I use Flickr to share my pictures, but I’ve never explored all of the fun features that Flickr offers. Poking around today, I found a couple of features that rival Google Earth in both their ability to make me want to travel and to waste my time.
Places: lets you drill down into a certain area and explore what it has to offer.
Maps: will take you whipping around the world to see some of the most interesting pictures on Flickr and recent uploads.
Start playing with these two fun toys and you’ll quickly find that you’ve burned away your Sunday afternoon. Trust me, happened to me.
A couple weekends back, before sitting down for lunch at Sally Lunn’s Buns in Bath, I looked into a funny pot hanging on the wall just above eye level. Inside I found a dusty note, pictured above. It reads:
Scavenger Hunt for out-of-London Area :)
Go to Salisbury Cathedral
look for E.T. & porno Noah
if you need help, find the old lady guide (which hair, green sash, carries a fire stick)
Send us a postcard
Go to Stonehenge and race the sheep
watch the performers outside the Roman Baths – and volunteer
Have Fun! Love Jesus!
– Megs & Kates
On the reverse, the note has the name “Pammy” and a heart.
Now I feel like I should have left the note in the pot for whoever was meant to find it, but seeing as it was covered in dust, I reckon they may have forgotten about it. In the meantime, it’s a potential adventure for me! There are parts of the instructions I’m going to find difficult, like sending a postcard to two people only identified by nicknames and loving Jesus. But I think I can complete the other activities in a fast and furious day trip. Especially the first item intrigues me. I feel like I’m going to find something in Salisbury that will lead me on to another adventure. Now all I’ve got to do is hire a car and go.
A couple friends understandably got a bit freaked about my post on traveling to Afghanistan. Truth is that I’m not gallivanting off somewhere that dangerous just yet. But as you can see in the video above, there are folks who are doing some risky tourism: Iraq.
It was summer in New Zealand and coming up with the first hill of the Queen Charlotte Track, we were greeted with this wonderful view. We spent the next three days hiking fast and hard over hills along the ocean on both sides and encountered views much like this one all the way. It was exhausting, but well worth it. When you’re in New Zealand, I highly recommend taking a long trek along one of the great tracks.
The folks of Tristan de Cunha, the most remote inhabited place on earth, are a secretive bunch. In an article for BCC, Simon Winchester discusses being banished from the island for inadvertently sharing an island secret. And no, he doesn’t repeat the secret in the article. But he does have a powerful philosophical conclusion about the moral code of travel:
Travel brings with it many responsibilities: not to damage the environment, to “take only pictures, leave only footprints” as the mantra has it.
But we, in our clumsy outsider way can unwittingly do other and less obvious damage too, like imposing, breaching codes, violating secrets.
I have to conclude that a quarter of a century ago I did so too. So melancholy though it may be for me, I am inclined to believe that I have been given a late-term lesson in the ethics of tourism and that the people of Tristan, in obliging me to stay away and remain here, were quite probably… absolutely right.
It’s a shitty situation to receive a lifetime ban for an accidental transgression. But I appreciate Winchester’s take on the situation. The fact of the matter is that when you’re traveling, you have to respect the rules of the destination. Even if you break a rule you didn’t know about, then you have to be willing to accept the consequences. Typically you find out about breaking unknown “rules” when a crooked cop tries to corner you for a bribe. But every so often you’ll make a misstep and have to realize you are from somewhere else, and have to play by others rules for the privilege of being a guest. C’est la vie.
