Category: Travails of a Guidebook Author

Perceptive Travel: Hot Times in the Riviera Maya

Here’s a little essay about a luxury hotel sweat lodge gone awry–it’s flattering to be up alongside the consistently great writing at Perceptive Travel. (Fresh issues come out every couple of months–well worth bookmarking.)

Dedicated readers of this blog will recognize this tale of steam-fueled woe from a research trip a couple of years ago. At least in this new iteration, you have a more coherent narrative, not to mention some very pretty pictures!

On a side note, I am under a gigantic deadline-gun, more of a deadline-RPG-launcher–hence the paltry posts. No one got Christmas cards, or even presents, from me either, so no sulking. Expect more action by February.

More on choosing a guidebook

Continuing on the theme of my Budget Travel piece on how to choose a guidebook, here’s a good piece comparing several books to the same destination: Guidebook Smackdown!

It was very interesting to see that Frommer’s ranked high for sharp opinion–I guess the only one I’ve read is the New Mexico one. Its first-person tone–which even includes the author’s childhood memories at certain points–drives me up the wall.

And since I just got done writing very, very short hotel reviews for Rough Guides, I guess the criticism is true. I swear, on the second edit, I will add more juicy details. But in about 30 words, that just means “plastic flowers galore” or something.

I’m driving around NM right now. Completely fried. Can’t even compose funny stories, because nothing fun has happened, because I’ve been driving too fast. Oh, except just FYI, Farmington is where all those trends you’ve read about in the newspaper are actually happening: scrapbooking stores, soup served in bread bowls, methamphetamine. I was there when the new 10-screen multiplex opened; the story in the newspaper lamented how the old 4-screen theater had opened just months before stadium seating was introduced–one trend that Farmington took a while to catch up on.

Keep an eye on this: Cancun on Foot

Back in New York now, after wrapping up the whole Mexico Adventure. The last night I was there, I had dinner with Jules Siegel and his wife, Anita Brown. The great privilege of being a guidebook author is that it gives me license to just email people on the pretext of “research” and demand to meet them.

Jules is the author of the Cancun User’s Guide, a really excellent book that singlehandedly changed my attitude of Cancun, by gently reminding me that Cancun is barely 30 years old, so of course it’s not pretty or historic, so just get over it–there are plenty of other great things, real Mexican things going on. Jules has been shopping a book called The Real Mexico for a while, which, ironically, he can’t seem to sell because no one can grasp the idea that some guy wearing a hard hat is more real Mexico than a guy wearing a sombrero. Which of course is the point. Sigh.

Anita takes photos, and she’s put a few of them up online. Like Jules, she has an affection for Cancun and an eye for the things that make it a whole, functioning city–not just the crazy resort Xanadu that exists in most people’s imagination. There are only a few pics up now, but check back–and while you’re on the site, read more about Jules’s book, or buy it online.

Missing the Boat

For everyone who doesn’t happen to know: I am blind in my left eye. This is a pretty recent development, but so far it doesn’t seem to have cramped my style–biking, driving, getting through crowds on the subway, no problem.

But this past Saturday, I realized just exactly how much I can miss. I was on Isla Mujeres, at the ferry dock to go back to Cancun. I’d arrived a little bit early for the 11:30 boat; I bought my ticket in a leisurely fashion, and then wandered over to read some assorted tourist info posted on the wall inside the little wood-frame shelter in front of the dock.

I was about one paragraph into a treatise on whale sharks when in my left ear someone said, “Hablas espanol?” I turned to see this guy right next to me, looking a little miffed that I’d been ignoring him. Yes, I speak Spanish, but I haven’t gotten around to figuring out how to explain that I can’t see you if you sneak up on my left side… Not worth it, in this case, as the guy was just trying to sell me a snorkel tour. I showed him my Cancun ticket and told him I was leaving, so no thanks, and he wandered away.

That was a little clue, of course, that I was not really getting the whole picture at the ferry dock. And I did check my watch and look around to assess the crowd. The boat would be arriving off to my left, I knew, but I figured I’d hear the ruckus caused by everyone boarding, and really, how could I miss a giant super-fast blue-and-yellow ferry?

So I went back to reading about how whale sharks are called “rasp-tooth” in Latin.

Then, just a few minutes later, I looked over to see the ferry pulling away.

