| Six Ways to Drop Tourism and REALLY Travel, Part 2: Avoid Rental Cars and Supermarkets |
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| Tuesday, 20 July 2010 | Tonya Kay | Blog Entry |
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Tip 2: Step Away From the Rental Car Nothing beats the adventure of discovering the Shinkansen (bullet train) out of Tokyo, navigating London's outstanding subway system, catching a privately owned boat to Morro de São Paulo, or hiring a local driver in Jamaica. Public transport supports the community by investing in the transportation systems that the community itself utilizes. It also keeps your individual travel carbon emissions low, and introduces you to real-life community members—like no air-conditioned, subcompact, weekly rate rental car can. In Kaua'i just this week, I waited at the bus stop next to a 70-year-old Hawaiian elder who told me all about her property's fruit trees and the best time of day to start my Alakai Swamp hike. She walked (fine) with a cane and I carried her groceries onto the bus for her. Her eyes sparkled with the aloha spirit, something I surely would have missed had I been whizzing by at 50 mph trying to keep my vacation time all to myself. Tip 3: Bypass the Supermarket and Explore the Farmers Market In the only true paradise I’ve ever visited, the Commonwealth of Dominica, I walked two miles to the country's main farmers market where, again, I was the only light-skinned person (but not the only person with dreadlocks!) to be seen. The farmers market on this tiny island—with no military whatsoever and a population of just 60,000—was more like a daily social meet-up than a legitimate consumer's market. After all, in paradise why charge for the bananas you picked when your neighbor has six ripe banana trees herself? The locals socialized, traded fruits and filled each other's reused liquor bottles with fresh cane juice or coconut water. I was flabbergasted to find pile after pile of the freshest, deepest purple cacao beans I have ever seen in my raw vegan life on their tables. When I asked if I could try one and put it in my mouth raw, the woman vendor shrieked with laughter, and pointed and gathered her friends. I was suddenly the white, dreadlocked chick doing what must have appeared a freak-show stunt by eating these cacao beans raw. I discovered that, culturally, they think the cacao bean is quite disgusting unless melted down with milk and sugar into a cacao tea. No matter how hard I tried to convince them that in Hollywood, raw cacao beans go for a grand price, I was in their territory now and was just "crazy!” These are the kinds of precious traveling moments that happen spontaneously at local farmers markets. Like the time at the Chiang Mia farmers market in Thailand when I stopped at a stand and picked up a guava as the older women started to giggle profusely. Apparently, in Thai the word for guava and white people is the same: farang. So I was a farang eating a farang. And wasn't that just absolutely silly!? Next week I’ll share two more ways to help you become a traveler instead of a tourist. See Part 1: Ditch the Resort Packages and Lodge Locally [Sign up to be notified each time Tonya publishes a new Clean and Green Everyday blog entry on EcoHearth.– Ed.] [See a complete list of writing by Tonya Kay on EcoHearth.com or visit her Clean and Green Everyday blog. – Ed.] Comments
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Last week I shared the first of six ways to help you drop tourism and really travel. Here are my second and third tips:
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The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. ~G.K. Chesterton