The Great Plotnik's Travel Rant

In this morning's Chron there was an article written by an irate travel journalist about how older travelers are ruining the hostel system by wanting to stay in them. The author's point was that in the same way grandparents shouldn't want to live in a college dorm, which is after all where young people want to interact with each other, neither should they want to stay in hostels, where the purpose is the same.

The Great Plotnik and Great Ducknik travel as much as they can and love to stay in hostels or backpacker hotels, not only for the cheap price, but precisely because there are younger travelers there. The terrible dilemma in which non-kids-who-love-seeing-new-places often find themselves is that they can't stand most other travelers their age, who are usually well-heeled and interested only in having the world presented to them in a nice, clean package, preferably between massages. When Plot and Duck toured South Africa in backpacker hostels they met fascinating kids, whose travel maps already had more pins at age 22 or 25 than Plot and Duck would amass in a lifetime. One kid from Scotland was taking seven years to travel the globe without ever taking an airplane.

Conversely, when Plot and Duck came down to the communal kitchen in the morning to make breakfast, the kids got to taste some really good Saint Plotniko coffee and share some edible bounty they probably could not have afforded, and had never heard about anyway.

It must also be said that most of the young travelers P and D ran into in the hostels were going to the same tourist spots, eating in the same cafes, experiencing their host countries in the same shallow way as their parents, unmindful of local culture, language, food or customs. The fantastic Cape Malay culture in Capetown was unknown to every young traveler the Plotniks ever talked to, no matter how long these kids had been in the country. Why? Color? Already ingrained baises? Not a lot of curiosity, anyway.

The end of this diatribe goes like this: the very, very best part of traveling is meeting other people who love finding out about new worlds just like you do. The next best thing is getting lost -- so you can find your way back. Unless you're willing to meet different kinds of people, keep your ears open and walk off the paved path, you may as well stay home and watch Survivor.