Somehow, fifty people had boarded the thing in total silence, and the only person left was the guy who’d try to sell me on snorkeling. That jerk knew I had a ticket to Cancun, but did he happen to point out that the ferry was going? No, of course he didn’t–because he assumed I could see the boat just like everyone else.

So as I’m standing there gaping at the ass of the boat, Sr. Snorkel comes over to me, points at his watch and at the boat, and says, “Exacto! En Mexico, el barco esta exacto!” I swear he said “exacto” about eight times, as though to drive home the point that I was a lazy slug who couldn’t be bothered to get on a boat on time, and that I shouldn’t be assuming that I was in some slack country that didn’t follow schedules.

I just said, “Crap!” about eight times and stomped off.

The next boat left an hour later. I was still in a pretty bitter mood when I got on, but then some American guy kept talking to me, so I couldn’t stew anymore. I ended up giving him a ride to his hotel because it was raining. I didn’t tell him I couldn’t see so well either.

Stupid Resort Food

First, let me complain that my desk in this room at this brand-new luxury resort is too high. My shoulders are already starting to seize, so this should be a brief post.

I know I shouldn’t complain at all. I travel along the most beautiful stretch of beach in Mexico and visit the nicest hotels. Everyone tells me what a fabulous job I have. And I gently remind them that I have to stay at the crappy places as well, and eat at the crappy restaurants.

Which brings me to this evening’s topic.

I feel ill. I feel like perhaps my best course of action would be vomiting before bed, then getting a fresh start in the morning.

This of course isn’t how Miguel, the dining room manager at this resort where the desks are too high (or the chairs too low?), would want me to feel. And he did pointedly ask if there was something wrong with my pasta. But I couldn’t tell him what I was really thinking, because it would have taken too long.

So, lucky you. Here’s what happened:

Course one: three Baja California oysters. Turns out Baja isn’t known for its oysters. Plus, there was a little chunk of iceberg lettuce mixed in with one. And quite a lot of grit.

Course two: a “salad” that consisted of a bundle of lettuce and cress standing vertically on my plate. Alongside were arrayed a few slices of pear, a soupcon of blue cheese and three hazelnuts. Atop it all: raspberry goo.

Course three: alleged pesto pasta with scallops. No basil in sight. Instead: mushrooms! Plus, the barest hint of cooked green pepper, just enough to trigger the old school-lunch memories.

In the background through all this: crap piano music (inside) and crap violin playing (outside on the terrace, but unfortunately audible). A simultaneously bland and cloying white wine. Not in the background: my waiter, who was pretty much nowhere to be seen at any point.

The really depressing part of all this is that this isn’t the only place this is happening. Just a couple of nights ago, Tamara was moved to say, “Huh, I guess I understand bulimia a little better now,” after we’d suffered through a meal at what’s purported to offer the finest all-inclusive dining on this coast.

So, what, are we just hateful food snobs? I don’t think so. I don’t think you need a trained palate to realize that this simulacrum of high-end dining is complete bullshit. I don’t think the elderly couple sitting in front of me on the terrace tonight–she removed his reading glasses for him while he was eating–took any particular delight in receiving their lettuce in a vertical bundle.

But there are a lot of places like this. It’s one thing to pay medium-range money to spend a week at a resort living the way you imagine rich people might (that appeared to be the target market for the place two nights ago), but it’s quite another to shell out twice as much and still get such utterly dispiriting and even hateful food as I did tonight. The two-nights-ago place served items like foie-gras ice cream, which I can’t imagine Middle America really has much taste for, or even understands the culinary lineage that brought it to their plates. The [resort name here] is to El Bulli what H&M is to Prada…or perhaps something more like Alexander McQueen.

Eating the Stupid Resort Food–usually in a dining room that’s lit very badly, with music that’s atrocious–is like eating in Bizarro Gourmetlandia. All the details are there–Michelin credentials, vast wine cellar, sleek furniture, some sort of challenging foam or savory ice cream.

But then it’s just Not Quite Right, starting with the occasional incident of bad English: “chocolate mousse souffle with an idea of Black Forest,” “Freshly Oysters.” Then it goes very, very wrong, as when Tamara noticed (fortunately, before we’d ordered it) that the house red was Citra, the heinous jug wine that Ali serves at the KC, for when we’ve drunk through everything good we’ve brought ourselves.

