When In Wherever...

It is always polite when traveling abroad to be respectful of the local customs and culture. 

However, what does one do when travel plans call for a visit to an area of the world that has become a tourist mecca, and as a result of that transformation, the only local customs and culture evident are exactly what you left behind?

That was the very conundrum I faced the first time I paid a visit to the beautiful Costa del Sol. The visit was just a two-day affair, but it was to afford me the hoped for opportunity of frolicking in the Mediterranean, laying out on a pristine expanse of white sand beach, and enjoying similar-to-California sunshine and scenery, but without all the plasticity of say, Los Angeles.

I was wrong. No, it was worse than me being wrong. I had deluded myself.

The name of the community I visited will not be mentioned, but I will state my reason for choosing to travel to this particular town was due to James Michener using it as a locale in one of his novels. 

Hey, I was young and impressionable, Mea culpa.

Anywhatzit, the depiction of the town in the novel was not anywhere close to the reality of the place.

The depiction of the place in the novel was lazy-fishing-village inhabited by heart-of-gold people of the land and sea.

The reality was...well, Los Angeles. Well, one of the smaller beach cities actually, such as Long Beach. Yeah, Long Beach, but with much older beach front hotels.

Just about everyone I encountered was from Great Britain or the Netherlands, and everyone of them seemed to be on a mission to get some. 

Some of what? The same something that every tourist always seems to be after.

So much for local culture and customs.

Which brings us right to the point of this little diatribe. I've once again made travel plans to visit an area of the world that is renown for it's local culture and customs, and once again that area of the world has also become known as a tourist mecca.

Which means I'm either going to be writing about how that particular area of the world is now a pit of despair, or I'll be writing something a bit more laudatory.

Bookmark this page and come back in the second week of January to find out which it'll be.