What did I do on my summer vacation?

I could tell the story two ways: I went hiking in the rain forests of northern Queensland, Australia, peeling leeches off my legs and listening to an Aboriginal guide explain the culinary and medicinal uses of various local plants; or I went "on location," hiring a bush pilot to fly me and my son over the Tribal Council site from the cult reality television series Survivor and bunking in the mountain lodge where the contestants went to lick their wounds after being voted off the show.

Depending on how we describe it, the trip was either ecotourism or teletourism. Same places, same activities-different experiences. Our motherly hostess was willing to play it any way we wanted-inform us about Australian marsupials or show us snapshots of the television contestants goofing around in her kitchen.

We were embarrassed to tell our driver that we were going to Herbert River Falls because we were fans of a television series. Teletourists are often portrayed as people who just can't separate reality from fantasy. Funny-they don't say the same thing about the folks who sign up for walking tours of Dickens's London or who go to watch Shakespeare's classics performed in the re-created Globe Theatre.

Many of us see travel as a way of escaping the "fake" realms of contemporary media. I think we're lying to ourselves-tourism is all about experiencing in the flesh things we first learned about through the media.