Category: Mexico

November 14, 2014

Mexico, Supposedly Corrupt Police, and Rental Car Insurance

Tourist police go electric in Playa del Carmen.

Last weekend, the New York Times published the essay A Maddening Bargain with a Mexican Police Officer. The writer, Jeremy Peters, recounts getting scammed on his car rental, then shaken down by a cop on the highway near Tulum.

It made me sad to read this, because a) that sucks, and b) it was preventable. Oh, and c) the snide of-course-this-happened-it’s-Mexico tone–but on that topic, I drafted a rather huffy letter, which I’ll spare you.

Everyone should know some really basic facts about the law when driving around the Yucatan (and in Mexico as a whole).

tl;dr: Skip to items #4 and #6.

1. Relax. Corruption just isn’t that prevalent.

I can speak only for the Yucatan, Chiapas and Tabasco, but since 2003, I have driven tens of thousands of miles around that area, and nothing bad has happened.

I have had a grand total of two encounters with police, both positive. In one case, they very sweetly alerted me to the fact that I was going the wrong way down a one-way street. In the other, I was in a traffic accident that was probably my fault. I didn’t even get a ticket either time, much less get hassled for a cash payout.

Granted, I’m a woman, which I think makes me less of a target in this case (chivalry lives in Mexico). Also, my first instinct is to apologize rather than get angry, and I speak Spanish, if badly.

The one firsthand bad-cop story I have heard (one! in all these years) was from a man, and he got out of it by playing dumb: not speaking Spanish and not taking the cop’s hint to pay up. And he admitted he had been speeding.

2. You don’t have to pay the cop!

If you do happen to get pulled over–whether you did something wrong or not–and the cop is suggesting you can pay the fine to him directly…you don’t have to, of course.

It’s not like he’s going to shoot you or kidnap you or beat you up! He’s a traffic cop, not a cartel boss. The Mexican system is not so bad that you’ll be tossed in jail to rot. There’s a whole, functioning system for collecting traffic fines, just like in the US.

Call the dude’s bluff. Smile and apologize, and say you’d be happy to pay the ticket as required, at the police station or through your rental-car company (see #4).

Betcha anything this cop will decide he has better things to do than write you a ticket.

3. A traffic fine costs about US$50.

That’s just not very much. And maybe you were speeding. So maybe you should just take the ticket (if the cop bothers to write it), and pipe down.

You also get a discount if you pay within the first 24 (or maybe 48?) hours, or so I’ve read.

(Can I just note that Waters forked over US$120 in bribe money? Ouch!)

4. And you probably don’t even have to pay that fine either!

Here’s the amazing thing! Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum all have laws on the books granting tourists TWO “courtesy infractions”–official warnings–before being ticketed for anything. (Links go to text of the laws; search for “infracción de cortesía.”)*

Technically, car-rental companies should advise renters of the law and provide them with a leaflet that can be shown to police–though that practice fades in and out, in my experience.

If you do burn through your two warnings and receive a ticket, then you have the option of paying it through your car rental company, when you return the car, for a small extra fee. You never even have to go to the police station.

Simply mentioning the law should deter any cop who’s trying to shake you down. Insist on a written record of the infraction, thank him for his “courtesy,” and be on your way.

5. You really, really shouldn’t pay the cop.

I know, you’re still thinking about it. Why give up any of your vacation time to police stuff? And won’t that little brush with third-world corruption make a good story later? (Jeremy Waters got his published in the New York Times!)

C’mon: corruption takes two people. Every tourist who pays up is paving the way for more cops looking to make a buck. You are part of the problem.

I was about to write “end rant,” but then I remembered: Most of the stories I read about corrupt cop situations, the driver starts by saying, “I was speeding down the highway…” or “My husband was peeing on a bush…” (seriously, that was on TripAdvisor).

Dude, they have traffic laws and laws against peeing in public in Mexico too! If you break them, you get a ticket, just like at home. It’s just douchey to think you can buy your way out of trouble.

OK, really, end rant. On to more info, after the chicken-car break.

Alas, it’s not for rent.

