Tonalá: A step back in time February 3, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Guadalajara, Mexico , 1 comment so far
As is the case in many big cities, one of the best things about Guadalajara is what lies outside its boundaries. That’s the case with two colonial villages just outside the city limits, Tlaquepaque and Tonalá.
Tlaquepaque is the more carefully groomed, tourist-brochure version of the colonial village – and it’s delightful, with its nightly serenades by mariachis, streets that were made for strolling and lushly landscaped courtyards. Tonalá, on the other hand, is still a little rough around the edges, with an outdoor market where you can still get a hearty meal of steak, chicken or fish in the market for about $2.50, or pick out your fresh produce and a cut of meat to go with it, all while watching the children run and play in the plaza next door.
Tonalá is a destination for shoppers of bargain artenanía, which ranges from kitchy Aztec calendars and frog-shaped ceramics to sophisticated creations from some first-rate artists. Here’s a little peek.
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¿Guapa enough for the baño? February 1, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Guadalajara, Mexico , add a commentI Loved the bathroom attendant at Parque Metropolitano, Guadalajara.
“Guapos” y “guapas” read the sign. “Guapo” means attractive.
The good lady was taking 3 pesos and giving out carefully wrapped sections of toilet paper at the door, as is the custom in public places.
“I’m not sure I’m guapa enough to enter,” I told her, dubiously.
“Ah, por mucho,” she assured me. “Todos somos guapos aquí. No hay feos.” (Absolutely – everyone is good-looking here.)
I was so amused that I returned with a camera to document the moment. “Ay no, voy a salir espantosa,” she protested. “Oh no, I’m going to come out looking frightful!”
“Not so,” I reassured. “Todos somos guapos aquí. No hay feos.”
She got a chuckle out of this, and sent me on my way with a blessing from God, and a fun memory of Parque Metropolitano.
Here’s a little slideshow of our sunny Sunday in the park.
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It’s not enough to be biodegradeable… January 31, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Guadalajara, Mexico, Sustainability , add a commentLife in Guadalajara is not so different from life in Houston. Sometimes, only the language is different.
My friend Alicia, like me, struggles to remember to bring the cloth shopping bags when she goes to the supermarket. This day, she remembered. Here’s a little reminder she likes to keep handy:
“It’s not enough to be biodegradeable; it’s necessary to be bioAGREEABLE.”
I liked the way this clever slogan captured one of the most important principles of sustainability: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” In that order.
The Rolling Cameras of Guadalajara January 29, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Adventure, Biking, Guadalajara, Mexico, Nature tourism, Sustainability, ecotourism , add a comment
Last week I had the chance to visit with Carlos Ibarra, news photographer for El Mural and one of the founders of Camara Rodante (literally, “rolling camera”.)
Carlos with his collection of miniature bicycles and a photo of his father, an avid bicyclist.
This intrepid group of biking photographers is dedicated to promoting biking in a variety of ways. Besides their weekly outings, which traverse a variety of rural terrains around Guadalajara and further afield, they’ve organized get-out-the-vote campaigns, children’s outings, first aid workshops, bicycle repair workshops, and a fundraiser for Haiti – all aboard the seat of a bicycle.
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Guadalajara by night – and by bike January 21, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Biking, Guadalajara, Mexico , add a commentIt’s not every day you get to ride with 500 enthusiastic bicyclists to the theater. But in Guadalajara, you can do it once a week.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Matter of fact, you can ride with a herd of cyclists pretty much any night of the week – just pick your flavor. “Al Teatro en Bici” (To the Theater by Bicycle”) is one of a seemingly endless number of bicycle-oriented initiatives in Guadalajara. There’s Camera Rodante, a hard-riding group of biking photographers. There’s GDL en Bici, a group of young professionals dedicated to reclaiming the streets for all commuters, not just cars. Their nocturnal rides, each one with a theme and costumed riders, have drawn upwards of 4,000 participants.
Tuesday I got a taste of the Guadalajara bicycle explosion, as well as why it may have evolved. Guadalajara is a city that has evolved, like most U.S. cities, around the automobile, and public transit is somewhat disorganized. A morning taxi ride to Tonalá, a village on the southern outskirts, took me 15 minutes; the bus ride back, an hour and a half. It took longer than that to figure out how to take the bus back to Tonalá.
