Is it Harder to Travel Now?

Puerto Natales is one hundred years old, according to my guidebook. With the tin siding on the simple frontier homes, a horse or two chained up to a fencepost on the most residential streets, or even an old wooden boat sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, it sometimes looks like little has changed since 1908, and that a great distance has been traveled to get to Patagonia.

However, it is so easy to stay in touch with American culture, even down here at the “end of the world,” as the Natalinos like to say. Though the only McDonald’s in Punta Arenas closed down years ago, the influence of the Northern Hemisphere is never far. English language music and movies are everywhere. I plopped down in front of “Cast Away” and “The Last King of Scotland” (with Spanish subtitles) recently, thanks to the myriad of TV channels we have at home—many more than we ever would have dreamed of at Editor’s Rook. I see the influence of English-language media in my students every day. When I told my students to “please stand up” so we could play a game, they all started repeating “please stand up, please stand up,” quoting the Real Slim Shady! When I asked Marcos the date on another occasion, he replied “Friday! Friday Night Smackdown!” I was delighted when Claudia told me how badly she wanted to learn English—even if one of her main motivations for was to watch E! News.

Thanks to CNN, absentee ballots, and the newspapers online, the other volunteers and I have managed to stay up on the election. We’ve watched every single one of the debates at a “debate watch party.” Live political coverage is a good excuse to gather together other pieces of the culture we left at home—like burritos and margaritas.
Mexican night.

True, there are no limes in Puerto Natales, and you’ll have to look hard for Triple Sec and pay dearly for tortillas, but the point is that overall, it is possible to create or find just about anything you miss from home.

A little of this recreation is good. A stiff margarita can ease homesickness, a night of CNN can keep a person informed. But on the extreme end, these luxuries make it possible, it seems, never to travel at all, even while in a foreign country.

With the package that John sent, I even have real coffee from the coffee shop that was just down the block from my office building. Taking a sip of Intelligensia, I’ve traveled no further than a little stroll down Randolph Street.

With globalization, email, the Internet, and other media, even in remote Patagonia, real travel is a whole lot harder than it was a hundred years ago. That’s why, even if it pains me to be without my Macbook, I can live without it for a couple months more.