Category: Mexico

March 14, 2011

5 Essential Travel Strategies

Recently, a friend suggested I write a book about how I travel. But I doubt I’m the only person who thinks this way, and it doesn’t really merit 200 pages of musing. And I’m happy to give away my so-called wisdom for free. These are the things I tend to do on the road. How about you?

Rule #1: Accept any FOOD you’re given.
Food is the easiest, most concrete way to make a connection with someone with whom you might not share anything but this moment when you’re both munching on pig-blood-soaked coconut and smiling at each other. It doesn’t matter whether you don’t speak the same language, or live under different political systems or whatever.

Besides, refusing food is just rude. Somebody is being hospitable in the most fundamental way they know–offering you something that will keep you alive.

Vegetarian? You can be veg when you order your own food. But when someone shares his plate with you at a restaurant, or gives you a free kabob just because you smile sweetly and say thank you in the local language–just take it. You’ll live.

So you might get sick. Big deal. You’ll get over it–and you’ll even have another good story to tell. (Celiac–fine, you get a pass.) Just smile, say thanks and eat the thing. You might even like it. (I liked that pig-blood stuff! Who knew?)

January 31, 2011

Mexico #6: Back Roads

I love that even though the Yucatan has very few roads, and I’ve been down there more than a dozen times, there are still some roads I haven’t been on. Such as the road between Valladolid and Izamal, which passes through the village of Uayma. Where there’s this:

I also had time to poke around bits of Valladolid I hadn’t had time to see before–like the portrait gallery on the second floor of city hall.
Read more

January 24, 2011

Mexico #5: Snack Break!

OK, time for less narrative, more pretty pictures.

Bees swarm the displays of sweets in every market. I always thought people must bring the bees with them, and put them out to show off how sweet their treats are. I mean, where the hell are the bees coming from in the middle of the city? But then I saw a girl with a fly whisk actually trying to brush them away. (I guess every other vendor has just given up.) And then I noticed bees on flowers in someone’s teeny front-almost-all-concrete-patch of a yard. The ancient Maya kept bees and traded honey. Those bees are here to stay.

Here’s another Hanal Pixan specialty, mucbipollo. It’s a big ol’ tamale, studded with black beans and chicken.

We stopped at the market in Oxkutzcab–I’ve never been there early enough to see much action. But in the morning, the whole front area is filled with people selling oranges and flowers wholesale. Inside are snack and craft vendors. And this woman, selling delicate thin disks of chocolate, patted out by hand like tortillas. Her fingerprints were in every one.

The chocolate was completely bitter, and so intense as to be medicinal. Good medicinal.

Just across from her sat a woman shelling xpelon, the little black beans eaten everywhere in the Yucatan:

Not all tradition is good. I see this stuff everywhere too, and it fills me with horror.

I believe it’s white bread slathered with some kind of mayo-y treatment, and studded with canned peas. Hilarious, in an El-Bulli-wait-I-thought-this-was-going-to-be-something-normal mindf**k way.

Here’s some slightly more high-brow junk food:

Poblano pepper stuffed with cream cheese (most beloved cheese of the Yucatan, aka queso Filadelfia) and shrimp, and–yeah, baby–battered and deep-fried. Tastes great even if you’re drinking some healthy green juice instead of your ninth beer of the night.*

And…well…just this:

*Wondering where to get the deliciousness? Check Pescaditos, in Cancun. Details in my Cool Cancun & Isla Mujeres iPhone app.

*Flickr set from this trip
*Mexico #1: Where the Party at?
* Mexico #2: Partying on…and on
*Mexico #3: Party Favors
* Mexico #4: Howdy, Cowboy
* Mexico #6: Back Roads

January 17, 2011

Mexico #4: Howdy, Cowboy

In Tizimin, I was driving around the main square, and I noticed there was an awful lot of horse shit in the street. “What happened here?” I wondered out loud. “Did we just miss a parade?”

That was a little bit of a joke for my mom, who was in the passenger seat. See, she and my brother* are all nature-y, and go hiking around in the woods looking for animal dung so they can figure out what the animals have been up to. So I was being an urban tracker. I started following the horse shit, but soon I lost the trail, and I had to check the bus schedules anyway.

As we were driving out of town, we found the parade. Or we found the tail end of it–a huge mob of people on horseback, waiting for the procession to move forward. It was a good two blocks of horses, all edging and prancing and shuffling around. Moms, kids, and loads of cowboys were all saddled up and ready to ride.