6. The car-rental guys aren’t scamming you, although it can look like it.

Peters complained in his essay that a $20/day rental jumped to $40/day at pickup time. I’m almost certain it wasn’t a scam–just the boring old law. Primary liability insurance is required in Mexico, but unlike in the US, almost all of the rental-car companies pass that cost on to the renter, as a separate fee. It’s about $15/day extra, plus taxes.

Most of the major rental companies note this in fine print on the booking page. Go to alamo.com, for instance, and run a search for pickup and drop-off in Cancun–you’ll see “Primary Liability Insurance” is an option. But only if you click to read more will you see the explanation of the Mexican law, and the fact that the only way out of paying is with very good on-paper evidence that your home car insurance covers liability.**

If you rent through a third-party site, such as Kayak, it’s worse–you see only a blanket “additional fees, taxes and insurance may be required,” which is so vague, it’s easy to think it doesn’t apply to you.

FWIW, Hertz is an exception–it carries its own liability insurance and includes it in the total rate, so you will not be charged extra. ~~(At least last I checked.)~~ [EDITED: This is still true, as of January 2017. Hertz will of course try to sell you more insurance, as rental places always do. Note, though, that Hertz is selling you on “supplemental liability insurance,” as opposed to Alamo’s “primary” coverage.]

So yes, it feels like a scam if you’re not forewarned, but the people to blame are the honchos at Alamo/Thrifty/etc. headquarters, not the Mexican guys at the car desk in Cancun.

Why drive when you can ride a triciclo?

So, that’s it. Honestly, you barely need a car in the Yucatan, because the bus and taxi (and triciclo!) system is so good. But you shouldn’t be afraid of renting a car because you’re afraid of getting shaken down by the police or car-rental companies. If you have this info before you go, you’ll be fine–just watch the speed limit and keep an eye out for topes. Have a great trip!

—————————
*Various websites refer to this law as “Article 152,” but the numbers are different for each city, and they change whenever the traffic laws get tweaked anyway. So you can’t say to the cop, “Dude: Article 152” and expect results.

**I don’t own a car, so I don’t actually know if standard US car insurance will *ever* cover liability on rentals in a foreign country. Does anyone know?

And just to clarify, because it took me a long time to figure this out: There are two kinds of insurance:

Liability insurance: This covers the damage you might do to other vehicles/drivers. Liability insurance is required virtually everywhere in the world, and often countries or US states require the car company to provide it, included in the rate, where it’s called primary liability insurance and/or LDW. But if the rental company doesn’t bundle it into the price, then you must buy it. Supplemental liability insurance is optional, and it usually just increases the coverage amount. As I say above, it’s not required–but you have to know what risk you’re comfortable with.

Collision insurance: This covers the damage you might do to the rental car itself, and it is usually covered by your home car insurance and/or a good credit card (issued in the US or Canada only; I don’t think European credit cards play this game?). At the rental counter, you *can* opt out of collision insurance (“decline the CDW,” in the lingo). Of course, the agents may try to upsell you–just like they do in the U.S. And of course, if your credit card isn’t covering collision, you have to decide whether you’re OK with the risk of going without it. And if you decline collision, the rental agency will put a hold on your credit card for a lot of money–between $5,000 and $10,000, depending on the car–until you return the car in one piece.

I know about insurance firsthand, from that car accident a few years ago. It was a great opportunity to find out how the rental-car-insurance system works.

May 28, 2013

Mexico City: Plaza Garibaldi

Another major hot spot we just didn’t manage to get to on our first trip was Plaza Garibaldi, where all the mariachis gather. The symbol on the signs for the metro stop is a guitar.

The plaza had a reputation for seediness, and it’s now being spruced up in that slightly heavy-handed way city planners use when they want to get rid of blight. Lots of LED lights and green glass, and a museum. Presto!

The actual open area was a bit too tidy and unfocused for our tastes, so we hightailed it to Bar Tenampa, which is famous as apparently the first bar on Plaza Garibaldi. Inside, it feels like the party has indeed been going nonstop for the better part of a century.

It’s a big barn of the place with high ceilings and huge murals of great singers, and bright lighting.

Those are jarocho guys, with the harp. Mariachis lurk in every other corner.

Mere words and photos can’t describe the atmosphere of the place. Let’s try a little multimedia experiment instead.

