The death of nostalgia

The death of nostalgia -

Although I always like to visit new destinations, if I really like a place I want to go back, and I often visit places I've been , In February I went back to Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica. The last time I was there was in 03, and I remember, Manuel Antonio for its amazing number of monkeys, lush jungles and wide, white sandy beach. While it was tourist time, I would not say that it was "overdeveloped."

When I came back this year, I was shocked to find that the only thing that I I could see from Manuel Antonio used to know the beach was. The road runs between Quepos boasted (the nearest main town) and Manuel Antonio even a single restaurant, but now it is with hotels, resorts and overpriced restaurants lined with Western or Americanized dishes. The beach, which was once so calm, is now filled with hawkers food retailers and parasols.

One of the things the Manuel Antonio so special is the park, sitting on the edge of town. To get there in 03, you had to wade through a mouth, and enter through a small gate. If you were late to the park, meant the rising tide for swimming had! Now there is a new entrance from the street and a park center. What makes it worse is the huge hotel, which was built right at the park entrance. Tranquillity was disturbed.

When I was there in 03, I have five feet could not walk without tripping over an animal. Monkeys were everywhere, and I saw deer, land crabs, birds and animals by the name, I did not know. Now, I could hardly hear the sounds of the monkeys in the trees, and I have not seen a land crab in the park, which was not dead. The only monkeys I saw were those who wait on the beach waiting to be fed by tourists.

I was there with Jess and Dani Globetrotter Girls. Dani has never been there, but Jess had in 00, and we both commented on and complained of the change visited. "We might as well be in America," she said. "That could be, Hawaii, California and Florida."

Manuel Antonio had wondered if history might be too much a bad thing. Some time ago I wrote a post called as travel for the world's poor. In it, I said.

"Tourism is not the most environmentally friendly activities fly, cruise, eating out, and go to all have a negative impact on the environment Most people, when they travel constantly, use. you towels in hotel rooms, leave the air conditioning, or forgetting to turn off the light. Jet-setting around the world on airplanes or driving around in an RV all contribute to global warming. between waste, development and pollution, we do exactly what the Beach said that we would do the very paradise we are destroying, we are looking. "

One of my favorite travel books is the Beach . I am only too well to the theme of the book. The book is about how travelers, especially backpackers who are looking for paradise, which is not available outside of their heads and how even if they find something great, they end up ruining it. On the street I often encounter travelers who talk about how good a place 10 years ago, but as "tourists" have now ruined. It is always said with snide superiority, and I hate it. "If you do not like it, why are you back?" I tell them. have now come back to a place I do not to have been in seven years, I wonder if I like to be the travelers. Do I have to be blunt, or am I just romanticizing the past?

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Certainly development brought many great things to Manuel Antonio. The local economy is booming now that there is a lot more work for locals. There is more money for better roads and infrastructure. The water is now to drink clean. There are more accommodations for visitors. The pollution and environmental destruction seen in so many seaside resorts is not there yet. I can still swim in the water, the park has not been cut down, and the streets are not filled with garbage.

But what is the heart of a place? Has the development of the soul of Manuel Antonio destroyed? I noticed that the prices are much higher, and there are many great hotels that are environmentally friendly in any way. The road from the nearby capital city of Quepos is now filled with hotels, and the jungle that was there has disappeared. The clearest for me was the lack of animals in the park, which were by the sudden influx of people almost certainly has scared them chasing this trophy Reisefotografie down.

I can not help that to think what I love about this place is gone. "There are too many people here," I said Jess. "It's too touristy now." And after I said it, I thought back to the traveler, I've met and thought ". Ohh, no I have become that Man?" Have I become what I hate? But now I see to do so often try ineloquently major point those travelers. It's not that the place is now bad. What those travelers are really excited about, is that the image ruined in their mind. What they remember ... what they came back for ... is no longer there.

The romantic picture she painted disappeared and with it their innocence.

Yes, there is more of everything in Manuel Antonio. It is much more developed, but that does not make it bad. It does not mean that it "ruined." I still recommend Manuel Antonio for travelers, and I'll probably go back again. What really upset me is not the development in Manuel Antonio, but my own loss of innocence. It was the realization that the romantic image is in my head now not reality. change places. They do not stay the same. As much as we want for this place be, as we will leave it, that can never happen. We can never simply put us back in our memory and in the past. Life is linear. It changes.

was at the end of Manuel Antonio never destroyed. My false picture of reality was, but in the long run, it's just better places to enjoy as they are and not complain about how they are used.

For more back to places you love to read this article:

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My Paradise Beach
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