Category: Travails of a Guidebook Author

Best. Avocado. Ever.

It was only a garnish with a plate of chicken, and it was only about a fifth of one, nowhere near the whole thing. But there it was, bright buttery yellow with a rim of delectable green, and it tasted so good.

So sweet, I could see immediately how tasty it would be as a sugary drink, say–something that had never occurred to me about avocadoes until a few years ago, when some Ecuadoran guy told me this was standard practice.

And I’d never imagine saying this was a positive, but it was a little watery, almost succulent. This wasn’t the typical I’m-so-rich-and-fatty boasting of your standard Haas. This av was more confident–it stood on its own, and it was very clearly a fruit, which isn’t usually obvious with a grocery-store avocado.

This all went down at the fantastic Restaurante Los Tres Reyes, in Tizimín. Ideally when you go, I would hope you get to see the bullfight on TV, and get the good waiter: an older guy with gray hair in a ponytail, thick glasses and a jaunty hat. He knows what you want, and he just gives it to you. He’s proud of the food: the handmade tortillas (you can hear the pat-pat-pat back behind the screen–and then see the operation when you duck back there to use the toilets), and the fried winter squash, and he just tells you to get the special, which in my case was pollo en pipian.

I was expecting a thick green sauce, but this was reddish and light and bright, a little earthy, but the taste of the chicken really stood out. This may have been a chicken I saw strutting around by a speed bump just hours before, for all I know. I’d be raving about the chicken if it weren’t for that avocado.

About two-thirds of the way through my chicken (a thigh, a leg and a wing), I realized I’d totally overlooked the black-bean soup. Which was also delicious. And did I mention the smoky habanero salsa? And of course fresh chips.

Oh, and I have a huge soft spot for ridiculous boasting in a restaurant context (viz. Kabab Cafe): Los Tres Reyes says, in very fancy Spanish, that at the turn of the millennium, it is proud to be serving its fine customers, and testifies that it will serve them until the year 3000. And its food is “tradicional, tipica, regional, nacional, internacional, mundial e interplanetaria.” I can repeat this because my lovely waiter gave me a souvenir business card, after a brief lecture on the health benefits of chaya (a great leafy green that grows everywhere here), as well as an utterly perfect little cup of coconut pudding, flecked with chewy bits of coconut flesh and served with a shaker of cinnamon, so I could season as I pleased.

And was I ever pleased, as is abundantly clear by now. The trouble with Los Tres Reyes is that it’s in Tizimin, which is just a big cow town, and sometimes where people change buses. It’s genuinely worth getting off the bus for, but I doubt anyone will. Basically, the chance of any tourist not traveling in his own car, and not utterly obsessed with food, actually going to this place is nil. But for those who do: make sure you get some avocado on the side.

And then a snake dropped out of the ceiling.

It was shaping up to be a really less-than-action-packed trip, but then, on the last day, the snake thing happened.

I’d actually gotten done with my planned itinerary early. This absolutely never happens, which makes me wonder if I totally overlooked a page in the atlas. Beverly and I were a full day ahead of schedule when we rolled into Chama.

I had thought Chama was kind of a big deal, tourism-wise, because the cool old Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad starts there. Well, there’s that–but only that, and it turns out that railfan tourism isn’t really the bonanza I thought it was. Just because I like trains doesn’t mean lots of other people do too. Odd. Anyway, we visited all the motels and lodges and I took some pictures of the train, and we had pretty much done Chama in about three hours.

In the process, I happened to encounter my first real live case of meth mouth. Like Republicans, tweakers are a phenomenon you hear spine-tingling tales of terror about in New York City—usually via public radio—but you never see them in real life. But unlike Peter’s kindly Republican friends in Baltimore, this chick who was the caretaker at a Lodge That Shall Not Be Named (But Has Very Big Trees Out Front and Is Named for Them) did not make me feel as though there was hope for all humanity to live as one. I checked my wallet, and backed away when she coughed her hacking cough.

So that was Chama. The antidote to the speed-freak encounter was a very pleasant dinner in a place called Marion’s, where the waitress squeezed us on the shoulder a lot and the view was lovely. And then we split, and drove back home that very night.

