Vacilando, or Lazy Tourism

In his 1962 travelogue, TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY: IN SEARCH OF AMERICA, John Steinbeck defined travel as something quite different from tourism. “In Spanish,” he wrote, “there is a word for which I can't find a counterword in English. It is the verb vacilar, present participle vacilando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere, but does not greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.” A kind of modern-day Quijote, Steinbeck set out in search of the America, not that he read about in other novels, but one which he was famous for portraying. Appropriately enough, he affectionately named his camper after the Spanish hidalgo´s faithful nag, Rocinante.

During my travels around Spain and Portugal, I am reminded of Steinbeck´s fascination with the zen-like act of vacilando, in which how one travels is more important than his or her final destination.

The kind of tourism most of us practice today—the kind popularized by the 17th century “Grand Tour” and Thomas Cook´s first attempt at mass tourism in the 19th century—focuses on the destination of the traveller, and within that destination, a circuit of mini-destinations. The kind of tourism in which travellers visit major cities, their monuments, and other pre-designated points of interest—in hopes of documenting the world´s marvels— only appears to give us the kind of direct contact with history lacking in our fast-paced, hyper-modern lives. This kind of tourism, however, better represents an attempt to check marks next to the long list of buildings and monuments we must see before we die than a genuine attempt to give and extract meaning from the act of travelling.

Every country has its own points of interest, its own architectural oddities and monuments erected to local heroes. Thanks to the Internet, they are only a click, and not a world, away. What is the point, then, of taking pictures of what has already been captured so many times, and what can so easily be seen through the eyes of others?

Why not explore what really makes us all different, and ditch the monument for a cup of coffee and the local rag, a chat in the neighbourhood pub, or even a trip through the metro station during morning rush hour?

In my experience, the point of vacilando is neither to float aimlessly through space nor to leave unbroken the cultural bubble in which we travel inevitably; but rather, to look beyond a city or a country´s selling points in order to really discover its own rhythms, sounds, smells, and cultural idiosyncrasies.

The following is my attempt to briefly document my vacilaciones through Spain and Portugal.

Lisbon: If the Iberian Peninsula represents a family and its capitals are two brothers, Lisbon would be the quiet, well-mannered older brother of an exciting but somewhat unruly Madrid.

Key words: cobble-stone streets, steep hills that descend into the river, fashionable, casual refinement, pastelerias, laid back, unpretentious, hand-painted tiles, pedestrian walkways, diverse, hospitable; An old lady dissed us when she realized we didn´t speak Portuguese. It was SUPER funny.

Porto: 15 hours in Oporto, as this city is officially called, and not a picture to prove it. Our time in Porto epitomizes the vacilando (lazy tourism) philosophy.

Key words: Amazing dinner at O Cocula, posh, metrosexual, stylish, young heart in an old city. People just smiled and laughed whenever we used our broken Portuguese.

Vigo: Proving that the rain in Spain does not stay mainly in the plain, rainy days are a way of life in this port town.

Key words: solitary, quiet, rainy, the arts, verdant. I finally encountered one of the mythic Euro bathrooms where one can attend to all bodily functions in the one open, 3X3 space. Exciting!

San Sebastian: My new favorite of the famous Spanish Ss, among them Sevilla, Salamanca, and Santiago de Compostela. This city is beautiful and proud, without being boastful.

Key words: Euskera, resistance, proud, multilingual and multicultural, generous, civilized, intense but not chaotic; I didn´t notice it immediately, but graffiti in this city is almost non-existent, making it an anomaly among other Spanish cities. This city has so much pride that young people express themselves by tagging large pieces of paper and taping them to city walls. Awesome.