I’ve never seen so many horses in the Yucatan. Aside from the Pollo Vaquero logo, you just don’t see a lot of cowboy imagery in the Yucatan. That whole open-plains, rope-and-ride, oompah-music kind of scene doesn’t happen here, because there aren’t a lot of cows.

Except for around Tizimin. I’m not sure how or when the ranching industry got started here, but the forest has been cleared, and I guess cows graze around in the tall greenery somewhere–I haven’t actually seen a lot of them, but I have eaten their meat, at an excellent restaurant in Tizimin. It was heartwarming, seeing all this Western wear–plaid shirts, big hats. I grew up around that, and even if I’m a city slicker now, I do like horses. If my previous posts were about seeing odder things than expected, this afternoon was all about being surprised by a more familiar thing.

And then, this guy. He looks completely Arab, and not just because he was a foot taller than everyone there. Lebanese and Syrians came to the Yucatan in the early 20th century. This guy’s family must’ve gotten into ranching at some point.

You might’ve noticed a lot of beer cans in the previous photos. Yup, a beer company was sponsoring the whole shindig. These guys just skipped the horses and rode the truck.

I’m a terrible reporter. I have no idea what the parade was for (though we did see a statue of the Virgin being carried down one of the streets). I just liked the pretty horses.

*Regular readers of this blog may know, but it never hurts to remind: my brother just wrote a great book for hiking around in the woods looking for other animal sign: Bird Feathers: A Guide to North American Species.

*Flickr set from this trip
*Mexico #1: Where the Party at?
* Mexico #2: Partying on…and on
*Mexico #3: Party Favors
* Mexico #5: Snack Break!
* Mexico #6: Back Roads

January 10, 2011

Mexico #3: Party Favors

Beyond Hanal Pixan, fall is dotted with village fiestas and fairs of all sorts. Izamal is notorious for having some kind of festivity from mid-October straight on through December. When we passed through, it was the season for gremios, which pilgrimages to the church, made by each trade syndicate, such as engineers, taxi drivers, etc. Each syndicate dresses up in all their Mayan finery, parades to the churchyard, does some dances, and then parades off to some block party somewhere. If you follow the parade, by all reports, you’ll wind up at a pretty serious throwdown.

The whole parade-and-dancing part of it takes quite a while, as there’s lots of stops, and someone setting off fireworks the whole time. (I guess this lets you know where the parade is at any given time? Bottle rockets as GPS pings?) I was pretty impressed with just how much dancing was involved once I laid eyes on a guy with a big platter on his head. Damn! He had to hold onto that platter with one raised arm through all the dances! My muscles started seizing up in sympathy.

But the guy looked so cheerful. His white teeth were gleaming, under his nicely trimmed little mustache, and his eyes were all atwinkle. Once I got up close to him, I saw why he was so delighted.

He had a pig head on his own head!

OK, this kind of thing is exactly what I love about the Yucatan. Everything’s pretty mellow, and I basically know what’s going on. It’s not like you’re in an obviously trippy place–people aren’t dressed up in crazy masks and taking peyote. So just when I think everything’s kind of familiar and pretty…some dude starts dancing with a roasted pig’s head!

The previous post was another example of this same blindsiding-with-bizarre. It turns out it’s worth spending so much time in visiting a place not so you actually get to know it, but so you think you’ve gotten to know it–and then are even more boggled by the oddities.

These, on the other hand, are totally normal party elements in Izamal:

*Flickr set from this trip
*Mexico #1: Where the Party at?
* Mexico #2: Partying on…and on
* Mexico #4: Howdy, Cowboy
* Mexico #5: Snack Break!
* Mexico #6: Back Roads

January 3, 2011

Mexico #2: Partying on…and on

Another thing I’ve noticed about parties in Mexico is that they really seem to go on much longer than you’d think. Carnaval, for instance, can carry on into Lent if you live in a very small town and have to wait for the thrill rides and the rest of the traveling fair to get to you. And most holidays get started at least the night before the supposed date.

