Didyoudoiters

So it´s been a while. Presently Gem and I are in Guatemala. We got here earlier than expected, mainlybecause I am a tight wad and thought that it might be cheaper to live here than in Mexico, how wrong I was. The credit crunch and the central american equivalent of NAFTA has crippled the country, food prices have gone through the roof which means that the Gautemalans poor quality of life is even poorer.

We´ve all read plenty of westerners guilt regarding their own relative wealth, so I won´t bore you with that, instead I will tell you about a group of people that wreck my head almost as much as American trade agreements, these are the ´´Didyoudoer´s. The DYD´ers have a running checklist of places, countries and possibly people to ´Do´. ´Doing´ something means visiting it in as short as time as possible, ticking it off the list normally prescribed by Lonely Planet and then finding the nearest english speaker to tell them exactly what they did and then what you should do. The idea that travelling should just be a series of experiences that one catologues in order to reel off to some poor unfortunate (namely moi) is abhorrent. I truly hope that if you are one of those people - you choke on the list that drives you forward to your next fucking tick box.