First, pour yourself a drink. We were fond of palomas–tequila and Squirt (say it ‘Esquirt’), with salt around the rim. I can also recommend a ponche de granada, which Tenampa seemed to specialize in, and of which I had never heard. It’s booze and pomegranate juice, aged for a bit, and served with crumbled pecans floating on top. Seriously, dangerously drinkable–good thing I only got around to ordering one on the last round.

What really makes it is the dainty glass!

Now, all settled in with your drink? Start this video playing.

That’s just for background, really. What we really care about is the next song. The lyrics are painted on the wall:

Que borracho!

Maybe best to click on that and open it in another tab, to see the words.

Got that? Now start this next video. Yes, at the same time as the other one.

WHAT?! YOU CAN’T HEAR ME? THAT’S OK. THAT’S NORMAL! JUST RAISE YOUR GLASS AND SING ALONG!!! THAT’S WHAT THE PEOPLE AT THE OTHER TABLES ARE DOING!

If you’re still not feeling the cacophonous, drunken magic, go stick your finger in a light socket.

Because, as an added attraction, in addition to the three separate mariachi groups in the bar, and the jarochos, there are guys walking around selling electric shocks. With, like, jumper cables. Apparently this is a thing in Tijuana and Juarez, and I guess wherever vast amounts of tequila are drunk; I never knew how sheltered I was.

Near the end of the night, one of our party said, “I’m exactly three shots away from doing that.” It seemed like a fair assessment. He’d already done quite a few.

My magic camera that captured the evening just as I saw it.

Hiring a band (M$120 per song; M$50 for the puny jarochos) was a way of coping, of creating a wall of sound that screened out the others. The bathroom attendant, for her part, wore noise-canceling headphones.

In a way, the noise was so solid that it made everything like a silent film. Far down the end of the room, I watched a small, brief melodrama unfold: two tall, jocky American bros guzzled shots, stood up and jumped around and posed for pictures and danced. I glanced away, then glanced back, and they were already back in their seats, bent over, heads on the table.

I would totally go again. I just want to learn some lyrics first.

May 20, 2013

Mexico City: Beyond the Palacio Nacional

Peter and I went to Mexico City two years ago. It happened to be the week before Easter, when the city runs at half-speed because everyone’s on vacation. We were too, so we just didn’t wind up doing very much sightseeing.

Oh, why am I making excuses? We never do much sightseeing. It’s just too tedious to make big plans and maps and timetables, and get your heart set on any one thing. (Precise opposite: friend of a friend who planned her family’s trip to Disney World with a spreadsheet, down to the minute.)

Awe-some. Like, really, awe.

The other problem with planning too much is it’s basically admitting you’re never going back to a place. If you have a big checklist, and you check off all the sights, well, then why would you come back?

I know, the world is a big place and we have a limited amount of time here, so I see why people are strategic (especially with only two weeks of vacation a year; the American workplace is savage). But let me dream, OK? I would much rather leave a place with a pang of regret–which may be strong enough to make me go back–than some kind of bucket-list satisfaction.

This is all a very roundabout justification for my own laziness and the fact that, on our first visit, we didn’t even manage to see the Diego Rivera murals in the Palacio Nacional. They were, what, five blocks from our hotel?

This time, we were three blocks closer. No excuse.

I could load you up with photos, but I’d seen the photos before, and I didn’t understand how powerful the murals are. While we were in Puebla, Peter and I were in awe of the buildings–like, how was it the Spanish were building such amazing things just 40 years after they discovered the place, and the English couldn’t even keep a colony of settlers alive?

The answer is in the last of the murals.

If you answered ‘slave labor,’ you win a prize.

After that, we cheered ourselves up with ice cream.

Colors of the Mexican flag, no coincidence.

And some tacos–grilled beef and cactus.

Gorgeous.

That were grilled in this contraption:

See that? Next trend in food trucks. Mark my words.

Not sightseeing rewarded us with those tacos, and several other neat things.

Crazy bottles of booze.

The pinafore store–for all your street-vendor-uniform needs.

The Mercado de Dulces…which really was the candy market.

Funny fonts. It’s like they saw the ‘circ’ and thought ‘circus’.

Shrimp ‘cocktel’.

