The Hike That Shouldn’t Happen | POSTCARD #1

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What are you talking about?

Well, hello, Katie.

Hello there, Erin.

We are in your feeds on a random day, our Curious Tourism pals.

Still a Wednesday though.

Still a Wednesday.

But I know normally you don't see us in your feed until later in the month.

For those who've been with us for a while, you know that we've often switched up the cadence in which we released episodes.

So when we first started out, we were doing one a week for like weeks and weeks on end, like essentially nonstop and burnt us out.

So then we switched to seasons, which worked pretty well, but somehow we got.

Burnt out by that because we decided to release 22 episodes in one season.

Too many.

Too many.

So then this year we said, why don't we just switch to once a month without any breaks?

And it's been working really well.

But I will admit it has felt like just like it hasn't been as present in my life, like Curious Tourism, because we only meet for like one to two hours a month to record the one episode.

And so Katie and I were thinking, let's throw in a second episode a month.

But it won't include a guest.

It will be just you and I chatting about all the things we love to chat about related to travel.

These will be shorter episodes, more casual.

If there's stuff you want to hear us talk about in these episodes, you can obviously DM us or send us an email.

But basically we're going to bring to these episodes a media piece of the month.

So this could be something from social media.

It could be something we've seen on tv.

Really just like any piece of media content that's travel or travel adjacent.

And we're gonna chat about it kind of like we did in the White Lotus series that we did earlier this year.

Yeah, just chill and fun.

Good times for all.

Chill and fun with an angle of responsible tourism here and there.

As always.

As always.

And then we'll also talk about a travel trend or news story that I've been thinking about.

I write a monthly newsletter where I usually write sort of an essay style, some comment on something that is top of mind.

So we will typically touch on either what I've written about in the newsletter or just another story that I've been thinking about.

So this is your little.

Your monthly bonus episode from Erin and Katie.

Aaron, in that intro you made me think, I don't know if we've ever really done a Q and A episode.

I think that could be really fun.

So if anybody is interested in it.

We did like way back eons ago, probably four years ago.

So yeah, let's put out the call.

There are any questions for us, send them in.

All right, well, what's your media of the month?

We said that today we would talk about threads, but I think we can just talk about whatever we want.

Like, so what.

What piece of media are you thinking about?

Okay, so my media of the month in the travel sphere is.

I don't know about you, but I have just started watching the recent season of Love island, which is a bananas show to commit to because it is practically daily.

If I.

If you've you' watched Big Brother, I know this.

So it's basically just a dating show version of Big Brother where they all live in a villa together, new people come in, people get eliminated, that type of thing.

I will tell you, I.

Because I am a bit of a, like, reality TV junkie, or I used to be.

I wouldn't say I am anymore.

I've kind of like fallen off the wagon.

But I tried to watch Love Island a couple years ago and I just couldn't.

It was too.

It was too hardcore for me.

And I was just like, I don't have the time to watch every night.

Also watching people d in like, real time in a villa where they're all stuck together forever.

Like, relationships move fast in that show and it's just.

It's just intense and hardcore to watch.

Like, I started watching it because I had a whole sort of day of things to do where I just had it on the.

In the background.

It's the kind of thing that I would like, binge once the season's done.

Yeah, but then there's just too much.

Like, no, you don't want to binge like 800 episodes airing.

You need to binge it in 12 episod.

But please, please do tie this back to travel because I'm intrigued as to how we're going to get back to travel from Love Island.

Okay, so what I wanted to bring up about the show is that there was a contestant on the show named Jalen who came on to Love island, who is from.

He's from the south in.

In the United States, and he had never traveled outside of the country before.

He got a passport just specifically to go onto this show.

And the location of this season is in film, Fiji.

So his first time traveling ever.

This is the thing.

I can't imagine he really.

I hope he got up to more than just like going to the villa, which is essentially just a TV set.

Right.

I was gonna say not to Gatekeep, but I don't really know if you could call that a travel experience.

He went to Fiji and I couldn't help but think about this because I've seen Fiji on one other reality TV show before, which was called the Great Adventure Challenge, hosted by Bear Gryl, if you're familiar.