What I’m getting around to saying is that this left me with a whole two extra days of unscheduled fun. I spent one day tooling around Albuquerque and checking up on things, and the next we bundled in the car and went down to the Salinas mission ruins around Mountainair.

To get off track again, let me just add that I was exceedingly grumpy about being accompanied. I can’t ever decide whether it’s better to have people along on a research trip (staves off total boredom) or go it alone (much faster, and sometimes cheaper, but you can’t drive and take notes at the same time). Invariably, whichever way it is, I’m always wishing it was the other. So on this last day of work, I was looking forward to just zipping out and doing it quick, and maybe listening to the radio really loud in the car.

But if Casey and Beverly hadn’t come, they wouldn’t have been there in the Shaffer Hotel dining room in Mountainair with me, ogling the beautifully carved and painted ceiling. The Shaffer is this great old Pueblo Deco building that was just renovated and opened in December ’05. About 10 minutes after I’d finishing writing in my notebook, “carved wood ceiling crawling with turtles, lizards, birds and snakes,” we heard this light smacking noise and looked over. A snake—an actual live one—had fallen out of the ceiling and was sitting there, stunned, on the table.

Sure, it was a very, very small snake, as big as my hand. And just a garter snake, not anything venomous. And it didn’t fall on our table—it fell on a table over by the window, where no one was sitting.

Casey nipped over and picked it up and then he went to show the kitchen staff. That wouldn’t have been my first move, because not everyone in the world has been raised not to fear snakes. But fortunately no one in the kitchen got too hysterical, and our waitress said, “Yup. At least it wasn’t a rattler.”

Oh, fair New Mexico. We love, we love you so.

Clayton, I’m so sorry.

I take it all back. Any snippiness about cowtowns and slow Friday nights–forget I ever said it.

Now I’m in Raton, NM, and it’s a Saturday night, and there’s not even a movie like Step Up to go see. Because the goddamn movie theater is closed.

Beverly and I were barely able to get dinner. Options included the steak-and-chops family place, and the steak-and-chops more-adulty place, and the Pizza Hut. Finally some extremely nice guys reopened their restaurant (La Casita on 1st St.) to feed us. Fortunately, it was extremely fantastic, or I would’ve had a breakdown right there. My carne adovada was deliciously porky and endorphin-fueling spicy, and we got two sopaipillas each. Amen.

Raton won’t even have a chance to redeem itself tomorrow, because it’s Sunday, and it looks like absolutely everything is shut. Well, really, it looks like everything is shut right now, and it’s Saturday night. There aren’t even lights on in people’s houses, and zero traffic on the streets. It’s creepy. Either the rapture came, or they went to Colorado to go to the movies.

Anyway, I’m a little worried about breakfast tomorrow, but at least we’ve got a little safety net in our dinner leftovers. Monday: Taos, and I know that place has a multiscreen movie theater. Jackass 2, I will see you yet.

The day before

Like I said, it wasn’t so thrilling. In fact, I wrote about it last night, then I lost interest, so I saved the post…or so I thought.

The only two moments I want to recreate are:

1) The super-intense (and very knowledgeable) woman at the tourist office in Las Vegas telling me that she’s a big supporter of the Jews, because, well, without the Jews, there wouldn’t be any Bible. Then she told us some anecdote involving a child saying something cheeky-but-oh-so-true about Jesus. This came up because we’d asked the whereabouts of a Jewish cemetery someone had mentioned to us earlier.

2) We stopped at a U-pick raspberry farm, and got some raspberries. They were good and all, but that’s not the point. More fascinating: I believe this is the first time I’ve ever been doing guidebook research and gotten somewhere during the correct season. I am forever peering in windows at dustcloth-covered furniture, taking photos where I hope the “closed” sign isn’t too obvious, and wrapping my sweater tighter around me as I look out at the lovely Caribbean Sea.

It’s an extension of a road trip I took with my friend Chris in college, where we drove all over the South and managed to hit every scenic spot after the sun had gone down. Oh, and we were in the botanical gardens in Birmingham way too early in the spring. If I’d known my life would continue to be like that, I think I might’ve not bothered to renew my passport, and maybe gotten a library job like I’d been considering.

On my next trip, I’ll actually be in Mexico for the Day of the Dead. Could this be the start of a new era?

