Don’t try this on vacation: learn from the mistakes of other travelers
Sometimes the most effective lessons sting a little. For Nadia Caffesse, that pain came in the form of a series of tiny needles in her hands, forearms and chest.
In September 2006, Ms. Caffesse, now 45, and her family were driving through Big Bend National Park in Texas, where she found herself admiring the native blind prickly pear cacti growing along the rocky side of the road. One of them would make a nice addition to her garden, she thought, so she decided to ask her family to stop so she could choose one.
She broke a cardinal rule when visiting a national park: take only memories and leave only footprints.
“It’s not just nice words,” she said. “They pose a poetic threat.”
She knew she had made a mistake when she grabbed the paddle from the cactus. “The pain was immediate, searing and, because of the diffuse nature of all those tiny needles, unrelenting,” Ms Caffesse recalls.
She ended her day not with a souvenir to take home, but with red, swollen arms and an abiding respect for the rules.
We often hear about tourist misbehavior, some blatant and some innocent, leading to public outrage. This year alone, a man was recorded carving his and his girlfriend’s names into a wall of the Roman Colosseum; children in England defaced a more than 200-year-old statue with bright blue chalk; and in Paris, the opening of the Eiffel Tower was postponed one morning after security officials said they found two American tourists sleeping overnight in the monument.
In an effort to help future travelers learn from the mistakes of others, The New York Times asked readers to share examples of when they have made a travel mistake or acted against good tourist etiquette and perhaps common sense. From the more than 200 submissions we received, one consistent theme emerged: there are lessons to be learned.
Uninvited guests
You may have noticed when crossing international borders how strict the authorities can be when it comes to bringing in produce or agricultural goods.
Jennifer Fergesen, a 29-year-old food writer from New Jersey, was on a months-long trip to several countries after completing her master’s degree several years ago. On her way back from the Philippines she had a stopover of a few days in Austria. She decided to bring some fruits from Manila – a bag full of mangoes and mangosteen fruits – to have for breakfast once she arrived at the hostel in Vienna.
Ms. Fergesen did a quick Google search and looked at a official travel website of the European Union, and concluded that it would be fine to take a few pieces of fruit for personal consumption. But she wasn’t expecting company at breakfast.
“When I cut open the last mangosteen, I saw something white under the top leaves,” Ms Fergesen said. “When I touched it, countless baby spiders ran in all directions across the breakfast room. I crushed the mother spider but couldn’t find any babies.”
She followed Austrian agricultural news for a year, she said, “looking for news of a new invasive spider.”
A drop in the dark
Humans, unlike runaway baby spiders, can hire tour guides to help them find their way. And if you’re exploring dark, underground cemeteries, it might be worth tracking one down.
In the early 1980s, 64-year-old Michael Koegel, then studying abroad in England, found himself in Rome with some friends. Near the Via Appia, an ancient Roman road, they discovered an entrance to some catacombs and decided to explore them.
As the friends marched single file into the darkness, lit by the dim glow of their cigarette lighters and a candle they had found, they could hear, but not see, a tour somewhere in the distance.
Everything went smoothly until a friend, who was standing right in front of Mr. Koegel holding the candle, suddenly disappeared.
“I heard the rustle of gravel and a sickly thud,” Mr. Koegel recalled. ‘Afraid to move, I stuck my lighter into the darkness, but saw nothing. I called his name several times, but got no answer.” Finally, after several tense minutes, they heard a muffled, “I’m fine.”
The friend had fallen about eight feet, Mr. Koegel said. Fortunately, his injuries were minor.
“Being naive is no excuse for bad behavior,” Mr. Koegel said. “I was let loose in Europe for almost a year at a very young age and felt invincible and above the law.”
Planter’s punch
Most readers’ confessions involved breaking rules, but a few travelers got caught up trying to be good. It turns out that excessive politeness can sometimes have consequences.
When Laurel Thurston, a lawyer from California, traveled to Paris one summer in the 1990s, the hotel host generously offered her a free, “but undrinkable” aperitif each evening, which she secretly threw away in a nearby factory, to avoid offending her host .
What Ms. Thurston didn’t know, she said, was that this particular plant was a rare specimen, grown for two generations.