And Hanal Pixan dragged on well past November 2. Four days later, my mother and I stopped off at Hacienda Chichen, the super-swanky old hotel next to Chichen Itza. It’s a bellhops-in-white-gloves kind of place. Here’s the entrance:

We weren’t there to stay, believe you me. Instead, we were looking for Jim Conrad, aka the Backyard Naturalist. My mother is a devotee of his weekly email newsletters, and knew he was living on the hacienda property. We had a 20-minute window in our schedule. In the hotel lobby, I asked where we might find him. “Oh, the man who walks around in the forest taking pictures of plants?” said the glove-clad man at the door. “Right this way…”

He sauntered down the front steps, across the lawn and out through a gate in a wall…and just up the path was a traditional Maya-style hut. And sitting in front of the hut, reading a book and sipping a mug of some hot drink, was Jim Conrad himself. It was exceptionally cold around this time–I mean relatively, maybe 70, but this was enough to prompt the Yucatan government to start emergency cold-weather services, dropping off blankets and sweaters in small villages. Jim was all bundled up in a sweater over several layers, but barefoot. He didn’t exactly look like your typical Hacienda Chichen guest.

I wish I’d taken photos–I know my mom would’ve liked to have a pic with him, but she’ll probably see him again soon enough, as their nature-education paths cross in a big way. But even photos might not convey the surreal quality of seeing Jim in his super-traditional hut just around the wall from the resort lobby. I spend my working life in Mexico interacting only with the public face of fancy hotels. It felt very Scooby Doo, somehow, to slip out of that world just by walking behind a wall. But then, all resorts have that quality a bit–you know there’s an entirely different story there, going on beyond your own weeklong vacation.

I asked Jim about a forest fruit I’d heard of, a pinuela, sort of a wild pineapple. He took us up to the next clearing to see one that was bearing fruit right then.

Doesn’t it look just a little like something out of Alien?

The fruit was tart and seedy, but also succulent. If I were stuck in the woods with not much to eat, I’d be glad to have it.

While Jim was explaining his theory that perhaps the lords of Chichen Itza had cultivated special versions of plants in pleasure gardens around the site, some hotel staff in uniforms came into the clearing and started digging a hole in the ground. Actually, they’d already dug the pit–now they were just uncovering it.

The men dug out a big stash of tamales. I thought they must be for some hacienda feast, but the guys said they were for “rituals.” Related to Hanal Pixan, they said, but didn’t explain.

Off they want with their stash of tamales, and Jim said, “Oh, yeah–the guy who brought you over here”–the lobby greeter in the gloves–“he’s the big shaman for the community.”

Until then, I’d known in theory that Maya rituals and culture were still strong. But I’d never seen it so clearly, the continuity, right next to Chichen Itza, even as a whole tourist infrastracture had been plopped down around and in between them, even as everyone got dressed in industrial-grade poly-blend khaki slacks and snap-close short-sleeve shirts.

I can’t extrapolate much more from the moment, as I didn’t get to talk to these guys more than a few words. But I treasure every single reminder I get that a place or a culture doesn’t exist to entertain tourists. It’s just there, and sometimes the best way to see it is to not even try.

*Jim Conrad is on call for nature tours, even if you’re not staying at the hacienda. Drop him a note via his website, and don’t listen to him if he says you shouldn’t pay him. You should. Knowledge should be rewarded.

*Flickr set from this trip
*Mexico #1: Where the Party at?
*Mexico #3: Party Favors
* Mexico #4: Howdy, Cowboy
* Mexico #5: Snack Break!
* Mexico #6: Back Roads

December 31, 2010

Top 10 Reasons Not to Complain about 2010

A lot of people say, “Wow, Zora—you have so much going on! Food! Travel! Your job is so fabulous!”

It’s true–there’s a little fabulousness. But what’s really going on is the plight of all freelancers: Every week, I try 80 different things. If I’m lucky, one of them sticks maybe once a month. Because the success rate is so low, it’s hard to feel I accomplished anything. So please allow me a moment to consolidate the high points of this year—I found it surprisingly satisfying when I did it last winter.

1. I took a little time to enjoy the beach in Mexico. Tacking on just four more days than usual to my last research trip, in November, gave me a surprising amount of breathing room. Near the end, I actually spent the better part of a couple of days hanging out at the beach in Cozumel and snorkeling with my dad. Too bad those days were overcast and drizzly. But that in itself was educational—I’d forgotten what it was like to have a trip depend on weather, because I have to work no matter what. But sun is what 90 percent of the people who visit the Mexican Caribbean are counting on.