And that’s not even mentioning the aggressive stance a pedestrian must take in order to negotiate the glorietas, traffic circles where a seemingly endless churning mass of vehicles whirl past.
Little wonder, then, in a city where many people don’t have cars, that frustrated commuters turned to bicycles, then teamed up to find safety in numbers. It couldn’t have been easy, however; in a city where just a few years ago, bicycles were seen primarily as a vehicle for street vendors and poor people.
On Tuesday, the first ride after the holidays, hundreds milled about with their bicycles in front of Punto del Arte, a classy cafe in the Centro. Suddenly a shout rang out – “Ya vamos!” followed by the voice of Aretha Franklin blaring from the loudspeakers attached to the lead bicycle.
“What you want, baby, I got it… What you need, you know I got it. All I’m askin’ for is a little respect…”
I don’t know about the impatient drivers who waited as the wheeled hordes streamed through the red lights, but the message wasn’t lost on me.
The eclectic soundtrack weaved from Rolling Stones to Caifanes, from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Café Tacuba to Guns ‘N Roses, and the elation was so high you could feel it bouncing from the Beaux Arts decor in the old city streets. We plied those streets for about an hour before ending up at the spectacular neoclassical Teatro Degollado, where we piled in to see a free showing of ZaikoCirco, a surrealistic international troupe of circus performers who, of course, supported the effort with bicycles in their act.
All in all, a phenomenal performance – beginning with the commute.
Coyoacan: The Coyote Capital January 15, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Latin America, Mexico, Mexico City , 3comments
Coyoacan has always been one of my favorite parts of Mexico City – indeed, it’s the favorite of millions, being a top tourist destination and the home of Frida and Diego, Leon Trotsky and Hernán Cortés. The zone has long been a hotbed of cultural and political innovation, and today it’s one of the most culturally rich and scenic parts of the city, with structures dating to its sixteenth century inception.
On Wednesday I went down for a visit with Subcoyote Alberto Ruz, and after two and a half hours of video, had only enough battery power left for a few shots, sadly. Note to self: NEVER leave home without a spare battery.
This doesn’t pretend to be an exhaustive or even complete tour of this beautiful area, just a meander down Francisco Sosa street to the Plaza Central. “Coyoacan,” I learned from the Subcoyote, means “Place of the Coyote” in ancient Nahuatl, and indeed the Coyote seems to be quite present in modern-day Coyoacan, in spirit if not in the flesh.
I also had the pleasure of stumbling upon the place where, supposedly, the famous Tacos al Pastor were invented: El Tizoncito. Sadly, the battery ran out just as the tacos arrived. I can only tell you, they were as beautiful as they were delicious.
In the meantime, enjoy! I know I did.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
True-Blue Texas Bluegrass: A slice of life January 11, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Texas , add a commentA couple of months back – it seems like an eternity now – I had the pleasure of enjoying one of the finer backwaters of Texas culture: the Salmon Lake Bluegrass Festival. It was truly a step back in time, and good company with some of the friendliest, down-to-earth folk I’ve run across – not to mention talented.
Just Fiddlin’ Around, an article I wrote on Texas Bluegrass, appeared recently in Texas Journey Magazine, and I promised videos and extra content – a promise I’ve been slow on delivering, due to my overcommitted work and travel schedule.
Here at long last is the first of the two videos I promised:
Keep an eye on this spot for a video demonstration of the amazing Doyle Campbell, a truly original bluegrasser who makes instruments out of everything from washtubs to bedpans to a dog dish. Also, an interview with the Pickin’ Professor Rod Moag, and a link to his article, A History of Texas Bluegrass, which contains everything you’ll every want to know on the subject.
Thank you for your patience, those of you who have been looking for the promised videos and extra content. I appreciate your readership and your support!
Jogging on the Hippodrome January 10, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Latin America, Mexico, Mexico City, Uncategorized , add a commentThe sun peeked out from the clouds for awhile today, and as my afternoon appointment had been canceled, I took it as a cue. I shed the sweater and switched to jogging gear, grabbed my iPod and hit the street.
I’m not a natural-born runner; my body resists it in every way. But I took up the hobby last year, realizing that if I were going to stay fit on the road, I’d need to rely on means that don’t include going to a gym. Besides, running doubles as an aerobic form of sightseeing – albeit without the camera, the only thing I regretted about today’s run.
(From Friday’s walk: One of several fountains on Amsterdam Street)
I headed straight for Calle Amsterdam, a verdant loop through the heart of La Condesa with a tree-lined path in the center. Formerly called Calle Hipódromo, the loop is what remains of the old Condesa racetrack. Now laced with fountains and gardens and lined with colorful cafés and boutiques among the classic art-deco architecture, it bears no semblance to a racetrack – except for the presence of the other joggers.
The high point was Parque México, an enormous stretch of greenery filled with children learning to rollerblade, boys kicking a soccer ball, tiny dogs in colorful sweaters and their attentive owners, elders perusing newspapers, youngsters listening to MP3 players and families pedaling a four-seated bicycle contraption for rent in the plaza.
Smells of roasting corn, savory pork tacos and fresh flowers filled the rain-washed air. A gentleman sat in front of a booth surrounded by small tables and filled with wooden objects and painting supplies; for $3 you could buy a small animal or for $6 a little wooden jewelry box, and you could paint it however you liked.
Further along I found Mejor en Bici (Better on a Bike), a nonprofit group that provides free bicycles for “rent” in several parks around the city. All you have to do is leave your ID and a 200-peso note, and you can take the bike for a spin.
I don’t know whether it was because of the altitude (Mexico City is about a mile and a half higher than Houston!) or that I’m out of shape after three weeks of huddling in the cold, or simply because there was so much to see, but it was a run-walk type of run. At any rate, it felt great to unclench my huddled shoulders and feel the sun on my skin again.
From Mexico to Palestine: Carbon offsets January 10, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Latin America, Mexico, Mexico City, Sustainability, ecotourism , 5comments
Much has been written about the pros and cons of carbon offsets. The idea, if you haven’t been following, is that you pay money to a nonprofit organization to plant trees or invest in renewables or otherwise reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere in an attempt to offset the carbon you’ve generated.
There are many calculators online that help you to figure out how much carbon you’ve generated and where you should donate it. Carbon Footprint is a nice flexible one that lets you calculate individual aspects of your life as opposed to doing a whole audit – both can be good, but since I’m on the road, my lifestyle doesn’t easily fit into many of these calculators. Since my main impact is travel, I figured my mileage and multiplied the air travel by 1.9 to account for the increased impact airplane emissions have (the amount used by Carbon Footprint). It then lets you select from a variety of worthy projects from Kenya to Central America.
Critics compare this system with the Catholic Church’s system of indulgences in Medieval times – a system that allowed people to “buy” forgiveness for their sins by making donations to the Church. They argue that there’s a wide variance among carbon offsetting groups, none of them are regulated and there’s no way to know for sure that the trees you’re paying to plant wouldn’t be planted anyway.
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San Antonio is in the heart January 9, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : San Antonio , 2commentsYes, I know it’s the tourism board’s sentimental slogan, and I am now nowhere near the River Walk, 700 miles to the south in Mexico City. But nostalgia dies hard, especially when it comes to San Antonio, and so I was pleased to be asked to write a story about my former hometown for the Houston Chronicle. The story appears in today’s travel section. San Antonio Express-News travel readers will get a treat from my former Houston Chronicle colleague, Harry Shattuck, detailing some of the finer points of the Bayou City.
Here’s a little taste of my San Antonio story, together with a slide show and a link to the full story, for those who don’t have access to today’s Chronicle. If you’d like to see more of my San Antonio ramblings, click here for a beyond-the-Alamo tour guide.
More to love in the Alamo City
If you liked San Antonio before, get ready.
The Alamo City is just about to give you a whole lot more to love.
From the revitalized Main Plaza at the heart of the city to the restored Mission Concepción in the south, from the newly polished gem of a Japanese Garden in Brackenridge Park to the hip and happening Pearl Brewery complex, there’s already more to see in San Antonio than you may have suspected.
The city’s crown jewel — the famed River Walk — is undergoing a $384.5 million expansion that will increase its reach by several orders of magnitude. This 13-mile linear parkway is unfolding in stages until late 2013, transforming a neglected, weed-choked drainage ditch into a word-class attraction. In the process, the project is transforming the city itself.
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