Two tired tourists and painted hills

I count myself among what I would imagine is the majority of tourists when I say that I don't like tourism.  I hate it.  It was obviously invented to fatigue a human in every possible way.  It tires the mind, making it hard to concentrate on anything other than bags, bus terminals, crowded sights.  It stretches our capacity for appreciation, making us question the very underpinnings of human empathy.  It tires the body, making it hard to do mundane tasks such as washing your face, or even necessary ones such as get up to turn off the burner on the stove... So the question is, why do we do it?  Well even as Caitlin and I struggle to get to point B from point A we feel the need to go to museums, walk around towns and even go see sights occasionally.  And although the question is perhaps not an interesting one, after all, "how else do we get to see another culture?  Even in our pain we might learn something new." But actually, I disagree.  The reason to be a tourist is to occasionally see the incredible while almost swallowed under a sea of boring.  The Iguazu falls for instance, rising above the thousands of gawking onlookers on concrete paths with crying children.  The multicolored hills of Purmamarca poking through the endless streams of hippie hawking street vendors and deadlocked dawning consumers.  Even in our haze of sensory overload which has rattled us the past few weeks it was the lone bagpiper echoing through the painted hills who woke us up to why we are still seeing the occasional sight, experiencing the occasional bout of tourism.  The abnormal and the wonderful.

But that's enough.  Tomorrow we head out to the border with Bolivia.  Enough with hitchhiking--this time it's not worth the 10 dollars on the bus.  On the 1st Caitlin and I go our separate ways.  On the 1st the hypocrisy  of tourism ends and I become my true self again, an itinerant farm laborer.  Home again.

Oh and check out the new photos if you haven't (in the sidebar)!