Clayton, Clayton, Clayton (big sigh)

Yesterday was only mildly more entertaining, but today–hoo-ee. Hold me back. Rrrowwr. Crrrraaaazy times. Yee-haw. Etc., etc.

I’m in the cow town of Clayton, NM, just a few miles from the Oklahoma panhandle, and although I sound catty, it’s only to disguise the fact that I’m crying inside.

I just went to the Luna Theater to see the forgettable Step Up, because that’s what was playing, and it was only $5. Junior Mints were $1.50. There were only about five other people in this giant theater with a beautiful velvet curtain from the 1930s, and groovy Deco-era wall sconces and gorgeous hardwood floors. It was easy to find the theater, because Clayton has about two streets, and one traffic light. No one was at the movie, it turns out, because they’re all at the high school football game. And when we came out into the damp, cool night, you could definitely smell the cows.

What must it be like to grow up here? I was pretty isolated as a kid, but nothing like this. We could at least drive to Albuquerque. From here, the big city is Las Vegas–Las Vegas, New Mexico, that is. And that’s where you’ve got to go if you want to see Jackass 2. Believe you me, Beverly and I were quite bitter to be driving out of Vegas today when we saw that new movie on the marquee at the other theater (the one that’s open, not the Serf).

Also, as we were driving out into the open prairie, we heard, ever more faintly on the AM station, about the great mariachi concert we were missing, and the fiesta and parade tomorrow, and so on and so on.

By the time we rolled into Clayton, it was just static, and we had to entertain ourselves by reminiscing about the last time we were in this part of the state, a good 14 years ago. It was a day drive that’s stuck with us only because it was so monumentally boring: all we did was maybe climb over a fence somewhere, not get let into a bar in Roy because we had my under-18 brother with us, and then, right before we turned around in despair, ran over a snake by accident. I still feel bad.

But here in the present, we’re in Clayton for the night, and we’re staying in hands-down the nicest hotel around. It’s almost ridiculous how much nicer it is than anything else. And they keep laying on the details–like, do they really need the scrolling sign that crows, “Our staff has 160 years of experience!” Dude, you have a light in your reception, and the doors aren’t falling off the hinges–you win, OK? Just chill.

I’m leaving out the other nice hotel, the Eklund, because I haven’t checked that out yet, but honestly, even if it does have historic charm, it is still getting its ass kicked by the Best Western in everything but the historic charm department.

I haven’t seen the Eklund’s rooms because I found myself in a weird ethical bind earlier. See, the Eklund is also about the only place to eat in town, so I didn’t want to march in and ask to see rooms, and then go eat dinner, because my cover would be blown, and they might be all fawning at dinner (or worse, they wouldn’t), and it would be awkward.

But then we had to send the trout back because it tasted like dirt (what is up with that? Is every fish in the world now farmed in a squalid box of muck?), which no one could really grasp. “Well, uh, if you order the fried fish, it doesn’t taste so fishy,” said one waitress with an apologetic shrug. “Not fishy,” Beverly said. “DIRTY.”

Meanwhile, my steak, which had probably been part of a cow that contributed to the very manure I’m smelling now, was delicious. We ate our baked potatoes in foil, and drank our half-carafe of house red (we spent a little extra to get the next up from Inglenook), and reminisced about how this, plus fried zucchini, was the height of dining fashion in the 1970s. Then we tipped big and ran across the street to the movies.

But it was a minor scene. And seeing how there are eight people in this town, it’ll be a little weird to march in there tomorrow and ask to see some rooms. “Oh that’s why she thought our fish was dirty,” they’ll whisper. “She’s some big-city writer type. Mmm-hm.”

Oh well. Then we’ll blow on out of here, and they’ll stay right where we left them. I just hope some better movies come to town.

New Mexico, land of contrasts

Sorry, I was just doing some research on Palancar Reef in Mexico, and came across one of those horrifically cliched-many-times-over bits of travel writing that make you wonder if it’s being done Mad Lib-style:

Cozumel is an island of contrasts. It is a quaint and timeless village, a charming mix of Mayan and Mexican cultures. It is a modern resort, assuring the services and amenities today’s sophisticated traveler appreciates. It is white-sand beaches and rocky coves fringing a vast uninhabited jungle. But most of all, Cozumel is turquoise, tepid waters and fabled reefs.