A perfectly nice art deco warehouse.

Wait, you’re saying, that’s just not interesting at all. No–look closer!

Hello, plaintains, ripening like hams in the Alpujarras!

The most trivial thing we did in our post-Palacio walk was stop for many long minutes to watch a street vendor make a perfectly round pancake, without the aid of a mold. While we were sitting, playing it cool, waiting for him to pour the batter, I realized why you can’t always travel like this, planless.

People! Other people! What a pain they are.

No, seriously, we love our friends we went to Mexico City with, and we would have happily spent all of our time with them. But they’d gone off to Trotsky’s house, which is amazing, but we weren’t sure we needed to see again.

Practically speaking, you can’t stop a group of four or six people and say, “Hey, guys, check out that pancake maker. Let’s watch him for a while.” At least not if you want to make it through the day alive.

Hell, you can’t even do this with one other person, if that other person isn’t totally on your travel wavelength.

I feel incredibly lucky that Peter is. Sure, sometimes I wish he’d wake up maybe a little earlier, but he’s totally open to the ‘Wait, stop, let’s…’ and ‘Take a pic of that weird thing’ (most of the photos here are his, at my prodding) and ‘[Chortling at some incredibly immature thing]’.

The fundamental similarity that makes it all possible, though, is that we don’t care if we miss some big sights. We get so many little ones instead.

May 6, 2013

Puebla #3: Miscellany

We were only in Puebla two and a half days, which really isn’t fair to Mexico’s fourth-largest city. (Did you know that? I did not. After DF, Guadalajara and Monterrey.)

We were pretty fried on Sunday, our first day out, and overwhelmed because it was Palm Sunday. The streets were packed with people.

Getcher palm doodads here!

We wandered around pretty aimlessly and happened across equally random treats, such as this hot dog situation:

I don’t know what that is in the foreground. We’re talking about the thing in the guy’s hand.

It was, as far as I could make out, a hot dog dipped in molten cheese then wrapped in an eggroll wrapper, and then wrapped in bacon, and then deep-fried.

Peter swore it was one of the best things he ate on our trip. And he wasn’t even high.

Please don’t extrapolate about Puebla cuisine from this; I think it’s a one-off invention of the guy who runs the stand.

Not far away was weirdness of another sort, a veritable garden of kiddie rides:

Photo by Peter. Actually, let’s just say all of these are.

We stopped at the railroad museum (doesn’t everyone make that their first stop in a new city?) and cried over the oh-so-recent death of Mexico’s passenger rail. (Our friend Jim took the train from Texas to San Miguel de Allende for a high school trip in the 80s! Argh!)

This is the style of travel to which I am accustomed, thankyouverymuch.

Later that day, we met up with some real live poblanos, who were kind enough to make sure we saw the Rosary Chapel, one of the city’s major attractions. Which we almost certainly would have missed otherwise, because it’s off the side in one of the churches that was mobbed with Palm-Sunday-enjoyers.

Click to enlarge. Really. It’s worth it.

We also went to the Museo Amparo, recently reopened after a big renovation. In fact, it’s still not totally finished. But the rooftop cafe was a great place to get up close and personal with all the church domes in the city.

Modern museum on the right; colonial city on the left.

Aaaand then, back to our regularly scheduled aimless wandering.

This park was so committed to its jacarandas that all the benches and trash cans and everything were painted purple.

With all the heart-ripping-out imagery, are emos just updated Aztecs?

Jesus loves neon, this we know.

Finally, to end this post on an educational note, did you know Chia Pets are, like, a real thing? Here, look:

An ‘altar of sorrows,’ commemorating the Virgin Mary’s loss of her son.

This time I did the zooming for you. Check it!

As a display at the Museo Amparo helpfully explained, sprouts and wheatgrass are placed on the altar, to represent rebirth. And little hollow clay turtles and sheep, covered in chia seeds, are a way of doing that. It was hard to tell from the phrasing whether this is something that’s been going on for centuries, or if Mexicans just like Chia Pets, and incorporated them into the altar? Chia Pets were originally made in Mexico, says-Wikipedia-so-it-must-be-true, which suggests the former.