“Ten nights later the plant was noticeably wilting, much to the host’s dismay,” she recalled. “Oops!”
Ms. Thurston kept quiet about the plant’s new diet but tried to make up for it by giving extravagant tips, she said.
The kids were fine
If we don’t want to enjoy the free drinks that the locals offer, we can at least take their advice.
In 2007, John Rapos, 59, and his husband were in Morocco, on their way to the village Ait-Ben-Haddou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site a few hours from Marrakech. Somehow they veered off the not-so-clearly marked road and drove their rental car into a dry gravel riverbed.
“Several kids started chasing our car, and we thought they were being aggressive, so we rolled down our windows and tried to ignore them,” Mr. Rapos recalled. “It turned out they just wanted to show us the way.”
Once Mr. Rapos and his husband understood that the children were motioning for them to turn around, they were able to find their way back to the correct course.
“I’m not sure if I have any great lessons for other travelers, but I think travel experiences for me can be improved by being a little more open to people than usual,” Mr. Rapos said.
And a more practical lesson that Mr. Rapos learned from this experience, “If the road doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t.”
Sometimes the stars align
On rare occasions, our embarrassing misfortunes lead to life changes, not just life lessons.
A few years ago, Lindsay Gantz, a 28-year-old nurse from Buffalo, bonded with her guide while ziplining in Monteverde, Costa Rica. After spending the day together, the two went to dinner. Then they rode on his motorcycle to what they thought was a remote field to look at the stars. In the passion of the moment, the splendor of the cosmos gave way to more earthly pleasures.
“We only realized the location wasn’t that remote when the police lights shone down on us in a slightly compromised position,” Ms. Gantz recalled. “Apparently there were neighbors nearby who overheard us.”
Police were understanding, she said. They took the information from the young lovers and asked them to leave the premises. Now, she said, she is “extremely respectful and aware” of the laws in Costa Rica and elsewhere.
Oh, and that charming zip line guide? He is now her husband.
Make it right
While many travel mistakes are harmless and made without bad intentions, some can be more serious and even criminal.
We received some anecdotes describing cases where someone had taken something from an archaeological or historical site or inherited such an artifact from a family member. (We won’t name names; you know who you are.) And it begged the question: How can I give back something that’s been taken, and will I get in trouble?
It depends on the circumstances under which it was taken, the value of the object and the reason why it was taken Patty Gerstenblithprofessor of law at DePaul University and director of the Center for Art, Museum & Cultural Heritage Law.
If you are in the United States and want to return an item, a good first step is to contact the departments of U.S. law enforcement that specifically deal with art, cultural heritage and antiquities, Dr. Gerstenblith said. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a team that investigates art-related crimes, and the Department of Homeland Security has a Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Program that specializes in investigating crimes. crimes related to looted or stolen cultural property. U.S. law enforcement could help facilitate the transportation and return of items, as well as communicate with foreign governments.
It may be tempting to return an ill-gotten item without a return address or to hand it over outside an embassy or consulate, but neither strategy guarantees anonymity, Dr. Gerstenblith said. Hiring an attorney can mitigate any legal consequences.
“People can be fined,” Dr. Gerstenblith said. “I don’t know how often people go to jail for things like that. And a lot of it has to do with whether their purpose is commercial. If they pick something up with the intention of selling it, they are treated more harshly than someone who puts it in their pocket and takes it home.”
There are reasons that removing items from important sites has consequences, said Dr. Gerstenblith.
“Everyone basically thinks they’re an exception, that doing one little thing won’t hurt the bigger picture,” she said. “But the truth is that it is. Because then everyone thinks they can do it too. And if a thousand people come and they all pick up a stone from the site, or from a national park, then soon there will be nothing left.”
But even if we make mistakes while traveling, the upside is that we hopefully learn something valuable from the experience, or better yet, it gives us a profoundly new perspective – which is, after all, one of the reasons we travel in the first place.
“We like a memento from outside the gift shop because it feels more real somehow,” says Ms. Caffesse, the traveler whose coveted cactus souvenir certainly felt real.
But Mrs. Caffesse realized that if she had managed to take the cactus home, it would have lost what made it so special to her in the first place.
It’s better, she said, to just leave the things that make us happy where they are.
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