It was a series of like, events that were happening pre pandemic where there were teams of about four people from around the world who are like adventure travelers or.

Or just adventure people.

Like, they.

These are the people that do like triathlons numerous times a year because they're just super fit and that kind of thing.

So there's a variety of teams from around the world that come and do this three day race across Fiji.

So they start on this tiny little island and then they all paddle together and then hike, bike, do like swim through rivers and stuff to get to the other side of Fiji.

And this series was so good.

It was on Amazon Prime, I think, and it really gave you sort of a sense of the people in Fiji, all the little towns that they ended up biking through, and how so many of the locals were really involved in this race because it was so exciting to have all these people from around the world come and do this race and they're literally like camping in like the rainforest.

Like it's people coming across.

So I was like, oh, it's nice to see Fiji back.

But like on Love island, you get zero.

Fiji, you.

There's no way that you would know that you are in Fiji by watching this show other than by mentioning the country.

But then on the Great Adventure Race, you totally know that you're in Fiji and you get to see all the beautiful landscapes there and just all of the wonderful stuff that this island has to offer.

So I don't know, it's just very interesting comparing how Fiji shows up on these shows and also just having your first time traveling abroad before a reality TV show.

Well, I hope that it opens up a whole new world for him and that he continues to travel maybe outside of the context of a reality show.

I've been checking in on some of his Instagram stories lately.

He did a Q and A and somebody asked him how he felt since traveling for the first time and he was like, it's crazy.

He's like, it's opened up a whole new world for me and I can't wait to just discover everything else the world is.

Because he's like, all I've known is the south of America, basically.

And he's like, I know there's so much more out there to know about the world and people.

So his next big plan is to go to South Africa.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

So we'll keep tabs on Jaylen's travels.

All right, Jaylen, you did make me think about how so.

I used to watch the Bachelor quite a lot and I would always find the way that they engaged with the places that they travel to.

Cause like, on that show, it's a dating show and they'll like, partway through the show, they start traveling, quote, unquote.

So they'll go from place to place and it's all just marketing.

Like these destinations pay a lot of money to have the show come and showcase their place.

But I always find it such a, like, stereotyped, packaged up presentation of the places that they visit.

And I always get annoyed by that.

When I watch reality tv, I think that, like, the Amazing Race does it less so, but they also do it.

All these shows do it.

It's so frustrating.

Anyways, just an observation you're making me think of.

Did you watch the season of the Bachelor, Clayton season, where they went to Toronto as one of their travel places, their destination?

Did watch that.

It was deeply, deeply upsetting.

The places that they went to Toronto in Toronto were the CN Tower, of course, and also the Distillery district.

They didn't go to like any of the different boroughs where there is like a variety of different, like, communities and diversity all across Toronto.

They just went to the CN Tower.

And then I think there was another season where they went to Toronto or something.

Yeah.

To celebrate Canada and they just ended up going to a pub where there Canadian flags plastered all over the wall.

That's all.

It was like no shade to the CN Tower.

It is a really cool experience and the Distillery district is really beautiful.

But there's a lot more to the city.

There's so much more.

And those are easily like the most expensive things you could do in Toronto.

Yeah.

Those are kind of the classic things, though, that every person that comes here wants to do.

And I understand why you just, like, wish that these shows would think outside the box a little bit more.

Yeah, like the Toronto episode of the Bachelor specifically, I was like, oh, this has tourism board written all over it.

Like, this is.

They should have just gone to the nudist beach on the Toronto Islands.

They should have.

Honestly.

There's so much more to do.

All right, Erin, I've talked enough.

What's Your media of the month.

Well, I wanted to talk about a thread that I posted last week or the week before.

And I have archived it because it flew up.

And sometimes, sometimes threads blow up and it's good.

I find there's interesting discourse and I learn the people engaging with the thread learn it turns into a really positive space.

Other times it's the opposite of that.

That's what happened.

And when that happens, I just sort of hit a point where I'm like, the anxiety of opening up this app is not worth it.

So I'm just going to shut this down, this point.

So what happened is I watched a reel posted by a person whose entire account is dedicated to extreme day trips.

