"Now to be an explorer is a craft, which consists not of what one might have believed, years of the studious discovery of unknown facts, but in cantering over a vast number of kilometres and getting together so many slides or moving pictures for projection."
Claude Levi-Strauss, Triste tropiques. 1992.

The cameras are raised and for a moment, the object is obliterated in flashgun white. No-one cares. Everyone is waiting to talk with their coach compadrés about home and how much better/worse it is than nothome. Or maybe they will compare notes on the amount of film used since their arrival at z.

a good holiday = home / nothome + 2(rolls of 24exp 35mm film taken.)

Some people are better tourists than others. They can get up early, take lunchtime rations at the hotel breakfast table and video diary their way through old towns, archaeological sites, beaches, churches, galleries and those special sites of local interest. They never tire. This place is like x. This church looks like the one we saw last year in y. Always comparing or removing themselves as far as possible from z. It is as if they are afraid of the moment -that any contact with it will result in a calamity.

Best, most, highest, and furthest also become some of the main criteria in deciding whether a place is worth visiting while on holiday.

[Tourist guide]"This is the highest point in z."
[Tourist a]"Not as high as the tower in y."
[Tourist b]"But higher than the spire at x"

And what about beauty?

[Tourist a]"The beach is more beautiful than the town"
[Tourist b]"The view from our hotel in z is more beautiful than the view we had last year in y because in z we can see the sea"

And density. A quiet place is a good place. Or a lively place is a good place. A place that is not too crowded is a good place. This place is good because it is very busy and there are a lot of places to go to. Not like last year in y when the only place open after 9.00pm was the place by our hotel.

"On day 5 of our holiday in z, I was wandering through the centre of town n. It was a beautiful place. Not too busy and the buildings were among the oldest in Europe. The people were friendly and the shops were full of local pottery, hand carving and weaving. It was all reasonably priced.

[The language spoken is dark and gutteral. It is seemingly impenetrable. I feel sealed in a bubble that allows sound and light into my field of vision by a process of osmosis. The meniscus surrounding my wondering self keeps me dry and allows me to breath. The wetness of my surroundings seem oblivious. I cannot touch anything. I cannot feel the sun.]

I stopped for lunch at a cafe and enjoyed a sandwich and a glass of the local beer. The cafe was one of the first to open in the city and had the largest wine cellars in n and probably the whole of z. I continued towards the highest church in the old town which afforded the best view of the surrounding area.

[A man with a searing smile follows me up a winding alley. He was at the cafe I stopped at earlier and was staring at my video camera (I'm sure of it.) I can hear his feet fall steadily on cobbled stone. The sun is directly behind us and I see his shadow begin to overtake me. The smell of tobacco on his breath impacts the back of my head like a harpoon. Should I start to run? My fingers tighten around my bag; I am seeing with the tips of my fingers. The texture of canvas, the cool buckle and the blunt shapes of my precious cargo shine more brightly than the late afternoon windows. His breathing is slightly out of sync with the springy reverberation of his footsteps as they bounce off the white-washed buildings. His accelerating shadow has almost reached the furthest point of my own. My breathing is almost twice the speed of his. Phasing and then synchronous. I feel adrenalin fire into my system and I am scared. But then he is ahead of me and starting to whistle. Whistling a tune as sweat trickles down the back of my cold, sunburnt neck.]

During our holiday in z we took six rolls of film and 267 minutes of video tape. It was better than y and on a par with our stay in x.