But I’ve also visited some really fantastically high-quality hotels that happen to have exceptional food and service, and make it all seem effortless.

So who’s to blame? Well, scale, for one: these resorts are trying to feed 400 to 800 people a night, which must require some enormous appliance called the Blanderizer. And I’ll go back to being a food snob and assert that people just don’t fucking know any better–yet they don’t even realize they don’t know, which only makes it worse. And usually they’re on some kind of group travel deal, or their company is paying or whatever, so they’re less likely to dwell on bad things. And then there are the just-plain-bad chefs who think they’re fucking awesome–all those dudes in the chili-pepper pants who are stoked to get a job on a Caribbean beach with all these hot mamacitas running around.

Basically, what I’ve learned on this trip is that real rich people live very differently from how not-rich people imagine them to. They do not require attendants in white gloves who call them “Mister” and “Missus.” They do not need absurdly thick terrycloth robes–at least not in the tropics. And they do not eat vertical lettuce.

The Road to Punta Allen

This road stretches from the Tulum beach for about 50km to a village that sits at the very tip of a little strip of land. It is a known Bad Road. Halfway across the Yucatán, people are saying, “I hear they fixed up the road a little,” or “The road is really terrible now.” In Punta Allen, the 400 people who live there greet you by saying, “How was the road?”

There happens to be another way to get there—you take a tedious, rattly drive straight east from the main highway, and then get a boat across the bay. Because you have to stare straight ahead at the same scenery for hours, you get that optical illusion where the sky seems to be constantly receding. But then you get in the boat, and the bay is the palest turquoise and so clear you can see the bottom and the shadow of the boat, and the clouds are scudding across the sky just above the palm trees and so on. That’s where, two years ago, I was actually inspired to exclaim, “I love my job!”

This time, though, I thought I’d better drive The Road.

Even though I had rented the tiniest car available—not even a Dodge Atos, but a knockoff Dodge Atos.

Even though the rainy season still has not ended.

Even though the guy at the entrance to the nature reserve through which the road passes said, “You’re going to Punta Allen in that car?”

But for all the talk about the Bad Road, no one had ever explained to me just exactly in what way it was bad. A couple of times I’ve driven about 3km down the road past the nature reserve gate, and, yes, it was horrible, with these roller-coaster-like potholes, but if you just drove slowly, it was doable.

And I had all the time in the world, for once. I got started even earlier than I’d planned, and it was 10:30am when I passed the skeptical gate guy. I was guessing two, two and a half hours driving down, an hour around town, and then the drive back.

The road was bad. There were potholes, and pretty big puddles. There were a couple of muddy spots. But I kept it in second gear and kept my eye off the clock. But then, a little more than halfway into it, the pretty big puddles started getting bigger, to the point where there wasn’t dry land to keep one side of the car on. Soon, there was barely any dry land in between the puddles. And needless to say, I couldn’t see how deep they were. For some reason, I just kept driving through them, imagining that it couldn’t really get worse.

Finally, about 2km from town, the car stalled and wouldn’t restart. Miraculously, I happened to be on a tiny strip of dry land, rather than up to my axles in mud. After about half an hour, some guys came along and helped push my car out of the road. So I sat there, catching up on note-taking and so on, for a couple of hours while the engine dried out. By then I’d also readjusted my mental calendar to allow for spending the night in Punta Allen. By the next day, the water would be a little less, I reasoned, and I would’ve regained the nerve to drive out. Eventually, the engine started, and I rolled the last little stretch into town, to astonished cries of “You got here in that car?”

But that night the wind battered my little cabin, and it poured rain. When I woke up, the streets of Punta Allen, which had already been filled with puddles, were utterly swamped, just as the road had been. I walked around trying to find someone driving out, and this required walking through muddy water up to my knees—which means I surely managed to contract some horrible tropical flesh-eating worms. The low point was when I nearly stepped in some dog crap on a rare sidewalk, and thus destroyed the fantasy I’d built up about the water being just muddy, and nothing else. I slogged to the one place in town with a telephone and called Peter to whine, very briefly at satellite-phone rates, about my situation.