So this person showcases flying from where they're based in the US to whole other countries and back in a day.

So the video that I initially landed on was this person flying from New York City to Rome and back in the day.

And truly I thought it was satire.

I was like, this is a, this is a joke.

Like this.

I would have thought the same thing.

This is.

I thought it was a commentary.

Like, I thought it was a commentary on travel.

That is too fast.

That was wishful thinking.

Because it was not.

It was for real.

Because I looked at all the other videos on this person's account and all of them were this like day trips to countries in Europe and South America, all over the place.

So I just like posted a thread about it saying, and I didn't name the person.

I never want to call out people directly because I just, I don't want to be that person to do that.

So I just said very vaguely, because this is like a trend that has started on Instagram especially.

We literally talked about this on the show recently.

Yeah, it's like in the last year or two that I've started to come across accounts.

This is just the most extreme of the extreme day trades accounts that I've come across because I've seen a lot where people are based somewhere in Europe and they're going to other European countries.

So like a one hour flight.

But this was like you're taking a red eye flight to another country and then flying back within 24 hours.

That's too much.

You can't even have a good time.

Feeling like that, to be honest.

Like, on further thought, I think that it might not even be real that this person has figured out that this stuff goes viral and like probably went to Rome for three to eight days.

And just because you could literally do that, you just wear the same outfit.

This was A thing that wasn't there.

A travel influencer that was like exposed for this a couple of years ago, where she was pretend.

Or this was like just somebody that was pretending to be traveling abroad, but she was just, just doing it all at home.

So she had found like B roll of the.

I think she pretended to be in Paris and she found B roll of Paris that she just used for her Instagram stories.

And then she just like kind of dressed up and found Parisie kind of like looking places where she lived.

And she had convinced a whole bunch of people that she was going traveling.

And you absolutely can, especially in the day of AI.

Like, there's really no way to know.

So, yeah, I don't know.

That was just a thought that crossed my mind because I was just like, I don't know, like, as someone who travels quite a lot, like, I won't even fly to Europe for like three nights.

Like, absolutely not.

It's exhausting.

It's not fun for anyone.

It's not good for the community.

You're literally just like giving your money to airlines.

I can confirm this because this is literally what I just did like a month ago, where I was literally in London for I think, four nights.

And it was not fun.

To be honest, the most fun part was getting to see you.

But we really crammed in, like, a lot of stuff together in that last, like eight hours that I had.

Yeah.

But yeah, so I would not recommend.

I. I flew home and I realized I was never on the London time zone.

And I got home and I was like, I'm human again.

Turns out me being grumpy the whole time was just me being tired in my body not knowing what was going on.

So.

Yeah, so all this to say I'm like, concerned that there are creators tapping into virality by presenting this mode of travel.

Because whether or not it's real that this person is actually doing these as day trips, it still sends the message to people and the inspiration to people to contemplate doing it themselves.

I don't know how many people really would.

So I made this post and I basically just said, like, I think this is alarming and that we should promote travel that is a little more in depth than this.

And in the case of extreme day trips, I understand that, like people, there's accessibility issues here and people view this as a way to travel that is more accessible because it's for a shorter amount of time.

But why wouldn't you stay like maybe one night or two nights, like, say you're flying on A Friday red eye.

If you have a 9 to 5 job, which this person says that they do, why wouldn't you come back on Sunday versus coming back within that 24 hour window?

Anyways, I posted this nonchalantly thinking, oh, people will have some things to say, but it'll be an interesting discussion.

It was not.

It was just a pylon of people calling me privileged for not believing in extreme day trips.

That's a weird puzzle pieces to put together.

I know.

And also there were comments saying that I just like don't support people traveling.

And like if I really cared about travel, I would want people to travel no matter how they do it.

People saying that I shouldn't care how other people are traveling.

The classic Nunny a business type thing.

Yeah.

Which like I guess is fair.

But when you're.

This person has a massive following.

I think when you tap into that kind of audience, it goes without saying that like people are going to look at you with scrutiny.

I know that people look at how I travel with scrutiny and that's fair.

I'm putting it out there for people to look at.

I don't know.