Cool, right? Who knows what I’ll learn on my next (hopefully longer!) visit to Puebla…

April 29, 2013

Puebla #2: Street Food Tour

HOLY MOLE!!!

(Sorry, just had to get that out of my system. The whole time I was in Puebla, the home of mole poblano, I had that dumb joke running through my head. But really? The mole? Hot damn, it’s so good.)

Peter and I took a food tour with Eat Mexico, the same wonderful folks we did a street food tour with two years ago in Mexico City. Not only have they branched out to Puebla, but the guide is the woman behind the excellent All About Puebla blog.

Peter and I put on our stretchy pants and met Rebecca in the center of the zocalo. As usual, we thought we knew stuff (mole, cemitas), but we knew jack. She promptly marched us off to a place with molotes, jarochas, chanclas and pelonas, among other things.

Now, as I type, I could not tell you what molotes really are. The shape has evaporated, and I just remember the tastes: we had one filled with potatoes and cilantro, which tasted like a samosa, and one filled with brains, which were silky and surprisingly beef-flavored.

The pelona is clearer in my mind because it’s, get this, a deep-fried sandwich!!!!

Rebecca explained all this rationally, about Puebla’s long tradition of baking a variety of wheat breads and so on, as though it were perfectly normal to dunk the outside of a bread roll in hot oil till it gets shatteringly crunchy, and the fill the inside with something hot and cheesy and fabulous.

Peter and I were so busy gobbling that we forgot to take photos. Sorry.

Then we marched on to a place that called itself a taqueria oriental, which specializes in tacos arabes and tacos al pastor, on dueling vertical spits.

Foreground: “arabe” meat; background: “al pastor” meat. (Photo by Peter)

I don’t know why it delights me so to see Arab culture mashed into/absorbed into/flourishing in Mexico, but it does. Tacos arabes are basically shwarma in form, but still Mexican in flavor (the pork helps).

They look like shwarma too, with a flatbread-y wrap that’s halfway between a flour tortilla and a Syrian pita.

They were allegedly invented in Puebla, in the early 20th century. The skewer technology either enabled or improved the taco al pastor (not sure which–any food historians know?), and wow, the ones we had were some of the best ever.

A thing of beauty, right?

If I continued with this blow-by-blow account, we’d never get anywhere. Suffice to say, we also stopped for strange and wonderful cookies and candies I’d never heard of, detoured for mysterious candy apples, and, best of all, walked for a while, out of the historic center and into a part of the city we hadn’t yet gotten to see. On the way we passed a peaceful protest.

Power–and parasols–to the people.

By the time we got to the market we were bound for, our appetites had been magically restored. We strolled around ogling all kinds of things, and asking people pesky questions. We bought a kilo of homemade mole. We saw huitlacoche in situ!

Mmmm, corn fungus! (Photo by Peter)

And then we ate cemitas. Just as Rebecca promised, every component of this amazing sandwich was perfect.

I love the man chomping in the background. (Photo by Peter)

You can’t see all the gorgeousness in the photo, but the string cheese was unstrung into fine threads, the milanesa was hot and crispy, the chipotle was homemade, all smoky and brown-sugar-sweet. (Ohhh, so that’s what chipotles en adobo are supposed to taste like!) A man came along and sang a sad song on a guitar, and a woman rolled up and sold us a big plastic bag full of fresh pineapple juice. It was one of those crystalline this-is-why-I-love-Mexico moments.

Then, as if that weren’t enough, we went and drank sweet-and-boozy drinks on a tiny balcony in a pretty arcade.

Slurp!

Puebla. So much more than mole!

April 22, 2013

Puebla #1: Lucha Libre!

Anyone who has been reading my stuff or following me on Twitter knows that I’m fond of Mexican wrestling. It hits the sweet spot between kitsch and real, folkloric, theatrical performance. I mean, I even loved Nacho Libre.*

The gods of travel scheduling were smiling upon Peter and me, because we happened to be in the city of Puebla on a Monday night, when the weekly lucha action goes down. And it was easy walking distance from our hotel.

Still, we almost didn’t go. We had eaten a very large dinner (surprise, surprise) and were feeling vaguely sunburnt and jet-lagged. Plus, Puebla is 7,217 feet above sea level. I tweeted this pitiful thing:

Fortunately, Rebecca of All About Puebla saw my public near-wimp-out and urged me to go. “It’s so bad, it’s good,” she advised. She didn’t need to explain the appeal to me.

