Destination: Mexico
“We’re Salesmen, Aren’t We?”
by Michael Yessis | 08.03.05 | 9:43 PM ET
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Yahoo! BuzzHola, Colorful Street Vendor. Can I Take Your Photo?
by Jim Benning | 07.05.05 | 2:23 PM ET
Further evidence that the entire planet will one day become a giant theme park: In Tijuana, Mexico, the new mayor has ordered street vendors to wear traditional clothes in bright colors to please tourists. The new rule, which applies on weekends, took effect June 25 on a small pedestrian thoroughfare. But according to an AP story in USA Today, vendors on Avenida Revolucion, the popular bar-lined street a 20-minute walk from the U.S. border, will soon be required to wear the traditional garb, too. Mayor Jorge “Hank” Rhon said the rule is designed to help visitors “feel Mexico.” Ridiculous.
Travel Humor on the Tube
by Jim Benning | 03.30.05 | 4:25 PM ET
David Letterman’s Top Ten list Tuesday featured the “Top Ten Ways Airlines Are Cutting Back.” Number 10? “Pilots have to pay for their inflight cocktails.” Rim shot. The rest of the list can be read here. Jay Leno had a good one-liner in a segment on company slogans. Regarding Greyhound’s “Leave the Driving to Us,” he quipped, “That’s certainly better than their first idea, ‘The Drifter’s Choice.’” Having just spent a couple of days on a Greyhound bus en route to Juarez, Mexico, sitting in front of a guy who was traveling with only a plastic grocery bag and who was yelling at nobody in particular about dolphins in the desert, I can confirm that drifters do have a soft spot for the Greyhound.
Maureen Dowd Just Wants Some Nachos
by Michael Yessis | 03.24.05 | 12:43 AM ET
New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd recently took a break from pointing out that the emperor has no clothes in order to travel with her sister Peggy to Aqua, “Cancun’s first boutique-style luxury hotel.” Dowd’s story about their experience in Mexico ran in Sunday’s paper, and it’s just what I expect from the Pulitzer Prize winner: Edgy, funny and a damn good read. Dowd swims, but not with dolphins: “If there’s one thing I detest,” she writes, “it’s swimming with dolphins.” Dowd gets a spa treatment with an ambitious aim: “[T]he hotel had seemed like a spectacularly beautiful but unapproachable woman sitting alone in an empty restaurant,” she writes. “But here was the promise of Soul.” And Dowd eats, but not what she was hoping for: “This was upgraded, contemporary, avant-garde Mexico,” she writes. “This was the land of fusion. I hate fusion. I hate infusion. I want my ethnicity straight up.”
Government Penalizes Bush Interpreter For Trip to Cuba
by Jim Benning | 01.06.04 | 9:21 PM ET
Just how absurd is the crackdown on U.S. citizens traveling “illegally” to Cuba? The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that one target of the Bush administration’s get-tough policy is an official interpreter to the president. Fred Burks, 45, who has worked on contract with the State Department for a decade, visited Cuba four years ago with his girlfriend, who was a fan of the “Buena Vista Social Club.” The pair said they were vacationing in Mexico when they saw cheap flights advertised to Cuba and decided to go. When they passed through U.S. immigration upon returning home and were asked where they’d been, they told the truth. Then came the $7,590 fine. Burks’ girlfriend negotiated a lower penalty and paid it. He refuses to pay anything more than $100 and has been haggling with the government ever since. “I never intended to make a big deal out of this,” he told the Times. “But I’m going to do what it takes to establish a precedent. I just don’t agree with this policy.” If only Burks and his money had stayed away from Cuba, the country today would be a free and democratic nation, right? Right.
What Do Jordan’s Ain Ghazal Statues and the Islands of Tuvalu Have in Common?
by Jim Benning | 11.12.03 | 7:36 PM ET
Michael Shapiro answers the question in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, offering an interesting list of threatened attractions around the world—places that, if you’re so inclined, should be seen sooner rather than later. “From the historically and biologically irreplaceable to the poignantly frivolous, we’re living at a time when the planet’s heritage is under ever greater threat from war, neglect, climate change, overpopulation and unmanaged tourism,” he writes. Among the places making Shapiro’s list: the islands of Tuvalu, threatened by rising waters, and eroding Quetzalcoatl Temple in Mexico City. Shapiro also points readers to the World Monuments Fund’s new 2004 list of 100 threatened sites.