This could be like a hot take.

But yeah, so I ended up archiving that post.

But I just.

My take a takeaway from it was just shock that people are defending extreme hatreds.

This is.

Okay.

I don't think it's that hot of a hot take.

I think it's if I think it's just a take.

The whole none of your business type thing I can see.

But it becomes your business when it's normalizing a practice that's harmful and that's.

Also the crux of it.

Right.

Because as a fellow creator, I feel that we do have a responsibility as creators.

And to me, this person is capitalizing on a problematic travel trend and promoting that problematic travel trend for personal gain.

They're clearly making money off of this.

And that's where it's different.

I would never comment to some random person like a personal account that is none of my business.

But I do think it's different when you're a creator earning an income off of sharing content like that.

And we're in like a very interesting world now too where people are just so focused on what they see online and everything is aspirational, especially wealth and that type of travel.

If you're assuming like this content is sort of idealizing it as a this is what I do every single weekend kind of thing, that's like an aspirational wealth type of situation that I think A lot of people who are feeling troubled might look towards it very much has a very high risk, I think, of normalizing this type of traffic and then like, what is everyone aspiring to be?

Like Taylor Swift hopping in a jet like every single weekend and putting more emissions in the air?

Like, that, to me is.

It's normalizing harm.

That was the also interesting part about this, is that people were arguing that this is about accessibility, that someone who has limited time off and limited money, an extreme day trip to Rome is a way that they can still travel.

And, and I guess, like, that kind of makes sense.

But in my mind, if you have $800, that's probably the average cost of flying from New York City to Rome.

If you have the means to spend $800 to fly there for the day, can you really not squeeze out 50 to $100 to stay in a hostel or in a private room for at least one night?

Like, just one night?

The privilege argument doesn't make any sense to me because we're observing content where somebody is doing this every weekend.

That is the other irony is a privilege.

Nobody has the money to do that every weekend.

Like, if this was something where, yeah, somebody has three jobs and they have very limited time off and they did an extreme day trip, like one time in a year, it's a totally different story than putting out content.

That is normalizing this as a thing to do every weekend.

It's two different stories.

The context, especially when you factor.

When you factor in the fact that a flight is generally the most expensive part of traveling to another country, it's like you have to think about stunt cost.

To me, that's how I think about it.

I think if I'm going to fly somewhere, I'm going to spend enough time there.

That makes the amount of money I spent on the flight, but also the emissions worth it.

Like, is it worth the amount of emissions I'm putting into the sky?

Yes.

I know some people, like, don't like to think about that, but I do think it's important to consider it.

Like, if you're going to fly somewhere, try to spend as much time as you can within the confines of your own work situation.

But yeah.

Anyways, that was interesting.

Wow.

Good.

Media of the month threads has turned on Aaron.

Yeah, sometimes you just gotta archive that.

Yeah, I mean, I debated it because sometimes I think, oh, I should leave it up in case people want to have discourse.

But no one was doing that.

They were just getting upset with me.

Yeah.

Because where is everybody on Twitter supposed to go?

After all they can see is AI porn, right?

Like, they gotta go somewhere where they can leave comments and stuff that try to upset people.

And Threads is the new place.

Meta is the new place.

I do find that Threads is not as.

It's not as bad as Twitter, though.

People actually don't.

In general, people are pretty nice.

I don't have that bad of an experience on Threads, but I am very worried for the tech bros entering this.

The space.

Oh, yeah, the bros.

The bros are on their way, Aaron.

They're off.

They are.

Okay.

So I wanted to share with you a story that I wrote about in my newsletter last month, because it's something we've kind of talked about, like, lightly on the show before because it's related to travel in Hawaii.

Do you know what the Stairway to Heaven is?

I only had just recently learned about it through you.

I'd never heard about it before.

Ooh, so you've never seen the aesthetic videos?

No, never.

Oh, my gosh.

This is how I first found out about.

It was probably during the pandemic.

I came across one of these videos in my algorithm, and it was just this, like, stunning shot of a person, like, filming in front of them, walking along a set of stairs at the very ridge top of a massive mountain.

And they pan and they're literally on the ridge.