Really? “X is a Y of contrasts” is to travel writing as “The X was a revelation” is to food writing. Banned.

(But then I also read this and cringe a little, because I’ve certainly thought about places being full of contrasts. It’s hard not to when you see a donkey next to a Mercedes, for instance. So when you’re writing something like that, it at least seems true. And I also cringe because I have a feeling I’ve used the phrase “vast uninhabited jungle” at some point. Mental note: pencil in self-flagellation.)

Anyway, that’s not really what I came here to complain about today. In fact, my main complaint is that it’s Day 1 of my second New Mexico research trip, and already I’m gripped with paralyzing jadedness. Southwest NM, which I toured in April/May and only just recently finished writing up, was interesting at first, but eventually became a tortuous exercise in describing ghost towns–there are scads of them down there, all with the same “and then 1893 happened, and the place went bust” story (1893 was the silver devaluation). Now here I am in the opposite corner, the northeast, and I’m dreading the tales of dead railroading towns I’m going to encounter.

I’m in Las Vegas, NM, which is the polar opposite of “Vegas, baby” Vegas. There are no high rollers here, no players, no glittering lights. The movie theater is named the Serf. I’m not sure why. But it does seem like the least glamorous name you could choose. Also, alas, it looks like it was last open when In Her Shoes was playing. I have not seen any of the actors from Red Dawn prowling the streets (it was shot here), but I have seen lots of guys in with mustaches. In fact, they’re all downstairs in Bucky T’s Saloon, in the lobby of my hotel.

Early this afternoon, Beverly and I wound our way up Hwy. 14 (aka the Turquoise Trail) and through the town of Pecos, and then cruised Villanueva State Park. We didn’t want to backtrack, so I scouted out a little dirt road to get us back to I-25. We drove and drove, and eventually came to the village of El Cerrito, which was pretty hardcore, because when you think about it, there are very few communities in the U.S. today that cannot be accessed by at least one paved road–especially in regions where it snows heavily in the winter. The whole place was built of adobe bricks and tin roofs–in that respect, it looked like a village in the Pyrenees, where everything is made of the same material. A guy with a mustache in a pickup truck told us we couldn’t go on–never mind what the map said, there was no more road.

So we drove back and back and back, and then got back on I-25, and I have to say, that stretch between Santa Fe and Las Vegas is one of the dullest in the state. For about two minutes, you’re thinking, Wow, rolling plains! And look at that big sharp ridge way over there! And then you’re settled in, and nothing changes for the next 45 minutes.

It was around then that Beverly said, “OK, I think I’ve seen about enough of the rest of New Mexico. Can we go home now?”

I know this is not the boundless curiosity that people want in their guidebook authors, but we all have our bad days. Las Vegas is quite pretty, and I’m suprised it’s not more gallerified than it already is, given its proximity to Santa Fe. (Must be that dull, dull drive.) I won’t even mention dinner, because it was also quite dull.

Tomorrow will be a livelier day, I trust. Land of contrasts, don’t you know…

Yahoo! Travel: Discovering Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula

The Rough Guide to the Yucatan gets a moment in the spotlight over on Yahoo! Travel, in this interview I did with Rolf Potts. Assorted travel tips for beaches and ruins, plus what to eat where.

Alas, the update page for the book isn’t mentioned, but it should be: go to www.roughguideyucatan.com for recent changes in the Yucatan. I’ll be adding a lot more in October when I go on my next research trip for The Rough Guide to Mexico.

Well said, Robert Reid: why be a guidebook writer?

Intrepid Lonely Planet writer Robert Reid has a great statement about the perils and pleasures of guidebook writing on his website (you’re looking for the page title ‘This Is Work’). Also check out his great “Moustache Blog” about his travels in Russia.

His thoughts on the influence of guidebook authors dovetails nicely with the current post on Killing Batteries, though Leif phrases it as “The sickening power of the guidebook author”.

