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The majority of the 1,750,000 Americans who will travel abroad this year will stick to the safe, recognizable places, but the majority will be smaller than ever before. Growing numbers will stream for the distant scenes and thus will rediscover some of the old-fashioned sense of adventure that used to go with traveling—as in the days when Baedeker advised the tourist to carry his revolver, or when Americans never ventured into postwar Europe without their own soap. Even though Greek hotels are putting in bathrooms, and Africa is practically air conditioned, today's tourists to the out-of-the-way places will still need to carry along plenty of their own hardware (not guns, though, as most countries require permits) and a special awareness of local etiquette. Bush jackets are a must on a Tanganyika safari, and special tackle had better be brought along to most fishing regions. Bombay is drier than a camel after a hard month on the desert; so visitors have to get a special whisky permit. Instant coffee is handy in Greece; cosmetics, sunglasses and flashlights anywhere. And just about everywhere tourists will maintain a healthy skepticism about drinking local water.*
Apart from seeking new horizons merely because they are there, U.S. travelers seem to be searching for some fresh identity with the elemental life and with the far past. They search for remnants of ancient civilizations, for the humbling majesty of raw, rugged nature, and for the mystique of island living—a symbolic as well as a genuine detachment from the rest of the world. Somewhere among a friend's notebooks, writes Author Lawrence Durrell. he found a list of diseases "as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of the spirit. There are people who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication. These born 'islomanes' are the direct descendants of the Atlanteans, and it is towards the lost Atlantis that their subconscious yearns."
Tahiti Popa'a in Paradise
Among the most appealing modern versions of Atlantis now available to American islomanes is Tahiti, the supreme symbol of escape ever since Gauguin's celebrated sojourns there. This month a new trail opened up to the Society Islands, one that Gauguin never dreamed of: on Papeete's brand-new runway, the first jetliner landed, opening regular weekly jet service (tourist-class round trip via TAI: from Honolulu, DC-8, $514.80; from Los Angeles, DC-8. $754.20). Aboard the plane, no doubt, were a few men—the greatest islomanes of all—who have long dreamed of Tahiti as a paradise unspoiled by the pressures of civilization. That dream will draw an estimated 15,000 tourists this year, probably causing the most momentous interruption in the island's history since Captain Cook landed there in 1769. To the French, who have controlled the island for 118 years, and who reluctantly decided that Tahiti needed an economic shot in the arm, tourism is "un mal nécessaire."