Enrique’s Journey
by Michael Yessis | 09.30.03 | 11:56 AM ET
“Live Large, Live Free!”
by Michael Yessis | 06.09.03 | 8:50 PM ET
That’s the slogan for Freedom Paradise, a new resort catering to “amply built” travelers that’s scheduled to open in Tankah, Mexico next week. According to a report on the Web site of Central Florida television station WKMG, all the furniture at Freedom Paradise is reinforced and made out of wood, and the staff pledges that “nobody is going to look at you funny if you ask for second helpings.”
Zapatistas to Tourists: Go Home!
by Michael Yessis | 02.07.03 | 4:47 PM ET
Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, Mexico have had their fill of tourists. In the last two weeks a group of French and Canadian kayakers was reportedly detained and threatened, and the rebels are threatening to seize a ranch and guest house owned by U.S. citizens. “The conflict is part of the rebels’ battle against foreign investment and eco-tourism, the small-scale, environmentally friendly operations that were supposed to help save the jungles where the Zapatistas have their last redoubts,” according to an Associated Press report. “‘We don’t want any American tourists. ... We don’t want any tourists at all,’ said Gabriel, a black-clad Zapatista guarding a roadblock near the ranch who would give only his first name. ‘We don’t want strangers coming around.’”
Mexico’s McCulture Clash
by Jim Benning | 10.30.02 | 1:27 AM ET
Monday’s Los Angeles Times features a report on a controversial plan by McDonald’s to open a restaurant in the historic main plaza in Oaxaca, Mexico.
The issue has been written about before, but we can’t get enough of it. Asks reporter Richard Boudreaux: “Should a multinational giant, in return for investment in one of Mexico’s poorest states, be ceded space in the very center of a culturally distinctive city?”
Oliver Sacks Speaks
by Michael Yessis | 06.26.02 | 11:51 PM ET
Noted neurologist and travel book author Oliver Sacks spoke with Diane Rehm Tuesday about his recent release Oaxaca Journal, in which he chronicles his search for rare fern species in Mexico.
Announcing the Mexi-Canadian Overpass
by Michael Yessis | 05.16.02 | 8:14 PM ET
After almost nine years in the making, the Mexi-Canadian Overpass is complete. The Onion reports that the elevated highway linking Guadalupe,
Mexico and Winnipeg, Canada opened last week. Some U.S. residents are up in arms about the $4.3 trillion, 18-lane structure. “It would be one thing if we somehow benefited,” said Junction City, KS, business owner Neil Grandy. “But because of the way stations, we don’t get anything out of it and have to deal with people tossing garbage out of their windows at 80 mph. You wouldn’t believe what we’ve found some mornings. Everything from tamale husks to broken hockey sticks. The people on that bridge are animals.”
Road Tripping with Alfonso Cuarón
by Michael Yessis | 04.08.02 | 4:57 PM ET
Of Ferns, Psychedelics and Neurological Trivia in Oaxaca
by Jim Benning | 03.12.02 | 8:24 PM ET
Neurologist and Awakenings author Oliver Sacks has joined the ranks of travel writers. Sacks’ latest book, Oaxaca Journal, documents his journey to Mexico to study ferns. Reviews are positive. “Thankfully, Sacks’s immense curiosity extends beyond ferns, so the result is a vivid journal filled with the region’s violent history of Aztec bloodlettings, the psychedelic mysteries of Oaxacan morning glories, and, of course, neurological trivia so strange it could come only from Sacks,” opines Men’s Journal. The Los Angeles Times also weighs in.
HIV as Travel Inspiration
by Michael Yessis | 02.11.02 | 2:52 PM ET
Michael McColly became infected with HIV in 1995. Friends and doctors urged him to stay at home where he would run less risk of jeopardizing his health, but McColly could think of nothing he wanted to do more than travel. “Since my infection, I’ve traveled to Mexico twice, Europe, India, Asia and Africa, not to mention countless trips around the United States to commune with friends, family and nature,” he writes in an essay in Sunday’s New York Times. “Travel brings us back into the world, back into our bodies, and—quite literally for me—back to life.”