it.

The next year, as we arrived at Athens airport, an American guy leaving the country gave us his Frommer’s Greece on $5 a Day guidebook. We’d never had an actual, physical book to tell us where we should stay, eat or dance and we consulted it like it was an oracle. We read each location description carefully, analysing the text, comparing options on what we might do next. The laissez-faire days of floating from island to beach to island, not knowing what lay ahead, changed as we feared making a wrong choice and ending up in a less than perfect location. The trip wasn’t dull, but my memories of fun and adventure have faded.

Today, few of us go anywhere without consulting guides and apps. They are designed to make our lives easier. But do they take adventure from the trip, is any sense of discovery muted by the fact that we’ve read about the high points before we’ve even arrived?

Answers on a postcard.



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