To Go or Not to Go, Not Really a Question Anymore

Of the “52 Places To Go In 2024” chosen by the New York Times Sunday edition, I’ve been to exactly four: Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota because an old Antioch friend lives in Minneapolis (fabulous); Kansas City, Missouri because my cousins lived there when we were kids; the Yucatan Peninsula and Costa Rica, which I actually traveled to on real tourist trips via airplanes. I came close to the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve on trips to Mexico City and environs, and the Baaj NWAAVJO I’Tah Kukveni, Arizona when I hiked down the Grand Canyon, but I guess that doesn’t count.

I read through the entire list of places to go knowing full well I’d never go to any more of them. Not that I particularly want to go to some of them: Baltimore, Maryland; Almaty, Kazakhstan; El Salvador; Montgomery, Alabama; or Craters of the Moon, Idaho. I’m too old to go to New Zealand or Ireland or Iceland even if I’d still like to.

But reading through the descriptions several themes emerged. One, these were promoted as locations that provide a less “traveled” and “crowded” visit for tourists, and two, will bring much needed “jobs” and “investment” to the locals. These are the Catch-22s of vacation spreads like this one in the NYT: turn these less traveled places into more traveled places and make more local places dependent on tourism for economic development.

When I was young and poor, the only places Mark and I traveled to were ones where we knew someone and had a place to stay or could take a bus or train instead of a plane. This meant a lot of trips to Mexico: 24 hours on a bus to Mexico City; 24 hours on a bus to Guadalajara; train trips to Mazatlan; car trips to Guaymas; and trips to Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, and Oaxaca because Mark’s parents were already there and paid for our hotels. When I was older and had a little more discretionary money—and after Mark died—I went twice to Tulum and once to Costa Rica. After the second visit to Tulum I decided I couldn’t be a tourist anymore, even though it was wonderful to swim in the ocean and eat tacos on the street and drink margaritas every night. The cartels were already in Cancun, the developers were already pushing Tulum residents into slums so they could build hotels and expensive houses, and the sea turtle preserve had to be closed down before tourist pollution killed them all.

While I was reading through this NYT “bucket” list, friends of mine were on a month’s long trip to Southeast Asia bagging another of their longtime bucket lists (they travel all over the world). I have to admit I skipped over all their Facebook posts of Hanoi and Laos and Phnom Penh, not because of envy–the thought of all those airplanes and hotels and restaurants and speaking foreign languages made me very tired—but because I found the privilege of it, just like I felt about Tulum, so appalling. When I’m spending all my writing time and online time bearing witness to the genocide in Gaza, I can’t understand why everyone else isn’t. This is probably not fair to my friends, but it’s fair to demand the world’s attention (right after I read the NYT article I read another essay a man about my age wrote talking about his anti-bucket list of staying home and enjoying ordinary life).

The International Court of Justice just issued a ruling ordering Israel to do everything in its power to prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians. However, they stopped short of mandating a ceasefire while ordering Israel to take actions including punishing those who incite violence against civilians and allowing more aid into the Gaza Strip. If enforced, which is unlikely (the U.S. will veto in the UN Security Council) this would result in a ceasefire. As I’ve quoted Vonnegut previously: And so it goes.