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Consider this scenario. In a third world capital, you book a tour to a remote attraction. On the way, a bridge is out, the tour bus driver knows an alternate route, gets stuck on a back road, damages the bus, and it'll take a day to get an alternate bus. Your group is fed local food by the nearby villagers, who string up hammocks for you to sleep in. When you get home and tell folks about the event, is it described as a wonderful adventure, the high point of your whole trip,, or a horrible disaster that spoiled your vacatioln?
People tend to look at anything outside their own plans as a disaster. If they would just "go with the flow" any thing one does in life can be an adventure!
Somewhere inbetween. While it's not a horrible disaster, and quite amazing that the villagers showed such hospitality, I would not find it a wonderful adventure. I'm NOT the sleep outdoors in a hammock type.
Somewhere inbetween. While it's not a horrible disaster, and quite amazing that the villagers showed such hospitality, I would not find it a wonderful adventure. I'm NOT the sleep outdoors in a hammock type.
Sleeping on a hammock overnight is not my thing. You probably will be eaten alive by mosquitoes overnight as well.
There are very very few places in the world where the mosquitoes are anywhere near as bad as in the eastern USA. I've slept outdoors in quite a few countries in Africa and South America, and window screens are rare in places I've slept indoors. Can barely remember any mosquitoes. Nets in hotels are normally provided only in places where there is a high malaria risk.
We've had similar happen a few times, neither was overnight in a hammock but definitely moved all plans back a day.
Most recently in Philippines, bridge was out due to rain/landslide so we ended up in this parking lot of vans/buses/cars that were stuck with nowhere to go. We didn't really know what was going on so just followed everyone else from our van around (they were all locals) and hanged out in town. Eventually the driver came to find us all and we walked to cross on a footpath, then waited in a town on other side until eventually another van from same company arrived from other direction (probably from our destination hours away) to continue journey.
That's my wife with the purple backpack trying to figure out what the **** is going on.
I'd rate that one as adventure, as I'm sure cebuan knows Pinoys are really laid back friendly people who love to eat, so we had no problems hanging out in the shade snacking for as long as needed.
Another time in India our bus broke out in the middle of nowhere. This time was much less comfortable since nothing around so we all had to wait in a field for hours with a few goats for company. What they did was wait until a bus of exact same model was passing in the other direction, flag it down, and somehow got a part of tool from it to eventually get ours going again. That time was much more of an irritation since was really hot and not much shade.
I wouldn't try to evaluate 'em as difference between tourist and traveler, that sounds like a douchey artificial distinction. Everyone is different and has different things they like/dislike.
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