aimless travelers

"For the first time since leaving the United States on this aimless trip I saw other aimless travelers. I had been passing myself off as a teacher; they called themselves students. There were advantages in being a student: student fares, student rates, student hostels, student entry fees. Great, hairy, middle-aged buffoons complained at ticket counters and shouted, "Look, I'm a student! Do me a favor! He doesn't believe I'm a fucking student. Hey—" They were cut-priced tourists, idlers, vagabonds, freebooters, who had gravitated toward this impoverished place because they wanted to save money. Their conversation was predictable and was wholly concerned with prices, the exchange rate, the cheapest hotel, the cheapest bus, how someone ("Was he a gringo?") got a meal for fifteen cents, or an alpaca sweater for a dollar or bunked with some Aymara Indians in a benighted village. They were Americans, but they were also Dutch, German, French, British, and Scandinavian; they spoke the same language, always money. Their boast was always how long they had managed to hang on here in the Peruvian Andes and beat the system."

~~ from The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux