2015 Goes Out with a … Whimper

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Colombia, Estonia, Finland, Israel, Jordan, Lennon Wall, Mexico, Prague, Russia, travel sickness

The sun is going down on a great year of travel, but the latest trip – Colombia in this final week of the year – has ended with five sick people. Was it the eggs we ate yesterday morning? The ceviche the night before? A parasite in the tap water? No matter – we are all down for the count to various degrees, and my Colombia posts will have to wait for the New Year.

I managed to get my feet out the door to seven other countries this year, and ranged far and wide throughout the U.S. as well. I started off in the freezing cold with Russia, Estonia, and Finland in January, warmed up in Israel, Jordan, and Mexico during the summer, and finished 2015 broiling under the Colombian sun in high-altitude Bogotá and steamy Cartagena. It was a perfect mix of trips – some solo jaunts, various two-person combos, and a few family gatherings.

My final photo of the year shows a thrill I got this summer when son A and his friends gave a shout out to my blog on the Lennon Wall in Prague. I haven’t been able to find a way to use it, but I love the bright pink background and the five minutes of fame I got before someone no doubt painted over it.

Happy trails, voyages, or whatever you might wish for in 2016!

DF Delight

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Coyoacan, DF, La Valise, Mexico City, Roma Norte

Primo traveling companion K had been begging me for at least a year to give Mexico City another try. I had liked it perfectly well before (probably a whole decade ago), but I had no real reason to go back, especially when I had so many other destinations on my travel wish list. But in recent months, I’d been seeing more and more articles on how exciting the Distrito Federal (DF) was these days, with new restaurants, transformed neighborhoods, updated museums, and many other enticements. Further spurred by a strong exchange rate and a free week before we both headed back to school (work for me and grad school for her), we pulled the trigger and set off for four days in Mexico’s capital city.

The best decision we made was to stay in Colonia Roma Norte, an up-and-coming neighborhood west of the historic center, east of Chapultepec Park and many of the bigger national museums, and adjacent to its similarly bohemian sister, La Condesa. From here, we could take an ambitious walk to the park and museums, catch an easy metro ride into the Centro Histórico, ride the Metrobus south toward Coyoacán, and spend hours roaming Roma itself, a charming mish-mash of bars, shops, restaurants, homes, and small businesses.

We chose the tiny La Valise hotel, which contains only three suites, and we’re sure we got the best one! One level above the street, our elegantly appointed living room overlooked Calle Tonalá; beyond that, we enjoyed a huge, comfortable bedroom, two luxurious bathroom areas, a kitchen, and a patio complete with swing and hammock. The space was incredible – Parisian with Mesoamerican touches – and the service was spectacular. I don’t tend to publicize hotels, but this one might be one of the nicest places I’ve stayed in the world.

La Valise’s location made it even better. We walked almost everywhere and when we couldn’t, we gained access to the metro at Insurgentes, a major intersection of the city as a whole. (Apparently, anyone considered middle class or above disdains the subway system here, but we loved it for the inexpensive fares and, even more, for the rapid transit times compared with the horrific traffic we experienced in a few taxi and Uber rides.)

We spent most of one day in the Centro Histórico, visiting the Parque Alameda Central, various smaller museums (Museo Mural Diego Rivera and Franz Meyer), the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and the Post Office.

We pushed through the crowds and some police barricades in the Zócalo to view the Metropolitan Cathedral and the National Palace, and we escaped the hordes by visiting the Ministry of Education where the Rivera and Siqueiros murals are more abundant and uncrowded than those at the Palace.

Diego Rivera at the Ministry of Education …

and his muralist colleague David Siqueiros’s work at the same Ministry …

Coyoacán, a far-southern neighborhood, filled another half day with its sunny cobblestone streets, shaded plazas and fountains, brightly painted houses and shops, and two big tourist draws, Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul and Leon Trotksy’s house. This “place of coyotes” lies almost 10 km south of the historic center of Mexico City; the small colonial village was swallowed up by the DF in the mid-1800s, but Coyoacán retains its small-town appeal and was palpably more relaxed than the city to the north.

Other favorite stops over the four days here were the Museo de Antropología in Chapultepec Park, El Parnita in Roma Norte for amazing ambience, tacos and tortas, Mercado Roma for wine and food shopping, Cafe Toscano Roma for coffee, and Maximo Bistrot for an excellent dinner. The Calle Alvaro Obregón was made for strolling, and my bet is that the corner vendors were laughing at how many times we traipsed back and forth looking for various shops and eateries over the days we were in the neighborhood!

After a too-long gap in travel to our southern neighbor, it was great to be back in Mexico City. The articles are right; the DF is hopping these days and I’d be ready to go again soon after seeing how easy it was to get there and how much there is to enjoy. Hasta la próxima!

Off the Wall in Mexico City

Tags

Diego Rivera, Mexico City, murals, Roma Norte, wall art

I’m guessing I’ve been to Mexico at least 10 times. I’ve baked on the beaches in Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Playa del Carmen, and Cancun, and crossed into the border towns of Tijuana and Juarez. I’ve sampled the ample cultural delights of metropolitan Mexico City and Guadalajara, and spent some heavenly days in the quaint little mountain town of San Miguel de Allende. But I just went back again to visit a place that keeps popping up on all sorts of travel lists – hot spots, hip capitals, food scenes, cultural meccas, and more: Mexico City, or simply DF, as the locals call the capital.

To top it off, we splurged and stayed at “the hippest hotel in Mexico City’s hippest neighborhood” (according to CN Traveler), and spent much of our time in its bourgeois-bohemian streets in the neighborhood of Roma Norte. I could (and probably will later) write more about how we spent our over-the-border getaway, but what keeps asserting itself as I review my photos are the walls. Of course, muralist Diego Rivera and his colleagues figure prominently in any photo essay on Mexico City, but there is wall art all over DF, especially in Colonia Roma, and its quirky vibrancy permeated our strolls, our sightseeing, and even our meals.

Friday Photos: Doors

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Argentina, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Cappadocia, Chile, China, Forbidden City, Goreme, La Boca, Lhasa, Norbulingka, Paine Circuit, Palermo Soho, Robben Island, South Africa, Tibet, Turkey

Going with a door theme today …

Forbidden City, Beijing, China

La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Cell door, Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa

Norbulingka Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Hiking the Paine Circuit, Chile

Cave hotel, Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey

Facing Fears

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Conquering fear, Lukla, travel dangers, world's most dangerous airport

I am not a total chicken, but I don’t consider myself the bravest person around either. (Some people in my family might, possibly, even argue I’m a bit of a worrier, maybe.) Travel has presented me with some good challenges, and there have definitely been times I was not at all sure I was up for them. The existence of this post means I have somehow survived all these real and perceived dangers, but the memory of a few of them can still make my hair stand on end years later.

When it comes to nerves on the road, it doesn’t have to be bungee jumping or whitewater rafting to produce a good adrenaline rush sometimes; believe me, I’ve frozen up before my share of foreign subway ticket machines while my train is leaving the station, and it can be daunting just trying to get directions or pump gas in a country where I can’t even read the alphabet!

But danger to life and limb is a different story. The first time I remember really feeling physically shaky was on a zip line in Costa Rica. The zipping itself was a blast, and standing on the platforms between zips was manageable, but there were three platforms from which we had to rappel instead of glide. The idea of that backward step D-O-W-N (that’s 140 feet down!) and the initial drop freaked me out; I was not at all sure using my hand as a brake was really going to slow me down and I pictured quite a splat at the bottom when it didn’t work. It did.

Tight spots and closed-in spaces are another great fear inducer for me. I once got talked into going down into some cenotes in the Yucatan peninsula and swimming down an underground river; to this day, the thought of being in that watery underground cavern makes me shiver. Likewise, crawling through stone tunnels – twice – in Peru made my blood pound as I tried to inch forward, feeling both my back and stomach scraping rock and knowing all too well that I could never turn around if I had to. Just the thought of being closed in gives me nightmares, and being in these claustrophobic situations in real life made me feel sick. I was sure I would be the first person to become paralyzed or trapped inside all those dark tunnels. I wasn’t.

Scary vehicle stories abound in my travels and many others’. From the bouncing, out-of-control rickshaw in Lhasa traffic, to the bus careening around mountain curves in the Balkans, to the Athenian driver who … well, ALL the Athenian drivers … , traveling under someone else’s control can be quite frightening. By far the greatest example of transportation trepidation was a flight from Kathmandu into Lukla, Nepal – the gateway to the hiking trail to Everest.

In the weeks before traveling, I watched way too many Youtube videos of this harrowing flight and by the time I boarded the aging, cramped prop plane, I was terrified out of my mind. For once, everyone on board shared my nervousness and a few morbid jokes took the edge off for the first few minutes. Both take-off and the flight into the Himalaya were smooth enough, but the landing was a big gulp. Trying to hit a 1700-foot long, 65-foot wide runway that starts at the edge of a cliff and slants uphill toward a mountain face at the other end, the pilot deliberately cuts the engine just before touchdown (stall alarm screaming) and slams on the brakes to mercifully end the flight. Before the trip, I had recurring visions of dying on this landing just as a planeload of passengers had a few weeks before. Luckily, I didn’t.

Heights and narrow ledges are another test of my mental strength. I know I am sure-footed and rarely worry that I will misstep, so my fear here is not always a physical one. No, I’m afraid that others will slip and either bump me or make me watch their own flailing deathfalls. On a narrow trail in New Zealand’s Dart River area, with a huge ravine on one side, I was petrified watching my son walk in (what I perceived to be) a careless way through the woods. I kept picturing him tripping and falling off but, of course, he didn’t. At Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park, I did question my own footwork and had the additional fear that one of the heavy chains I was grasping to stay on the ledges might suddenly pull out of the rock. Somehow, it stayed intact this one more time!

If I had to pick my poison? Well, I think I’d take heights and rickety ledges and scary vehicles over anything cramped or subterranean. An avid spelunker or diver I will never be. I’d rather fall off a cliff than get stuck deep in the sea or an extended passageway underground. Just reading articles – heck, just typing these words – about cavers trapped in rain-filled tunnels or deep-sea divers whose ropes get tangled on coral makes me sweat and breathe faster.

Fording fast rivers in Chile. Exiting a chaotic airport in the middle of the night in Kathmandu. Eating a singed guinea pig in Peru. They’ve all required a gut check of some kind or another, but I’ve made it through all of them and learned a little about needless worrying, maybe. “Always do what you are afraid to do,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. I’m trying to take him up on that challenge as often as possible.