It's hard to remember now, but back in the days when we traveled barefoot in the snow, we didn't lug around cell phones, netbooks, or iPads on trips to exotic locales. Now, of course, virtually every traveler leaves home back bowed under the weight of electronic gadgets. But what do we really need when we travel? Do our travel computers, cell phones, and cameras add to our trip.? Or, by taking our focus away from our new and challenging environment and cosseting us with our Facebook friends and e-mails about family doings back home, do they actually detract from our adventures?
Adventure Travel Before Computers
Well, okay, maybe I never walked anywhere barefoot in the snow. But back in 1982, when I bought a plane ticket and a Eurail Pass and embarked on what I cheerily called the "Europe on the bread and yogurt plan," I went without a cell phone (there weren't any), a GPS (ditto), a computer (no lap tops back then), digital cameras (are you getting the picture yet?) or an iPad. Not to mention all the accessories that go with them (a different charger for each, ethernet cables, converters, adapters, a mouse, a case, and the list goes on).
Fellow adventurers of a certain generation may recall how we barefoot travelers got messages in the age before e-mail. We didn't use passenger pigeons, but our system wasn't a whole lot more sophisticated: We'd give out an itinerary of where we expected to go, and those of us with an American Express card would check in at the American Express office in any large city, hand-rifling through the unguarded, more-or-less alphabetized stacks of letters and packages to see if anyone had sent us anything. Those without AmEx used poste restante. Phone calls were a buck or two a minute; more if you called from hotels. And those were 1980 dollars. (Plus you had to figure out the phones in another language.)
