PROLOGUE

Why do we travel? What is behind the apparent insanity of leaving a comfortable home and life, pack clothes and necessities in a bag, and spend large amounts of money to travel to a distant part of the planet to do nothing but wander around, gawk at people and buildings and landscape, eat strange food and drink unusual drinks, trying to avoid sickness and unpleasant people?

If you look at it starkly, in purely logical terms, travel makes no sense. There is no vital or important reason for Lou or I to go to South America. We've never been before, and South America was perfectly able to go about its existence before us. And it will certainly not change because we were there. We don't NEED to be there, and they don't NEED us to be there either. Why do we do it?

There's no easy answer. I can only speak for myself, but, if I am to be completely honest, I say that I travel because I want to. I'm curious by nature, and have a tendency to get slightly crazy if I stay in one place too long. I'm not one to pull up stakes and move permanently to other places, but I do like to look over the fence to see what's going on in the next area. I've found it to be strangely enlightening to see, first hand, that people in other places survive quite well and do things quite successfully in completely different ways than we do. Sometimes, I think, we can learn from other people and bring new ideas back home to try.

But, more importantly, when I travel, I begin to get a greater appreciation for how things are and how people act at home. That's not to say that I develop any sense of superiority about my home. But, on the whole, when I travel, I inevitably start comparing how the new place stacks up to Canada, and, more often than not, Canada comes out pretty well. I doubt if I'd gain that insight if I just sat at home and navel-gazed all the time.

No, the curiousity gets the better of me all the time. And, I suspect, other travellers get the "itch" too. The itch to see what's going on on the other side of the fence. Voyeurism? Maybe, although it's completely legal and harmless. I prefer to think of it as "neighbourliness" ... seeing how the other guy is getting on and what's new with him. Leaning over that fence post and having a chat, comparing notes and complaints. Kind of like a community message centre, but with aircraft, hotels, other forms of transportation, and bureaucracy.

So, in that spirit of friendly nosiness, we have packed our bags, gotten our shots, updated the paperwork, and signed on the dotted line to travel to a new and completely unfamiliar place: South America. Wish us luck!