Covid 19 coronavirus: hikers photoshop themselves into dream trip

On March 19, Marty Pollak and Monica Palenzuela journeyed from New York City to Patagonia, where they hiked the Perito Moreno Glacier, explored Torres del Paine and hung out with a herd of guanacos. Santiago and Buenos Aires were next.

Although stay-at-home mandates, travel restrictions and social distancing had become a new reality for billions of people all over the world, Pollak and Palenzuela’s five-month trip was very much alive – on Instagram.

Guided by their cancelled itinerary, the couple has been posting meticulously staged (and often Photoshopped) images and videos of themselves enjoying what would have been their adventure: say, gazing at a snow-capped peak, getting lost while hiking and taking a bus ride to Puerto Natales, Chile.

“You plan and God laughs,” said Palenzuela, 35, who is studying to be a winemaker. “But we’ve found joy in looking at what would have been. Seeing the itinerary day by day has helped us realise two things: One, this would have been an epic trip, and two, we can do it another year.”

With little choice but to stay grounded for the time being – and with plenty of time at home
– avid travellers like Pollak and Palenzuela have devised creative and meaningful ways to celebrate the vacations they have had to cancel because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We travel to escape – to unwind – but also to feel the thrill of doing something entirely new. So why not fake a vacation, if only to laugh and smile and feel something good for a minute? I’d plan a ‘fauxcation’ every day,” said Laura Dannen Redman, the digital content director at Afar, a travel media company.

As technology becomes an increasingly critical tool for everyone and everything, celebrations of “fauxcations” on social media are increasing. A video of a septuagenarian Australian couple – feet up, wearing robes, holding wineglasses and watching a YouTube video of the ocean on a flat-screen TV – went viral when their daughter tweeted: “Cruise cancelled? No problem.”

One post in Afar’s #TravelAtHomeChallenge, which started on Instagram in March, shows Dannen Redman wearing an all-white outfit with a red belt, being chased down a driveway by her 2-year-old daughter: a riff on running with the bulls in Spain.

Source: Read Full Article