4 Extraterrestrial Beings Are A Very Strong Workers B Astronomers In The Ancient – ENG1TOT | Course Hero

REVISION U7-8 G11

Passage 4

MY 25,000 WONDERS OF THE WORLD

The coaches at the Uluru Sunset Viewing Area were parked three deep. Guides were putting up tables and

setting out wines and snacks. Ten minutes to go. Are we ready? Five minutes, folks. Got your cameras? OK,

here it comes …

Whether an American backpacker or a wealthy traveller, Danish, British, French, we all saw that sunset over

Uluru, or Ayer Rock, in what seems to be the

prescribed tourist manner

: mouth full of corn chips, glass full

of Château Somewhere, and a loved one posing in a photo’s foreground, as the all-time No 1 Australian icon

behind us glowed briefly red.

Back on the coach, our guide declared our sunset to be ‘pretty good’, although not the best she’d witnessed in

her six years. Behind me, Adam, a student from Manchester, reinserted his iPod earphones: ‘Well, that’s enough

of that rock.’ Indeed. Shattered from getting up at five in order to see Uluru at dawn, I felt empty and bored.

What was the point? What made this rock the definitive sunset rock event? Why had we come here? Well, I

suppose my sons would remember it always. Except they’d missed the magical moment while they checked out

a rival tour group’s snack table, which had better crisps.

So now I’ve visited four of the “25 Wonders of the World”, as decreed by Rough Guides. And I think this will

be the last. While in my heart I can see myself wondering enchanted through China’s Forbidden City, in my

head I know I would be standing grumpily at the back of a group listening to some Imperial Palace Tour Guide.

At the Grand Canyon I would be getting angr with tourists watching it through cameras –

eyes are not good

enough

, since they lack a recording facility.

As we become richer and consumer goods are more widely affordable, and satisfy us only briefly before

becoming obsolete, we turn to travel to provide us with ‘experiences’. These will endure, set us apart from stay-

at-home people and maybe, fill our lives with happiness and meaning, Books with helpful titles like 1,000

Places to See Before You Die are bestsellers. I’d bet many backpacks on the Machu Picchu Inca Trail are filled

with copies, with little tieks penciled in the margins after each must-see sight has been visited. Travel is now

the biggest industry on the planet, bigger than armaments or pharmaceuticals. And yet viewing the main sight

of any destination is rarely the highlight of a trip. Mostly it sits there on your itinerary like a duty visit to a dull

relative. The guilt of not visiting the Sistine Chapel, because we preferred to stay in a bar drinking limoncello,

almost spoilt a weekend in Rome.