Explorers, tourists, and "mere travelers"

I've finally started reading David Grann's The Lost City of Z (thanks to Jason for the loan), about the early 20th-century British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest--which becomes Grann's own--for the fabled city of the title, which is supposedly hidden in the Amazon jungle. A phenomenal read so far.

Because of the way my brain is wired right now (two weeks to finish a book!), this section jumped out at me:

As Jack and Raleigh [Percy Fawcett's fellow-expeditioners] now excitedly stepped on board the ship [to South America], they encountered dozens of stewards, in starched white uniforms, rushing through the corridors with telegrams and bon voyage fruit baskets. . . . The conditions bore little resemblance to those that had prevailed when Fawcett made his first South American voyage, two decades earlier . . . Now everything was designed to accommodate the new breed of tourists--"mere travelers," as Fawcett dismissed them, who had little notion of "the places which today exact a degree of endurance and a toll of life, with the physique necessary to face dangers."

Emphasis mine. I like Fawcett's implied distinction: not between "travelers" and "tourists" (and, yes, enough with that) but between "mere travelers" (that is, tourists) and those on true expeditions. That, I think, is a worthwhile distinction. And, yes, those people doing that race in Antarctica are still "mere travelers"--at least until they start doing some research or show some purpose higher than bragging rights.