On expectations

A familiar story is playing out once again as I slowly make my way through the guide book. It works something like this:

First you get the idea to travel, and pick a country for whatever reason -- you've got friends there, or you heard it's fun, or you close your eyes and jab your finger at the Google Map of the world. At this point your impression of the country is probably pretty vague and based largely on stereotypes you've absorbed from popular culture and the news and on half-remembered anecdotes from friends who've been there. Going to Japan? The megasupertropolises will blow your mind and there will be clever adorable technology for everything! This was me in December: looking forward to, you know, the Andes, and that super-dry desert. [Note: level of ignorance exaggerated for dramatic effect. I've known the desert is called the Atacama ever since I saw that Planet Earth episode about deserts, like, three whole years ago.]

Next you buy some material to read up on your destination (fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants purists, please deposit your scorn/pity here [__] before continuing). Immediately you check out the pretty colour pictures, which provide the first tiny seeds around which your very hazy ideas can begin to crystallize. This was me last week: from knowing somehow I'll be getting up close and personal with "the Andes" to identifying Torres del Paine as one primo destination for same. Still not really knowing anything about what visiting TdP actually involves, though.

Then you start reading the details, and get a little excited; and you maybe skip ahead to some other section, like the chapter on, say, Easter Island, and decide you're just going to have to give that place a few days of your time, because holy crap does it sound awesome. And now specific expectations begin to coalesce, which is exciting; and even as you remember that the real thing will conform in almost no way to your nascent expectations, you also remember that this dissonance is possibly the most exciting part of all.

Finally you remember that your travels, should they even come to pass, are months away, and you ratchet it down a few notches. Sigh.