TELEVISION: Hazel Friedman
NORTHERN Oz is a land of bleak and bountiful beauty; a place where people are outnumbered by sheep by about 400 to one, and Marys — make that Sheilas — really do have little lambs; where the word “wog” still means something, and attitudes towards race, religion and sexual preference make the Deep South seem like a haven of liberalism.
This is the Northern Australia not of your common travelogue, but of The Rough Guide — that reckless and irreverent travel programme which explores the cracks and crevices of (and creepy crawlies lurking beneath) the world’s conventional tourist spots. And leading us though the back door of coastal cities and barren outbacks in their latest seven-part series, The Rough Guide to the World’s Journeys, are Magenta de Vine and Sankha Guha, this time in hiking boots, backpacks and, in the case of De Vine, those ubiquitous shades.
For those of you unfamiliar with the peregrinations of this intrepid pair, De Vine — an angular, six-foot creature made in cartoon heaven — is Kim Taylor, a middle- class British kid turned virtual cult-object, who consorted with transvestites and kicked a much-publicised heroin habit before the BBC hooked her into The Rough Guide.
Check out armchair travel series Wish You Were Here or conservation programme 50/50 and you’ll get an idea of what this series is definitely not about. To Rough Guide groupies, eco-tourism means the ringing noises in one’s ear after an ouzo binge on a Greek island, and wildlife protection has more to with taking Prohep the night before the morning after than with conserving our natural habitat.
Not that The Rough Guide promotes irresponsible tourism. De Vine and Guha also deal with serious stuff, like the dangers of tourism to the Barrier Reef, and Australian contempt for the Greek community in Melbourne — they still call them “wogs” even though the city has the largest Greek population after Athens and Thessalonika; lobola rituals in Zimbabwe; the banning of “shabbi”, Egypt’s top pop music; and the ongoing repression of women and police corruption in Mexico.
Mexico is the focus of the second programme in the series — from the Hyatt hotel to the hovel. The former is located in Cancun, where native Mexicans are precluded from treating this home-away-from-home for affluent holidaymakers as anything other than an employment depot. The latter is the Mexico of overcrowding and unemployment, the adopted home of Germany’s Volkwagen Beetle industry and America’s garment manufacturers. As Guha points out: “In Mexico City, reality stinks” — and he’s not just talking about the air.
But The Rough Guide doesn’t attempt to transform a pacy travel programme into a beginner’s guide to late-20th-century capitalism. Whether focusing on the lands of sushi, sauerkraut or tacos, each programme takes armchair travellers on a wayward journey of the mind, with practical information on where to stay and when to stray, while providing a glimpse into the lives of the rich, the disadvantaged, the decadent and muchacha more.
The Rough Guide to the World’s Journeys is on SABC 3 at 7pm every Saturday