The story ends happily, though: I was able to secure passage out on the beer truck that happened to be making its monthly delivery, and the rental agency, amazingly, is retrieving the car, at no cost to me. (Although, as a side note, it turns out nothing has changed in Punta Allen, thus making my trip completely pointless.)

Most important, I was able to meet Tamara in Tulum as planned. Now she’s here, and that’s a whole other reason I probably won’t get around to blogging again for a bit.

More reasons why I haven’t been blogging

So I drove out of Campeche in one of those foolishly optimistic moods. I’d gotten an early start, only 45 minutes behind schedule after getting massively lost on my way out of town. (Note to tourism bureau: wacky, curvy perspective is not appreciated on city maps. I still have no idea how I got anywhere near the airport.)

I was aiming to cruise through Ciudad del Carmen (“Why are you going there?” asked every single person I mentioned it to. “It’s in the book. I have to go,” was my rather weak answer) and on through Escárcega, an equally unappealing town, and arrive at a little cabaña place near Calakmul by sundown.

Oh, folly. One can only ever be an optimist if one doesn’t look at a map and really assess distances. Anyway, all I saw in Cd. del Carmen was horrific traffic and the world’s creepiest Day of the Dead altar (piles of dirt arranged in a rectangle on the floor, with some candles set into it, and a row of black feathers dangling from twine at one end—is this really traditional, or does Carmen have a huge Goth scene?). All I saw in Escárcega was a marginally better new hotel.

And then it got dark, and there was construction of the sort that requires such dramatic rerouting that there are cans of burning oil set to mark the way. Coupled with the dense jungle, trucks roaring out of nowhere and the screeching of animals, it was the perfect setting for a slasher film. And there was rain.

Anyway, made it to the cabañas, then carried on the next day to Chetumal, the little border town that could. Ate the Best. Steak. Ever. at an Uruguayan restaurant, where I resolved yet again to book a ticket to Montevideo posthaste. Next day, the Costa Maya (Mahahual and Xcalak), where very strange things are being built at an alarming pace.

By then I was back on schedule and got cocky. I figured I could drive down to Punta Allen (look it up on a map) and back in one day, although my very own guidebook sternly advises you not to do this…

(More to come.)

Me in Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel

Well, the story is built on other guidebook authors’ wisdom, but I compiled this piece about what to look for in a guidebook. It’s also in the print version.

Let me just say, though, that through the vagaries of the magazine editorial process, not all of that text is mine. Of course my original version was a million times more nuanced and savvy and sparkling…but that’s what every writer thinks.

One piece of advice that did not make it in, which was funny because it was the crux of the original question from the editor (how can you tell whether a writer is faking it?), is to look for reviews of places that describe interactions with people or other commentary on decorating details and the like–that’s the best evidence a writer has actually sat in the restaurant and eaten a meal, rather than poked his head in and thought, “Looks passable.” Thanks to Bethany Ericsson, author of New England Cabins & Cottages, for that one.

Also, the whole explanation of copyright dates is slightly muddy. Let me make clear that every guidebook you buy is giving you information that’s at least a year old. There’s no getting around it (except with a clever update page like mine!). But, despite what the article says, you may very well want a book that’s a few years old, especially if it has the kind of background info you want and a writer whose taste matches yours. Moreover, for some destinations where things don’t change radically, it just doesn’t matter that much if you have an older book.

Many other witticisms from fellow writers failed to make the cut, unfortunately, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say we’re a bunch of geniuses with incredible insight into this complex and fascinating subcategory of the tourism industry.

Why haven’t I been blogging?

Believe you me, I have plenty of excuses.

First, you know, I was hard at work studying Spanish. Ahem. Actually, I was spending my evenings chatting with an excellent fellow student, as well as some fresh-faced young leftists, some savvy and entertaining local bloggers and a great hotelier who indulged my curiosity about Mérida’s elite by taking me to dinner at the see-and-be-seen resto (and who, incidentally, first got in touch with me because she read this blog, not even realizing I worked for Rough Guides!).

