Travel has been many things for me. It is when I feel most in the moment, present in where I am and what I am doing. It has pushed me out of my comfort zone, made me question so much of what I thought I knew of the world. It has shown me how other people live and allowed me to take pieces of each of those places with me as I build my own life. It has broadened my understanding of what humans are capable of and over the last 15 years, has shaped who I am as a person.
But most of all, travel has given me an enormous sense of freedom. The freedom of time and being able to use it however I want, changing course on a whim and following the wind. Freedom from who people think that I am back home. Freedom from bills and work, freedom from decision making and finding purpose and building a career.
Until it became my career. Then slowly, imperceptibly, travel became about the best places to go, how to get there, money-saving opportunities, where the best photo ops were, and traveling more and more and more.
Travel became this thing that I needed to buy, the way some people need a new coat in this season’s in-color or those heatless hair curlers that were all over TikTok. The way I needed a Motorolla Razor phone when I was 16 because everyone else I knew had one and OMG what an incredible loser I would be if I was the only person without one.
Booking a trip gave me that hit of dopamine and going on it, and subsequently sharing it and receiving feedback on those travels became addictive. As my business grew, my identity as a traveler was solidified and so the need to travel became not just something that felt good, it became something that I could justify as part of my business, something that was required in order to grow my audience, to grow my income, to become the millennial Rick Steves.
Now I go on Instagram and I scroll through my feed full of accounts that I don’t even follow, lost in the number of people who are going to Barcelona, Bangkok, Berlin, and many other cities that don’t start with B. Travel has become as much a part of our consumption as fashion, wellness, and food.
I guess you could argue everything is consumable now. Everything is for sale and travel has fallen deeply into this hole.
I’m so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had over the last decade of growing this business. Sometimes I pinch myself that people pay me to go kayaking, hiking, snorkeling, eating. But I am also becoming painfully aware of the repercussions of this rapidly growing industry.
I feel like I woke up from a 10-year sleep and I don’t even recognize where I am anymore. I too have fallen into the trap of consuming travel, of selling it, and hoping that people will buy it so that I can keep consuming more travel for myself.
Towards the end of last year, I visited Bacalar. A town that sits along a lagoon of the same name. The lagoon is Caribbean Sea-blue. The water is clear and turquoise, but it’s not seawater at all. It’s freshwater that is fed by the cenotes that surround it. Stromatolites that have been growing here for millennia call this precious body of water home.
It’s only two hours from Tulum, one of the most overtouristed cities in Mexico right now. Soon you’ll be able to take a train right from Tulum Airport to Bacalar and the tourism industry in Bacalar is rubbing their hands together.
But many people are worried about what mass tourism will do to the lagoon, and rightly so. Several of the comments on the video I made about my trip there told me to stop sending people to Bacalar. I replied that with education for both visitors and tour operators, we could create more sustainable practices. But many argued back that while that is a wonderful idea, it is never the reality. I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
When I first visited Bacalar in 2019, there was one ATM and it was almost always out of money. There wasn’t a supermarket, just a few convenience store-sized grocers. Now there’s a full-fledged BBVA bank, a Super Aki, and boutique hotels lining the waterfront. You can’t wear sunscreen in the water since it creates an imbalance in the pH. But dozens of boats with petrol motors tick through the water six days a week (they take Wednesdays to let the water “rest” as though that will be enough).
Why it matters?
We’ve consumed so much plastic on this planet that it can now be found in the deepest parts of the ocean. It is in our bloodstream, in most foods we consume.
Fast fashion has created unwanted waste that is ending up on our beaches, piled high in the streets of developing countries around the world where we send them as “donations.”
What will the overconsumption of travel mean for the planet? We have already seen the backlash beginning. Last summer Barcelona residents protested in the streets, squirting water guns at unsuspecting tourists. They can’t afford to live in their cities anymore as developers buy up entire buildings to rent short-term to visitors rather than long-term to locals. This set off a stream of protests around Spain with more people taking to the streets in Mallorca and the Canary Islands.
But it’s not just prices that are being affected by over-tourism. The YouTube commenters are right. Over-tourism in Bacalar would mean the end of the beauty that draws so many people there in the first place.
I was in Cozumel over Christmas and all of the beaches that weren’t run by beach clubs were full of garbage. The reefs closest to shore, closest to the ferries and the cruise ships, the ones that receive the most visitors each day, are no longer vibrant and full of life.
It’s also just extremely unpleasant for both tourists and locals. Have you been to Rome at Easter? How about Mexico City at Dia de Muertos? Have you been to Santorini in July? I don’t even think Barcelona, Paris, or Amsterdam have a low season anymore.
I don’t know about you, but waiting to get a seat at a popular restaurant, overpaying for hotels, squeezing down busy streets to look at different attractions, and endless lines for entry to museums is not only not relaxing, it’s so much time wasted that could be spent talking to locals, drinking wine, walking through historical sites, or eating insanely delicious food at smaller, lesser-visited destinations where the locals are happy to see you rather than wishing you would leave.
What’s the solution?
I don’t have all of the answers, all I have are thoughts and observations and lots of feelings.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my role in all of this, how I can be a better steward of the places I love, and how I can be a better ambassador of travel.
In my first YouTube video of the year, I talked about how I hope to do my part in sharing more off-the-beaten-path destinations. I think this is a start, by spreading ourselves across more destinations we broaden our minds and experiences while also spreading the wealth elsewhere and avoiding the overconsumption of places that are already so saturated with tourism.
But I’m also going to do my best to slow down. To spend more time in one place, to use other methods of transportation like road trips, train journeys, and even the power of my own two feet (but not biking, biking and I really don’t get along very well).
I’m sure I’ll get it wrong along the way (and I’m sure people on YouTube will continue to let me know). But I am determined to be more aware of the way that I travel, both to remind myself why I love it so much and also to spread that message to more fellow adventure seekers.