In our increasingly flat and connected world, has travel lost its magic? What is there to do that some frenemy on Facebook has not already plastered your newsfeed about? Why do we travel? And is it less meaningful when we walk in the footsteps of others?
There is nothing particularly unique about the human desire to go where others have not or do not dare, to find that perfect white sand beach on a deserted island amidst warm turquoise waters, or that pure cup of tea made from leaves carefully hand picked by a toothless master practicing his art in poverty and obscurity, to stumble upon an unknown civilization of peoples in some foreign land painted in a different color palate, rich in architecture and culture and the scent of strange exciting foods. These are the experiences that cannot be tour packaged or arrived upon aboard a cruise ship after days of shuffleboard. A horde of tourists in white socks and Crocs is their antithesis.
And therein lies the paradox: the very desire to find such places inevitably brings about their ruin. Each El Dorado, once discovered, is quickly lost forever, leaving in its wake every place we have ever been.
And so, ever since I saw those large white letters painted in an uneven scrawl across a mountain wall on the road to Sapa town warning each new visitor to "Be a Traveler, Not a Tourist," I have never considered a travel destination without asking: "Am I too late?"
Or more precisely, "How late am I?"
That latter question is what Olga and I hope to find out about Colombia, a country whose reputation for instability and violence had for several decades isolated it from heavy commercial tourism. Until a few years ago.
After a brief stay in Panama City's Casco Viejo neighborhood, we sail for Cartagena by way of the idyllic San Blas islands. Our path is tested. There will be no macheteing through the Darien or jaunts amidst the narco hold outs and guerrilla camps that canvas Colombia's borders. This is not that trip.
But we hope, without wading for days through waist-high mud or being kidnapped at gun point, to find a place that will show us something about ourselves that Los Angeles could not. For it is the fate of El Dorado that it can never be where we already are.
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