(1b. BTW, lowlight of the year: Totally failing to learn to scuba dive. My plan was to take my course in NYC, then do certification dives in Cozumel. But I got so panicked and agitated in NYC that I never even got my paperwork to move on. I spent two weeks gnashing my teeth at my impatient instructor, and I have a million reasons for thinking this sport is not for me: expensive, tons of gear, requires a buddy, other divers, why would I go down deep where all the color goes away, etc. But it’s entirely possible I’m just rationalizing.)

2. I really got to like Twitter. Not much of an accomplishment, but it has been fun to go from feeling baffled and overwhelmed by something to seeing it as a tool and really connecting with a few excellent people through it.

3. I finally wrote down why I like Cancun. Everyone thinks I’m nuts when I say I love Cancun. I finally wrote my defense of the place. I’m not necessarily saying that you, with your only-two-weeks-of-vacation per year, should choose it above all other options. But you shouldn’t slag it off either. And it’s cool to see other travel writers encouraging the “love the one you’re with” approach I took to Cancun. Matt Gross’s “Getting Lost” column in The New York Times (great article on Chongqing), and Afar’s “Spin the Globe” stories are especially inspiring.

4. I finally wrote down all the specific things I like in Cancun, in an iPhone app. After eight years of writing guidebooks according to extremely precise instructions, for as broad an audience as possible, I can’t tell you how fun it was to write Cool Cancun & Isla Mujeres. I got to choose the subject, I wrote in my exact style, for exactly the people I imagine will use it, and I didn’t have to worry about word count or other directives. And when something changes, I can update it immediately, instead of three years later. Totally gratifying. I’m not predicting the death of the printed guidebook anytime soon. But I’m pleased to see how well smartphone apps can share info, and I’m proud to have a little hand in it.

5. Blog posts here have gotten less frequent. Wait, there’s a positive spin! I’ve had a ton of real, paid writing work this year, so too busy to blog. But also, I go back and look at those old posts, and they’re freakin’ epic. I don’t know if I’d read them today. Shorter posts, more photos–I kinda like it. I hope you do too. (This coming month, I will have been blogging for six years. I feel ancient.)

6. Rick Bayless said he liked my cookbook! I met him in January in Bangkok. Thanks to the aforementioned Twitter, I was able to introduce myself as the person who’d commented on his tweet on why Americans aren’t willing to pay big bucks for Mexican food. And then Peter (thank god for Peter!) mentioned I’d co-written Forking Fantastic!, and El Rey de Manteca said, “Oh! I know your book! I loved it. I gave it to my publishers to show them that entertaining books don’t have to be all slick and glossy and have pictures of the chef everywhere.”

I can’t help but notice that Fiesta at Rick’s is pretty glossy after all (and happens to have a killer recipe for this stuff called salsa negra–check it!), while FF! is probably teetering at the edge of the remainder bin. I am proud not only that Bayless liked the book, but so did Anthony Bourdain and Jamie Oliver—and, more important, scores of people who’ve told me it has inspired them to cook. Which is what I hoped all along.

7. I have a place to hang a hammock. Not a personal accomplishment at all, but the process went so smoothly, it was actually life-affirming. We hired two men named Rocco, and they carried out our architect’s plan, and now we have a roof deck, a place to lounge and watch the train go by. There are some nice plants up there, and a fig tree that one Rocco gave to us. And the colors are “very Miami,” according to the green-roof dude. But hey, a little Miami in Queens almost makes sense, just like all the other aesthetic choices here.

Overall, though, I’d say we’re going for a retro junkyard vibe, against the better wishes of our architect. Yeah, that’s an ice chest on the right.

8. I got stuck in Amsterdam. Dude, hasn’t everyone? But really—this was the volcano talking. That thing blew near the end of my research trip, and I got held over for another week. (See how I’ve avoided mentioning the name of the volcano, just so I won’t have to go look up how to spell it?)

I seem to have a knack (so far, don’t jinx me, knock on wood, alhamdulillah, etc) for apparent travel disasters turning into non-events. In this case, “disaster” was even a godsend. I had extra time to research and write. And I met some nice guys who were also stuck there, and who were visiting Amsterdam for the first time, which reminded me of what that was like. Oh, and travel insurance paid for everything, including nights in some really nice hotels. A thousand thanks to whatever arranged all that.