And by then, Peter was here for the weekend. We hit such hot spots as the town of Ticul, where we made ‘too cool for school’ jokes and attended the annual Expoferia de Zapatos (Ticul has a booming industry in tacky shoes). Hot-out-of-the-grease churros were eaten, as was a bacon-wrapped hot dog and enough other things to make us a little queasy. It was like going to the state fair, but with shoes instead of livestock. Then we bought a DVD which will probably not play on our home machine, which is maybe for the best because it’s kind of a rodeo snuff film—”Bulls Gone Wild,” essentially, a compendium of the most gruesome rodeo snafus. We were similarly fascinated by the video of the annual bullfight in some neighboring town, which appeared to be the local equivalent of that video of Astorians celebrating after Greece won the European Cup in 2004, but with a lot more mud.

After I dropped Peter off at the airport, I drove to Campeche, where I spent a day and a half in the most compulsive guidebook-author mode ever: I walked every single block of the center, marking each one off on my map as I went. It was very satisfying in a fifth-grade brain-teaser kind of way. Still, however, I managed to find only one more vaguely decent hotel.

Campeche’s tourist appeal has outpaced the hotel business—or at least the savory hotel business. There are still plenty of places to stay that, while they may be only M$120 a night, have a clientele consisting of gas-huffing youngsters and older men in yellowed wife-beaters, and bathrooms that have not seen a mop in decades. I know that some veteran travelers see these places as a personal challenge, and feel a little surge of excitement when they step into a windowless room where the walls are smeared with something that may or may not be blood. But I am not that traveler, and I don’t think I’m writing for that traveler—though feel free to correct me, and I will give you the address of Hospedaje Teresita.

It was unfortunate, then, when two nice young Swiss travelers—not of the hardy veteran variety—approached me just as I’d stepped out of there and asked if I knew where they could get a good cheap bed for the night. I knew that my hotel, the beloved Colonial, the only respectable place without a/c and all the other unnecessaries, was full, so I sent them off to the Monkey Hostel. (But then any goodwill I had earned that night was canceled out the next day when I gave them completely wrong info about the sound-and-light show. Not a disaster, but now they probably think I’m a total flake. Sorry, Swiss guys! I will never again pass on info that I have not verified in person that very day.)

Another unfortunate moment in Campeche: I returned from a tour of the gorgeous luxury hotel in town, for which I had carefully dressed in my nicest remaining clothes, and discovered that my zipper had been down the entire time. Now that’s class.

After Campeche, I set off into the wilds of southern Yucatán…details to follow.

Best. City. Ever.

I didn’t say it—the Merida city government did (OK, maybe just “best city in Mexico”). But if they hadn’t, I would have.

By happy chance, I arrived on a Sunday, which is when the central plaza downtown is closed to car traffic, food vendors set up shop all over, and live bands play.

Allow me to clarify: This happens every Sunday. And people come and hang out. It’s not like they went a few times, they’re over it, and who would want to hang out in the boring old downtown again. No, people show up, all dressed up, and dance to the bands, and eat panuchos and salbutes and churros and generally just enjoy life in a way you don’t see happening in, say, downtown St. Louis.

And actually, technically, there’s also sort of a party starting on Saturday night. And if I hadn’t shown up on Sunday, well, there’s also free music on Monday. Tuesday, too, for that matter, though I can’t remember precisely where. And on Thursday, there’s trova and dancing in the Parque Santa Lucia.

You get the picture—even though that’s not even getting into the fact that it’s the start of the fall cultural season, and you see all these people all gussied up in their Yucatecan finest (huipiles for the ladies, guayaberas for the gents) in front of Teatro Peón Contreras.

Anyway, that’s all fine and good, but then I was flipping through a magazine and saw an ad for the Mérida Bici-Ruta. Which appears to be simply that huge parts of the city are closed to car traffic on Sunday mornings, and you and your family are invited to ride your bikes in a “sane and safe environment.” Classy!

Then tonight I had the good fortune of getting to meet (and eat yummy tacos with–more later) the masterminds behind Yucatan Living, a quality website that magically seems to answer all my questions I didn’t know I had–a Magic 8 Ball for Mexico, if you will.

Not only had I just read all about the complexities of Mexican septic systems on their site, but I just came home tonight and saw they’ve got a whole post on the Bici-Ruta program, with pictures (dig that last guy’s ride!). To get an idea of the scale of the shut-down, imagine if Broadway in Manhattan were closed to car traffic between, say, 72nd Street and Union Square. Dreamy.

Check it out, American urban planners, and see what it might take to get inching toward Best City status…