Maybe it’s because these guys have both worked in super-sketchy Eastern Europe, or that they write for the company with the strongest name recognition in the budget-travel world, but I think they have more sickening power than I do. The words “Rough Guides” have never inspired any Mexican tourism professionals to fall to their knees and grovel, alas (although I have been told how beautiful I am on several occasions, which is quite nice). And the words “Moon Handbooks” have actually led to a door being slammed in my face and double-locked in Albuquerque, but I think that says a lot more about Albuquerque than it does about the publisher.

Aside from that little interlude, though, I have been treated with respect, but not outright fawning–and really, that’s ideal. Equally important, I’ve been given all kinds of weird gossip, advice and guidance–some of it spurious, but mostly useful and occasionally titillating.

See, most people can’t help themselves from revealing their little travel tips. In Taos, I happened upon a drunk man pondering the recent death of a friend on a dangerous curve over the river. He was in a very philosophical mood for a bit, but he turned practical when I happened to mention the work I was doing: “Hey, there’s a great secret waterfall up the road from Arroyo Seco…” he began, and he went on to give me precise mileage and landmarks. I didn’t have time to check it out, though, so his secret hangout spot with his old high-school buddy has not been revealed in the pages of Moon Santa Fe, Taos & Albuquerque.

And that’s why I do this job: I absolutely must give advice if someone asks. If I had found this guy’s secret waterfall, and it was super-cool, I would’ve had to tell the world. People always wonder how I walk that line: Do I “spoil” a place by revealing that I like it? I bet I have all kinds of little secret spots I never share with anyone…

Oh, gimme a break–of course I tell. That’s my job, and I’m such a know-it-all expert that it gratifies me no end to think I’m giving my readers the scoop.

How did I get to be like this? In grade school, of course, I was always the “I-know-I-know-I-know” kid with my hand in the air, but then I quit that in mid school when I realized people would like me better if I kept my mouth shut. I suppressed my answer urge for years, and then, just after college, I was given a fateful opportunity in Amsterdam: I was hired as the cafe operator/sandwich maker/welcome party at now-venerable Boom Chicago. At the time, Boom was in its second year, and it was supposedly part of my job to wrangle unsuspecting hungry tourists in to see the show. I was terrible at this. Sales is not my game. Part of the luring, though, was through my being friendly and giving tourist advice.

I’d been in Amsterdam for exactly two days when someone asked me if the Rijksmuseum was worth a visit or not. “Of course, but avoid the crowds by checking out the dollhouse section!” I must’ve read that in some other guidebook…or God was speaking through me. So, this happened on a daily basis, with me blithely giving advice about a city that I’d only just arrived in. I’d like to publicly apologize to all those people I directed toward the bike route in Amsterdam Noord by saying the path was really well marked. It wasn’t, I discovered when I finally went up there about a month into my stay. And those people may very well have wanted to come back to see the Boom Chicago show, but were probably just too damn lost to make it. So, a public apology to the Boom executives as well, although it’s kind of their fault for hiring me. But don’t worry–by the time I actually wrote a guidebook to Amsterdam, I really had visited everything and looked for bike-path signs.

Incidentally, one of the people I ended up being very friendly to that summer was a broke and exhausted writer for the Let’s Go guide to Europe. He publicly revealed this fact early in our conversation (“I’m writing for Let’s Go, and it totally sucks, and I’m totally broke and exhausted!” was kind of how it went). Then sales mode was quite easy: many free beers and lots of advice later, the author was already penning a draft review of Boom. The final writeup was several lines longer than the description of the Eiffel Tower. I never did check to see what he said about the bike route in Amsterdam Noord, but I always think of that guy when I’m tempted to gripe about my job to strangers while I’m on the road.

Looking back, I see it’s lucky I ended up in this job. Otherwise I’d be one of those annoying people who give you wrong directions, just because they don’t want to say they don’t know.

Back to France: the andouillette and me

Working my way backward through meals eaten, I’ll mention our sojourn in France first. After stuffing ourselves with amazingly good raspberries and peaches, as well as cheese fondue, in Geneva, we departed for Lyon with our college friend Chris and her family.

Seeing how our first visit to France on this trip was accidental, yet still yielded tasty food at the buffet of the stranded-air-travelers hotel, and this time we were visiting the real gastronomic heart of France on purpose, I had high hopes. The trip was also on short notice, so I quickly culled restaurant recommendations and names of local must-try dishes from reputable Internet sources like eGullet, as well as from the slimmest of French acquaintances.