From Amsterdam…the second installment

9. I bought a new camera. Overcame decision paralysis and bought myself a DSLR. Now I just have to figure out how to use it.

10. I made it to Asia. Now I just have to go back. Tickets are booked for January 5. In coach (no magical biz-class “mistake fare” this time). I’ll just focus on how happy I was at this food court in Bangkok. For 21 hours of limited recline.

Cheers to 2011, and best of luck with all your travels and new projects in the coming year! What were your greatest hits of 2010?

December 27, 2010

Mexico #1: Where the Party at?

Mexicans love a party.

That is not a stereotype. That is a stone-cold fact, extrapolated from years of visiting the Yucatan in every season, and encountering some kind of festivity every time. I can only conclude that Mexico really does have a fiesta culture, like all the brochures say.

If you really want me to qualify this statement, we could agree to say that Mexicans love a party from October through December. Better?

The fall is a nexus of public holidays, religious rites and village parties. You start complaining about Christmas creeping up to early November, but in Mexico, the holiday season cracks open in mid-September, with Independence Day. This year was an insane blowout, because it was the bicentennial of the year the independence movement started.

I missed that exact two-day party, but considering how many public buildings were lit up with special bicentennial-fund LEDs, it was like the fireworks were still going.

I also arrived just in time for the next big event on the Yucatecan party calendar, Hanal Pixan. You probably know it better as Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), at the end of October and the beginning of November. All that skull-chic you associate with Mexican folk art–that’s Day of the Dead stuff, and, more important, it’s central Mexican stuff. In the Yucatan, the aesthetic is a little different. Hanal Pixan doesn’t dwell so specifically on the skull imagery. The name means “feeding the souls” in Maya, and the emphasis is on the altars for the deceased, where you place traditional foods and candles and flowers. Usually, they’re private–in houses or offices, but not a huge public show. Or it didn’t seem that way to me the last time I was in the area for the holiday, a few years back.

This time, though, I think I was in the right place at the right time. In Valladolid, schoolkids got out early to enter an altar-building competition in the lawn area in front of the big convent. The altars were dedicated to family, or politicians or public figures. Imagine a history or science fair, but rendered in palm fronds and marigolds.

I know it makes me sound like an 80-year-old to say it, but it was just so nice to see all those young people working together!

We unfortunately had to leave Valladolid before those altars were done…and then we got to Merida just as the ones there were being taken down. But that evening, we saw a big Hanal Pixan parade–and this is where the skull-fest began.

Again, it was mostly schoolkids. And this event did not exist several years ago. It’s something the city of Merida organized recently, I think in part to be more of a tourist draw. But it’s not like people were going through the motions–everyone seemed to be having fun. And part of the fun was the skull-face-painting–it was as much a costume as anything, and yet one more excuse for a party.

*Flickr set from this trip
* Mexico #2: Partying on…and on
*Mexico #3: Party Favors
* Mexico #4: Howdy, Cowboy
* Mexico #5: Snack Break!
* Mexico #6: Back Roads

December 1, 2010

Cancun Is the New Tulum

Finally, all in one place, with photos, my thoughts on why Cancun is not a place for smart travelers to flee, but a place for them to challenge their ideas of authenticity, and what it means to have fun:

Cancun Is the New Tulum, in this month’s issue of Perceptive Travel.

(And honestly, this has nothing to do with the climate change conference happening there now. For better or worse.)

Crap, and I didn’t even mention the shrimp tacos with the Doritos garnish! Well, you’ll just have to buy my Cool Cancun & Isla Mujeres iPhone app for that…

November 19, 2010

Conned in Cairo, and a Mexico connection

I’m just back from Mexico and catching up on a lot. Happened to read this truly excellent essay at Perceptive Travel about getting conned in Cairo–and the surprising value in it. Cairo is really a test of travel skills–if you keep your guard up too much, you miss the good stuff. In this situation, I think I probably would’ve missed out on the author’s experience.

And by happy accident, the author, Jim Johnston, lives and blogs in Mexico City, where I’m headed in January, and am all fired up to read more about. Thanks, internet, for hooking me up…

By the way, on this Mexico trip, I finally finished David Lida’s First Stop in the New World–it was slow to get into, but wound up covering all kinds of fascinating aspects of the city.

Stay tuned for more meaty posts and photos from the Yucatan in the next few weeks. I finally got myself a snazzy camera, so there’s a lot to sort through.