So either side, it's straight down and there's a railing, and there's just mountains and lush green and.

Yeah, it's a hike on the island of Oahu.

It involves climbing 3,922 stairs, and you're going up the imposing ridge of a mountain.

So the stairs, like, help you get up that ridge, and there's basically, like, just vertical inclines and then a handrail to catch you from falling into the valley below.

How did your knees feel when you first saw these videos?

Not good.

Not good.

That's a no for me.

Well, I knew it was a no because, like, I don't know how I feel still about going to Hawaii.

Yes.

This brings me to the next part of the story, which is, of course, I saw this and I thought, oh, I wonder what is up with this, what this is.

I looked into it.

They were used as part of a facility for transmitting radio signals to ships that were sailing the Pacific Ocean.

Then when they were no longer needed for that, the stairs were then open to the public.

That was many decades ago.

So this was interesting to me because I thought, oh, well, if they're closed, like, how are people doing?

Yeah, they're close.

In the 80s, what the heck?

Turns out it's fully illegal to hike the Stairway to Heaven, but people have continued to do it.

And you continue to see it all over social media.

Definitely.

Like, after we chat, like, pull it up and just search that, like in Instagram or TikTok, and you will come across thousands of videos.

So I thought about this back in the fall because I came across a news article that quoted that 14 people were arrested for criminal trespassing.

They were doing the hike and then followed by two more arrests this past February.

Oh, man.

So they are starting to arrest people for doing this hiker.

It's considered a misdemeanor.

That can result in a hefty fine, can also result in up to 30 days in jail.

And one of the reasons that it is illegal is because it's not safe.

And the hike itself is really challenging.

There have been injuries reported.

There's been reports of people having to be airlifted or transported out because they've run into trouble while trying to hike the stairs.

So in knowing all of this, I find it really interesting that if you look on social media or if you Google this hike, you'll not only see aesthetic footage of it, but you will also find blogs explaining how to access it.

There's blogs, there's video essays.

Like, it is not hard to find out how to access this illegal hike.

And below these posts, like, you see tons of people declaring that they can't wait to do it themselves.

People are just out there boldly declaring that they're going to do illegal stuff.

And then what?

What's most interesting is that a lot of the posts I notice openly acknowledge that it is illegal and that it's unsafe.

So I wanted to write about this and talk about this because I've often wondered about the legal implications of creating content that covers illegal activities.

If you're promoting Stairway to Heaven, you're promoting an illegal hike that could lead to real consequences.

It could lead to, like, one of the people that follow you or engage with your content.

It could lead to them, like, attempting this hike and ending up arrested or ending up fined or jailed or worse, hurt.

And it also hurts the local community.

Like, the reason this is not legal is because it's a hazardous area.

So if things go wrong for someone that puts first responders at risk.

It's also a strain on public resources.

And I looked this up, and you know what I found?

Videos of people saying it's going to cost more money to remove it, because it will.

It's going to cost them, like, over a million dollars to remove the staircase.

And people were arguing, well, why wouldn't you just, like, fix it and, like, turn it into a tourist experience?

So it's interesting.

The discourse turns into, oh, like, it's not about what the locals want, it's about what we want as tourists, like, coming and we want to go on this stairway.

I feel like fixing it and giving it proper safety measures.

It will be more expensive than removing will be.

And also the other, like, missing piece is that there have been reports of people that live in the area that don't want this.

Then there you go.

At the end of the day, like, that is.

Is what it boils down to.

Yeah, that's like, number one.

And even if they make it, like, I don't know how safe you can make a hike like that because it is really dangerous.

Yeah, it's interesting.

The piece about the legal implications of digital content like this is really interesting to me because I already foresee someone suing a content creator because they saw this trip on their page and got injured and that type of thing.

That, to me, is totally likely.

Totally likely a thing.

So there's that piece.

And it is, I think, possible to have social media platforms and publishing platforms be able to block that kind of content.

Right?

Like, they can see if something is illegal.

Right.

They're already blocking Canadian news.

Like, why can't they also set, up, you know, algorithms that detect, like, promotions of illegal tourism sites and just legal shit?

