Adventure Sports Ego's

Whilst working my way through the north western highlands of Guatemala, I have encountered many adventure travel companies selling myriad trips and tours in the surrounding countryside. Some of these are Guatemalan owned and run, but most are operated by tourists/expats (who think they discovered the country). Most of the time the 80/20 rule applies, where 80% of the staff are very cool, approachable and helpful. However, you can guarantee that there will be that 20% or so who usually conform to the following generalisation/category/tribe:

Usually in their late 30's/early 40's (sometimes older) these people are socially inadequate and cannot converse about anything beyond their job and how great they are at it. Back in their hometowns they are not popular and don't have a large social network - they are very small fish in a big pond. So to become a 'big fish' (in a small pond) they get into Adventure Sports, to express how cool and edgy they are. Then they find a remote spot in a small developing country to work on cultivating an oversized ego and an attitude to customers that would resemble that of a Parisian Couture House's response to me entering their store in a pair of pants and a tramps overcoat.

By placing themselves in a transient environment, where backpacker spass through daily, these people further their ability to massage their ego's because not only are they the key to an 'adventure', they also know everything about the town/area that they're in. Thus inflicting the countless lessor mortals (tourists/backpackers) with a weak attempt at being the 'cool connector' in town.

I had the pleasure of experiening the pinnacle of this observation last week with a company called Quetzaltrekkers in Xela, where the unnescessarily large crew of staff flipped the 80/20 rule on it's head and are currently commanding a strong position of almost all staff being rude, arrogant, unhelpful and dangerously self adoring.

This trend got me thinking about tribes, not in terms of Maya tribes, but traveller tribes. So I think this may be the first tribe of many that i'll identify throughout my trip under the new category heading 'Tribes'.

Other tribe thoughts so far include; Flashpackers, Gap Yah's, Aging Hippies, Mid Life Crisis's, Decision Makers, Shipwrecked Cast Wannabe's, and a few more.