Why we travel even though we worry
Poll shows Ontarians adore seeing the world, but they tend to fret about danger
After years of adventurous expeditions, Dave Bouskill and Deb Corbeil have found that going to the wrong place at the wrong time can sometimes feel right.
Married more than 20 years, the couple from Woodstock, Ont., has together visited 100 countries on all seven continents and, along the way, leapt into some seemingly precarious positions.
They visited Burma when it was under military rule, cycled through Sudan during the war in Darfur and sped through politically volatile regions of Eastern Europe in a worn Nissan Almera.
In all cases, they cherished their experiences, finding that the real risk would have been accepting grim media portrayals of these places as fact.
“The problem is the 24-hour news channels,” said Corbeil, 44, who blogs at theplanetD.com. “Every little thing that happens, you see it on the news. It’s fear-mongering. “If you travel smart, you’ll be fine.” Increasingly, reconciling wanderlust with concerns about danger is a reality for travel-hungry Ontarians.
When Forum Research polled 1,001 adults in the province for the Star, 29 per cent said travelling would be their top form of entertainment for 2016 — more than any other diversion, ahead of entertaining at home, attending concerts, playing or watching sports, visiting museums or going out to bars.
And that’s even though 57 per cent of respondents simultaneously believe the world has become a more dangerous place.
So why are we so willing to confront our fear for the sake of leisure?
In Bouskill and Corbeil’s case, they don’t simply barrel blindly into the globe’s riskiest regions.
They research diligently and, of course, employ cautionary common sense. The duo visited Egypt and Thailand during recent periods of unrest but avoided the areas where protesting was most intense.
“Don’t just write off a country because in the news they say something is going on in one area; the rest of it could be fantastic,” Bouskill said.
Indeed, deciding which destinations are dangerous is hardly a scientific process.
Recent terrorist attacks loom particularly large in the minds of wouldbe travellers, said Frederic Dimanche, director of Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. Those fears flare and subside fairly quickly, Dimanche said, lingering only when a city is a repeated target.
Dedicated travellers, however, highlight the irrationality of worried tourists.
“If you look at the statistics of what kills people abroad, it’s heart attacks, drowning, car accidents: the mundane stuff,” said Robert Young Pelton, author of The World’s Most Dangerous Places.
“Never confuse what you’re afraid of with what will kill you.”
When countries work diligently and successfully to boost tourism and bolster safety, there’s often a delay in foreign perception catching up to reality. Colombia, for instance, has become safer in recent years, but fans of the Netflix series Narcos — which tells the story of the country’s notoriously violent drug lord Pablo Escobar — wouldn’t necessarily know it. And there’s a range of benefits to going where tourists aren’t: the thrill of exploring a destination before it’s been exhaustively Instagrammed; the glow of gratitude offered by locals who preciously need the tourism; and the serenity of sightseeing without constantly jock- eying with other gawkers.
Of course, it also tends to be cheaper.
Canadians Dalene and Pete Heck ditched their belongings to commit to a life of adventure in 2009. Now, they’re primarily driven by discovery.
“We’re most attracted to the places we know the least about,” said Dalene, 39, who blogs at hecktictravels.com.
“We go in as a blank canvas. Travel is the best education you can get.”
Overwhelmingly, their experiences have been positive. Dalene has lost her passport in Chile and misplaced her iPhone in Ecuador, and in both cases saw her items swiftly returned.
One genuinely scary incident stands out as the exception.
In March 2014, the pair retreated to Puerto Escondido at the southern heel of Mexico. One day, Pete was jogging along the beach when a stranger approached, pointed a gun at his head and gestured to the phone bulging conspicuously in his pocket.
Completely vulnerable in oceanside isolation, Pete ceded the gadget, along with his gold necklace, some pesos and a ring.
Somehow, he didn’t surrender his optimism. Roughly 21 months later, the Hecks are back in Mexico, chatting over Skype at a Querétaro café.
“Of course, that was terrifying,” Dalene said. “But that was wrong place, wrong time. One man does not make a country.”