Right.

That's an interesting take.

I never really thought about that.

But yeah, I mean, in general, I find, like, the social media platforms are very lazy about these things.

Like, they just don't care enough.

And then, like, the last thing I thought about is just the economy of content.

And this kind of, like, brings us back to the point about extreme day trips as, like, a product, as, like, a content product, because there's now an economy around creating extreme day trip content where these creators may not even be doing these actual extreme day trips.

They just know that it's content that will perform, that will make them money, because not for us Canadians, but if you're Based in the US Views equal income.

So something I've thought about is the fact that this hike is so mind blowingly aesthetic and beautiful.

When you see it on your for you page, you do stop to look at it because it is so beautiful.

And so it's created a way for people to make money off of social media.

So it sort of incentivizes them to go and do this illegal hike just to capture the content so that they can publish it online and earn money from.

Almost makes me think of those content creators that are like the skyscraper climbers, the people that climb to the very top of the of like antennas at the top of skyscrapers and you're like, that person's totally gonna die.

And they're doing it for the views and somehow they haven't died yet.

But like at some point you're like, this can't be normal.

Like you can't keep posting like this on the Internet for money.

Like, this is nuts.

How much is those millions of views gonna be worth it to you when you are roadkill?

Yeah, but basically my takeaway from this, like this is where my, where my brain came to was the.

I mean, I guess like this is like known already, but it's an uncomfortable truth that content is not neutral.

When creators document and share experiences in places like the Stairway to Heaven, they aren't just telling a story.

Like they are shaping behavior, they're driving demand and they're glamorizing actions that, that are illegal and unsafe and unsustainable.

And I think the incentive of money and pursuit of clicks and views and virality can really quickly eclipse the consequences that come into play when you're going out to shoot content like this.

Especially when it boils down to a creator earning money off of that content versus other people who've seen it and go out to do that same thing, who may end up paying the price.

Whether it's an injured hiker, overwhelmed emergency services, or just frustrated local communities.

It's like, sure, this creator, they got a lot of out of the TikTok fund, but now they've made this place go viral again and the local community is dealing with all these illegal hikers again.

So yeah, it does tie back to the point about the extreme day trips, because I feel like this just goes back to the point of creators having a responsibility to consider the impact of what they publish.

Yeah, I feel like I could just go on for this forever.

And like it's just, it's the new.

It's like this is mainstream media now.

That is what it is.

Yeah, it's the new.

If it bleeds, it leads.

Like it's, it's just the new version of this now and it's so fascinating for me to keep an eye on this in particular.

I love this.

It's like the new version of like when we were growing up and people, our parents would be like, you are not allowed to watch TV that like involves.

Involves violence.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Except it's not like it's not networks responsible anymore for like the morality of this content or the intent behind the content.

Like it's, it's down to like individual creators.

Well, hopefully it also comes down to the responsibility of the publishers that these people are posting on.

So.

Yeah, but I don't know, I don't think Mark Zuck is interested in that.

You know, it does make me wonder if you can flag content like that, like report it.

I think you probably could.

Yeah.

I've flagged a number of things on the Internet and I don't know if it does anything.

Yeah, I don't know.

But I'd be curious if like there's a, like a flag for this is an illegal activity or something.

Yeah, I think there, I think there might actually.

Yeah, I think there is.

Yeah.

Okay, well so maybe that's the takeaway here.

If you see something illegal, flag it.

We don't know if it will do anything.

What do they say on the UK tube?

See it, say it, sort it or something like that.

Yeah, something like that.

Well Erin, thanks for the postcard.

This has been really nice.

Yeah, I'm into these little semi monthly jams we will have.

Yeah, I mean this was a 40 minute long chat but I know this.

Always happens to us where like it's like when we decided we were going to recap White Lotus, we were like, oh, it'll be like 30 minutes max and like by the end we were doing like two hour recording sessions at.

7Am if you enjoyed this postcard, let us know.

And if there's anything you'd like us to cover in the next one, we are happy to do so.

Again, you can reach out to us on social media in the email.

Yeah, reach out.

We want to hear from you.

Yeah, send us a postcard.