I once was part of a university group that did a charity cycle ride from Scotland to London. We shook our tins for multiple sclerosis research in several large towns from Edinburgh to Cambridge, raising an average of £1,000 in each. Except Leeds. There we got £200. Now I don’t believe it’s true that copper wire was invented when a couple of Yorkshiremen fought over a 2p piece. But, being from God’s own county myself, I do appreciate a bargain.
Which is why in Buenos Aires this week I’m glad I sought out an organisation called Cicerones (www.cicerones.org.ar). This group of English-speaking locals, such as accountant Norma Gonzalez, offer free guided tours. Just e-mail and tell them what you want. You can give a donation afterwards, but what they would really like is for you to fall in love with Buenos Aires, to go away and spread the good word. It certainly worked for me.
People say that the Argentine capital is like Paris or Madrid, but I think Buenos Aires is a Spanish-speaking New York, with all the buzz, chutzpah, chaos and va-va-voom of the Big Apple, but with crazier drivers and better-looking inhabitants who live off steak and the world’s best ice-cream, but never put on an ounce of weight.
To some the fact I’m here at all means I’m going straight to hell in a hand cart. Just by flying 15 hours on British Airways I’ve killed a forest in Sweden, put three newts in a pond in Sri Lanka on the endangered list, and caused Hull to go on flood alert.
Ideally the hair-shirt brigade would have me take my holidays in a cave outside Thurso. But theirs always seems to be such a one-sided argument. Travel is bad. Full stop. There seems to be a lot of hot air (couldn’t we harness that?) from people who refuse to see the benefits that travel brings to neighbourhood economies.
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I’ve never heard them talk about the billions that are injected into family-run B&Bs, restaurants and tour companies that would disappear if we all stayed at home. Nor about the positive impact of meeting local people such as Norma. Now, with the rise of the internet, we are kings of knowledge and of our travel destinies, able to pinpoint where our holiday pounds go in a way we never could before. Several years ago in Guyana, for example, I stayed in a new eco-lodge in a poor village that had never experienced tourism before and where the money went directly into shared community projects, such as schooling, health care and water purification. I asked the Guyanese about daily life; they quizzed me about football and the Beatles.
Here in Buenos Aires I’ve gone on a cycle tour (www.biketours.com.ar - highly recommended) and stayed in apartment booked on the internet, the money going straight into the pocket of Mrs Delores Braun, the owner. She has introduced me to local shop and caf? owners and I get a friendly nod when I order my cortado (coffee) on Esmerelda Street each morning. My previously held stereotypes of “bloody Argies” have been smashed, something that wouldn’t have happened had I not flown down here.
Yes, there is a balance in the environmental travel debate, but just staying at home isn’t the answer. If you don’t want to fly, you can do what I did 20 years ago and again this week - get on your bike. I’m sure Thurso is lovely in February.