Start time is 9pm, and we rolled up to the Puebla Arena about 9.30–there was a big mob of people, because we were in line for the cheap seats. It was a huge all-ages crowd: families with tiny kids (one baby freaked when her dad put on a wrestling mask; hadn’t learned object permanence yet, obviously), old folks, couples on dates.

That’s me in the pink shirt. (Photo by Peter)

Inside, the arena was medium-size, and slanted very steeply–even four rows from the back, we still had a great view, without the risk of a wrestler actually landing on us. Food and beer vendors threaded through the crowd. One was carrying a huge basket of steamed shrimp, which seems like the most unlikely coliseum snack ever. But people were buying.

I briefly tried to see where we were in the program, and deduce which luchadores we were dealing with.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!! Er, I mean, Monday, Monday, Monday!

That was silly. It didn’t matter. Every match was pure mayhem. There was an old-fashioned bad guy, a man with a huge belly and skinny legs and the old-style skinny-strap unitard, and some new-fangled baddies, all with gnarly-looking black-and-red costumes. Several wrestlers’ masks had mohawks on top. The biggest crowd-pleaser was campy-sweet Maximo, who didn’t wear a mask but did wear pink spangly pants and a blond fauxhawk. He disarmed one opponent by kissing him. Maximo even signed autographs for kids in between matches, which the bad guys didn’t.

Here’s a typical move:

(My first animated GIF! I’m so proud.)

After about an hour or so, the show was over, rather suddenly. We were caught a little off guard. We all filed out, past the detritus of the evening.

Man, it’s like a Spanish tapas bar in here…

Peter said he liked the one we saw in Queens better. Which was, admittedly, more dramatic, and had midget wrestlers and child wrestlers, and a bad guy called La Migra. It lasted for hours.

But here in Puebla, this goes down every week. I realized we’d walked in to one episode of an ongoing soap opera–a tag-team telenovela, I suppose. We left on a cliffhanger. Maximo was up…for now.

Tune in next Monday at the Puebla Arena for more thrilling adventures…

*In Mexico, Nacho Libre totally “counts” as a real Mexican wrestler. You can buy Nacho Libre masks!

November 7, 2012

Counterintuitive Travel Tip #6: The Water

The first five tips (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5) had a lot to do with how to plan your trip (or not plan it). Now we’re getting into the more nitty-gritty on-the-ground stuff.

Drink the water.

I had written a righteous screed about how all guidebooks are just covering their asses when they tell you not to drink the water, and of course you can drink it, if normal middle-class people drink it too.

Then I went to Fes, Morocco, where everyone drinks tap water…and I got sick.

But even so, I believe that tap water is often not so horrible. If people who could afford to buy bottled water drink from the tap, you can certainly brush your teeth with it. You can even swig a bit in the night, when you realize you’ve run out of bottled water. You can have a little ice in your drink.

Peter drinking from the (very large, public) tap in Comitan de Dominguez, Mexico. Later we drank the water in Villahermosa too, sin problemas.

It’s with cumulative exposure that your system freaks out (or mine does; yours may be different–that’s my CYA). I didn’t get sick in Fes until about a week in. My threshold for Cairo tap water is about four days.

Contrary to logic, the worse the water is, the better off you are. If all the restaurants use bottled water, this means your ice is almost certainly made from purified water. Basically, there are very few situations in which you have to do that prissy “no ice, please” thing.

The reason I’m even being so macho about tap water is that plastic bottles are the world’s third-largest evil, after plastic bags and Halliburton, and I feel like a failure every time I buy bottled water. If you’re not feeling like risking it, I really recommend a Steripen. I just got one this summer–it’s fantastic. It has cut down on my water-risk-taking and makes me feel like a magician every time I use it. (But I recommend rechargeable batteries–it was due to battery fail that I was in the unfortunate Fes situation.)

October 29, 2012

Counterintuitive Travel Tip #3: Go Where the Tourists Are

This tip, hot on the heels of Tip #1 and Tip #2, seems completely contradictory. Bear with me.

Go where the tourists are.

