Impacts Ecuador, as in, consider all data with a grain of salt.
You know how I have always promised timely and scintillating news? Yeah...well...this "ain't" it! File this under I have been swamped...living under a rock...whatever. This story is old and got buried under my "electronic paper file". Worse yet, it appeared in the USA Today. Not exactly a priority reading source for me. In fact, I generally believe that the USA Today is to legitimate journalism, what a chimp armed with a box of crayons is to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
However...even a broken clock gets the time of day right...twice even! Unless, of course, it is a digital clock...but I digress. So...here is the article from the USA Today:
"State Department warnings take nanny-ish feel
Updated 5/18/2010 4:32 PM
By Lionel Beehner
The State Department does not want you to walk
through Nepal's Golden Gate in Bhaktapur Durbar
Square, ride a camel over the sand dunes of
Mauritania's Adrar region, or navigate the narrow
corridors of Jerusalem's Old City. Nepal, Mauritania
and Israel, along with 28 other countries, are all
listed as places to avoid for American travelers.
The need for this travel warning system is obvious.
Americans should probably not be poking around
northern Mexico or honeymooning in Bangkok at the moment. Nor should they spend their spring
break in Somalia or go for a hike along the Iran-Iraq
border.
But the list risks turning into something of a farce,
the travelers' equivalent of the Department of
Homeland Security's color-coded security alert: a
vague, risk-averse system meant to keep us safe, but
really of no redeeming value because few people
really follow it or change their behavior anyway. It
no longer refers just to places that have suffered
through violent coups or terrorist attacks. To read
the travel warning on Lebanon makes it sound as if Beirut is as dangerous as Baghdad.
The warnings come off as too nanny-ish. Americans
are warned against traveling to the sticks of Nepal because of Maoist rebels. OK, that makes sense. But then we are told to avoid roads outside of Katmandu Valley, which are " hazardous due to erratic drivers." (Um, last time I checked, bad driving was not just a Nepalese thing.) Or consider the warning on Israel: I agree that Americans should avoid backpacking in Gaza. But to avoid all restaurants and businesses, even those in Tel Aviv? That seems a bit excessive.
Be vigilant — or something
The warnings are also hopelessly vague. For the
Kyrgyz Republic, the State Department advises
Americans to " maintain a high level of vigilance,"
whatever that means. For Colombia, it warns that
"common crime also remains a significant problem in many urban and rural areas." What is a traveler supposed to do with this information — lock himself in his Bogota hotel room like Howard Hughes?
The warnings also come off as patronizing. Travelers to Nepal are told not to wear "expensive jewelry," while women are instructed to "dress appropriately in public." I'm sorry, but if your Louis Vuitton handbag is worth more than the local monthly salary, you might want to leave it home. Do Americans really need to be reminded of that? Other times, the list is strangely selective. Why is Nairobi singled out for high crime and carjackings but not, say, Johannesburg?
Avoid all local color
As a travel writer, I have encountered countless
tourism officials abroad who roll their eyes at the
mere mention of the State Department's travel
warnings. The upshot of this list is to never leave
the confines of your Marriott suite and never
intermix with any locals other than bellhops. After
all, there are pickpockets, scammers, greedy cab
drivers or worse lurking about.
But the downside is that Americans will never
encounter colorful locals like Rasika, an engineer I
recently met on a train ride through the hilly jungles
of Sri Lanka who gave me more insight about his
Buddhist hometown of Kandy than any guidebook
can convey.
I understand the obvious need for travel warnings and advisories, especially in this age of daily terrorist threats. But we have created a boy-cries-wolf system that does not differentiate between real threats (Maoist rebels) and perceived ones (bad drivers), making many Americans afraid to ever venture outside of Europe. And that's a shame.
I worry that Americans are taking on the bunker-like mentality of their embassies: larger than life, surrounded by moats (metaphorically speaking), unreachable to the average local.
No wonder the rest of the world feels so distant and foreign to us.
HGQ
I can resist everything except temptation -
Oscar Wilde
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