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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Two progressive resorts in Chile exemplify the baby-boomer shift from bare-bones backpacking to pampered adventure.
Dec 4, 1999 | Deep at the bottom of a red-walled canyon, half a dozen travelers soaking in a meticulously landscaped hot spring watched a tray of sun-struck Pisco Sours floating their way.
It was one of the most decadent things I've ever seen. And to my guilty dismay, all I could think was: These people really know how to camp.
Only later did it strike me that my sympathy for this scene, arranged by thoughtful minders from the luxurious new explora hotel in Chile's stunning Atacama desert, showed not just how much I have changed, but how much tourism has changed in my lifetime.
For me, like many of my baby boom peers, the 1970s and '80s were years of cheap and easy exploration. I rode a battered jeep through African plains, camped on Asian beaches, even followed a ragged band of Huichol Indians in Mexico on their annual peyote pilgrimage.
Now, at 42, I've got a lot more baggage: a husband, two babies and editors who have kept me on a tight leash. No longer do I -- if, frankly, I ever did -- look forward to long bus rides or sleeping on the ground. Yet while I have grown rather less carefree and brave, my hunger for nature has become more intense as pristine wilderness has turned into a scarce commodity.
I'm not alone, of course. My generation of travelers is distinguished by both our surplus of cash over free time and our nostalgia for the plentiful open spaces of youth; clean lakes and clear skies are now a kind of luxury good, as exotic as Asian temples. We'll travel farther for our nature and pay more to enjoy it, supporting the kind of $2,441-a-week "ecotourist" binges offered by Chile's quirkily elegant explora firm (which insists on its lower-case e), as well as the increasing array of similarly priced, carefully catered ventures offered by U.S. firms -- such as the Tierra del Fuego sea-kayaking tours advertised by Berkeley's Wilderness Travel.
Just how did we get here? It's been a long, strange trip. Until the middle of this century, long-distance travel was an elite pursuit, engaged in by scholars, soldiers and the then-tiny group referred to as the leisure class. But with World War II's end, global tourism began taking off; and in the 1960s and '70s, more and more middle-class travelers ventured to Europe and beyond, while backpackers clogged the Asian overland trail. By the 1990s, tourism had become the planet's biggest business.