The first night we headed out to the nearest recommendation to our hotel, La Machonnerie. It was August 1, so that very morning, apparently, the Vacation Rapture had happened. Vieux Lyon was empty, and so was the restaurant, except for an older couple with their dog.

When I expressed interest in trying the most traditional items, the friendly chef/host began to sell me in French, and I gave up trying to translate, and just put my faith in him. Chris leaned over and murmured, “That’s brains, you know.” What the heck–I’ve got nothing against brains, and if I’m going to eat them, I may as well eat them in France, right? I nodded and smiled at the chef.

As we neared the main course, anticipation–and jokes–were mounting at the table. Juan had gotten the hard sell on the tablier de sapeur, some special preparation of tripe. Fellow eaters who’d ordered based on what sounded good, rather than Lyon reputation, got their duck breasts and sausages and lentils. Juan’s plate arrived, looking like an innocuous bit of, essentially, tripe schnitzel. Finally my dish came, last, with great fanfare, ladled like a big cauliflower out of a cast iron pot of steaming broth. A beady-eyed crawdad sat next to it, egging me on with its little claws.

I was grossly full from my previous course of fried pig foot (the fat goes great on bread!). But I dug into my dish, surprised by the texture, and slightly puzzled by the crayfish broth, which didn’t seem like the most logical companion for veal brains. I managed to eat about half of my weird white orb, and then sat back, sweating, while everyone else chowed down on succulent duck breast, sausages, and incredibly savory lentils.

The next day, when we were in Les Halles, which had also experienced the Vacation Rapture, the one food shop that was open was selling shrink-wrapped quenelles, which is what I’d had the night before. They looked nothing like brains, and in fact seemed to contain some sort of seafood. And then right next to it was a big tub of the local specialty cervelles de canut, which is some cheese thing that I knew meant, literally, “silk-weaver’s brains.”

Oh. Duh. Cervelles. Quenelles. I’d spent a whole dinner thinking I was eating some exotic bit of animal, and really I was just hacking away at a giant fish dumpling.

So the next night, we go to another neighborhood joint. I’d read somewhere that Chez Bobosse was a reputable local producer of a Lyonnaise specialty called andouillette, so when I saw that on the menu, the choice was clear. Some kind of artisanal sausage would be just the antidote for my brain/not-brain experience from the night before.

Again, my plate arrives last. It’s a sizzling cast-iron gratin dish, about one-quarter occupied by a stubby little sausage-like form bathed in a mustard sauce. And it smells exactly like the Metro station we just walked past to get to the restaurant. Which is to say: like pee.

I can’t remember the last time I was simply unable to eat something. Out of politeness and general optimism, I will try whatever is placed in front of me. And I gamely tried my andouillette, despite its toxic smell. Even swathed in huge lashings of mustard sauce, it tasted like pee–or what I would imagine pee to taste like.

And it was a rather odd sausage: its filling was not ground up, but more just long shreds of things loosely gathered together in a casing that was quite stretchy and gummy. It was a uniform grayish color. Even after I managed to choke down about half of it, its evil smell continued to waft up, and I had to gulp my wine to counteract it. I walked home feeling exceptionally nasty.

The next day I stuck to recognizable pastries and sandwiches, and the day after that, I looked andouillette up online. Turns out it’s all pig intestine: chitlins wrapped up in more chitlins.

I just had no idea the French could do me so wrong. I know the French eat a lot of odd parts of animals, and I respect that. But I just assumed they know what they’re doing, and actually make those odd parts delicious.

In fact, though, I now see that even French cuisine includes things that fall under the category of “acquired taste.” All those people on eGullet who were gushing about andouillette must either have been fed the stuff from birth, or are really just huge Francophile posers who lord their tolerance of obscure foods over those with allegedly more pedestrian tastes. What I can’t understand is why I would ever cultivate a taste for something that makes me think of a subway tunnel on a hot day.

I was just about to compare these hook-line-and-sinker Franco-freaks to those people who speak rapturously about how phenomenal sea urchin is. But then I remembered I had some really amazing sea urchins in Greece–and that’s a separate story.