Magelssen + Created Realities

Discussion Question: The pieces that were most intriguing to me this week were the Magelssen essay and the Christian Science Monitor article both describing the experience of Caminata park in Mexico. The question that arose for me was after reading the following excerpt from Magelssen's piece describing the act of this new kind of adventure tourism- How is this different, after all, from the entitled Western demand...for a "glocal" sensory experience that offers escape from "mediocrity and kitsch of mass tourism?" As a student who just traveled for the past 3 and a half months I saw many attempts to discover the "real" experience of a place. But in some instances attempting to "discover" the reality of a place just cheapens the experience. Instead of enjoying the culture and accepting the circumstances you are placed in, people are obsessed with going beyond "tourism" in some elitist attempt to rise above the stereotypes of ignorant tourism. While the aims of such travel are obviously admirable, in my experience, sometimes its more stereotypical to attempt to create a "reality" of a certain place. As with these people impersonating runaway slaves or attempted immigrants- they are attempting to create a real situation but this is impossible. They are not these people. They are not facing these hardships. They are just acting and pretending. Does this not demean the actually experience had by these peoples by making it all into some sort of bizarre game? Some attempt to recreate a reality that is impossible to replicate?