I really mean Go where the local tourists are. Plan your trip around domestic holidays or popular weekend-getaway spots, and enjoy. The most fun I’ve had in recent memory was in Chiapas in August 2009, the year swine flu scared off foreigners from Mexico.

I foolishly thought the major tourist spots would be empty. But hotels were packed with Mexican families enjoying the tail end of summer vacation. The ruins at Palenque were swarming with people. In San Cristobal de las Casas, kids were running around in souvenir Zapatista ski masks. It was great.

Peter and me posing with the winners of the Golden Age pageant in Palenque.

As travelers, we spend so much time avoiding (sniff) common tourists, but in the long run, you have to admit this can be a little wearing. When you’re the only foreigner in some village, everyone’s staring at you all the time, and you start getting antsy. Or if you’re trying to blend in in some European capital, you’re constantly worrying whether you just flubbed your coffee order and revealed your out-of-townness.

But, just as in the ugly, over-visited places I mentioned in my last post, if you go where the local tourists are going, you can enjoy the buffer of a crowd, which takes the heat off of you.

During that Chiapas trip, I went to the amazing church at San Juan Chamula. If I’d gone in a quieter time, I would’ve felt like a terrible interloper–it’s such a private-seeming place. (Er, should I really be stomping around this church while people are in the middle of intense healing rituals?) Walking into the church on the heels of a busload of Mexican tourists made me feel a little better. (Oh well—all the Mexicans are!) In fact, another Mexican tourist saw me hesitating and waved me in with a smile, like a good ambassador.

Ignore the traveler/tourist rivalry. Frankly, most tourists are fun (especially Mexican tourists!). They’re out to have a good time. So if you go where the domestic tourists are, it’s a little like crashing a party—but it’s still “counts” as a travel experience, because you’re with another culture.

October 23, 2012

Counterintuitive Travel Tip #2: Ugly Places

Continuing my series of cranky travel tips, many of which have to do with how to plan your itinerary. This one’s related to Tip #1, but in the bigger picture.

Go to the ugly places.

I’ve argued this before, specifically about Cancun. But it has a broader application.

Any indie traveler worth his backpack shuns the place with concrete hotels, nor do most people go where there are zero landmarks. But you can learn a lot about a local culture in some random “ugly” city, more than you can at some remote beach where there’s exactly one local, who’s selling you weed and cooking your fish dinner however you like it. Cancun is very, very Mexican if you know where to look—and how to look at it.

Perfectly authentic Mexican sweets in supposedly soulless Cancun.

Another example: Pattaya, in Thailand, typically considered ground zero for hotel towers and prostitution. But to quote a guy I met in Bangkok: “It was great! There were Indian package tourists, and they were posing for photos with ladyboys on the beach!”

C’mon! How is that not heartwarming? I’m not saying you should go for a week, but one night can be fun. The nice thing about supposedly ugly, over-touristed places is that you will probably not be the tackiest person there, and you can gawp all you want–at prostitutes, at sunburned Brits in gold chains, at whatever.

The same logic applies to under-touristed spots with no major attractions. This summer, Peter and I took an exceptionally great trip to Thrace, the eastern fringe of Greece. According to guidebooks, and even most Greeks, there’s “nothing there.” That means no ancient Greek ruins–but there are very interesting Greek-Turkish towns and more recent history. One town–New Orestiada–is definitely un-charming: it looks like a midsize Midwestern town, with blockier apartment blocks. It was built from scratch on a grid system. But the very reason it’s that way is what makes it interesting.

Greece like you've never seen it before: New Orestiada.

Even if you don’t buy my argument, please take a moment to thank me — because every time I get held up in some ugly place, gawking and eating and laughing, I’m not making it to that pristine, off-the-radar beach. I’m one less person ruining the fringes. And the world could use a little more of that.

June 18, 2012

The Mini-Mex Algorithm

On the occasion of a major update to my Cool Cancun & Isla Mujeres travel app (for iPhones and now for Android* too!), here’s just a few reasons to love this part of Mexico. If you’re a regular reader, you know I have a soft spot for Cancun. It’s why I wrote the app, to share all the cool things no one knows about it…and Isla Mujeres and Puerto Morelos too.