Lat/Am Daily » Travel

Playtime

Peter Krupa — Mon, 03 May 2010 03:08:47 +0000

A somewhat hilarious AP article out today profiles Chávez’ efforts to arm and train some kind of civilian militia force. Frankly, it sounds like a rip-roaring good time: Take a few days off work (unless you weren’t doing anything anyway), play army with real guns, blow things up, etc.

I have family members who do this on weekends, and have at times participated. I can vouch for the entertainment value.

But Noticias24 has gotten its panties in a twist over the fact that the drill sergeants encourage their recruits to “kill those gringos!” This brings up an interesting question that several people have asked me in the last few weeks: Do Venezuelans hate Americans?

I’ve only traveled in Venezuela three times, so my experience is somewhat limited. But what I’ve seen is that while the president of Venezuela talks a lot of smack, Venezuelans still watch baseball and drive American cars and take shopping trips to Miami and sell most of their oil to the United States. They will not hesitate to give you a piece of their minds, but they will also buy you a wijky and invite you home to meet the family.

Probably their essential Caribbeanness has something to do with it.

But also, the thing is, to hate people from another culture, it helps to have been personally hurt by that culture in some way. All the macroeconomics, international politics, and military strategy that Chávez alludes to in his lengthy Sunday ramblings are perhaps outrageous, but abstractly so for your average Venezuelan.

In my experience, you’re much more likely to get hated on for your gringoness in Nicaragua or Mexico, where direct interaction with norteamericanos has often been distinctly unpleasant. In contrast, for many decades Venezuelans got employment, training, an improved standard of living, and some pretty decent-sized piles of oil cash from their contact with the gringos.

So if you want to see real gut-level gringo-hating in Venezuela, I think you’ll have to wait till US Marines are camped out in Miraflores and drawing mustaches on the Bolivar portraits. Until then, it’s just a game.

Cruise lines to abandon Antarctica

Peter Krupa — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:17:37 +0000

Some cruise lines will cease traveling to Antarctica after this cruise season, as a ban on the use and carriage of heavy fuel oil goes into effect next year. The ban came after a 2007 incident when a Gap Adventures ship got punctured by ice and sank, causing a mess. [link]

Christ the Redeemer tagged

Peter Krupa — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:05:27 +0000

Rio’s iconic Christ the Redeemer statue was vandalized by intrepid ne’er-do-wells who scaled scaffolding that was in place for cleaning the statue. Rio’s mayor called the vandalism of the 120-foot statue “a crime against the nation” and promised the vandals “will go to jail.”

Not your grandma’s country club

Peter Krupa — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:18:30 +0000

A group of country folk in Colombia’s Boyacá municipality maybe didn’t quite grasp the idea behind water polo, so they’re just going ahead and playing polo, in the water. Basically, to play, the townspeople set up goal posts in a river bed and then have at, riding horses in the shallow water and using clubs to knock a floating rubber ball through the goals.

The game was invented by Fredy Naizaque – currently the mayor – as a way for people to relax, have a good time, and attract tourism. This year’s Chapaleo Festival (as it’s called) attracted hundreds of sight-seers, as well as competitors from all over the municipality anxious to show off their jockey skills.

Chapaleo is only one of the ridership events at the festival. The photo gallery has more great shots. Looks like a blast.

Rush Limbaugh, health care reform protester sex tourist

Peter Krupa — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:44:56 +0000

(Via Costa Rica's Diario Extra.)

Rush Limbaugh has said he’ll move to Costa Rica if Congress passes health care reform. But that can’t be right. By Limbaugh standards, Costa Rica is practically Stalinist, what with the social security system providing government health care and government clinics to everybody who pays into the system (workers must contribute about 15% of their paycheck, if memory serves, or they get sent to a gulag in Cañas).

What’s Rush really after? I’ll tell you: Ass.

Yes, ass. In addition to being great at socialized medicine, Costa Rica is great at The Sex Tourism. And Rush knows something about The Sex Tourism. Either that, or he had something far more scandalous in mind when he traveled to the Dominican Republic in 2006 on a private jet with a bunch of dudes and a bottle full of Viagra.

It would also explain why he had Costa Rica on the tip of his oily tongue. Like, maybe he’s been here before? Had he been, you would never notice. He would blend in with his listeners down here like an old shoe, all the other divorced, good-ol’-boy, Parrothead, fat-assed shit-kickers from Texas and Florida and Alabama, bellied up to the bars along Gringo Gulch like hogs in slop, drinking $4 beers and flirting with prostitutes who call them papi and ask for money so they can buy their kids school supplies.

I hope Rush isn’t a Pacific Coast kind of guy, because there are no private hospitals out that way to treat his inevitable venereal diseases. Anyway, he’ll be happy to learn that the government-run clinics are actually quite nice.

Safety in numbers

Peter Krupa — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:07:46 +0000

Visit Mexico! (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

You would think from media reports that traveling to Mexico is a good way to get decapitated. But technically, that’s only true if you’re a law enforcement official in a border state. The AP points out that in fact, the murder rate in Mexico has been falling since 1997, when it reached a high of 17 murders per 100,000 people.

The murder rate in Mexico today is 14 per 100,000 people, and in Mexico City, it’s only 9 per 100,000 people. That’s comparable to L.A., and significantly better than Washington, D.C., where the murder rate is 30 per 100,000.

I can testify to the relative safeness of Mexico City from personal experience. Last year I spent 10 days there and did not come back dead. Instead, I enjoyed many hours wandering around the Centro Historico, looking at the architecture, and eating everything I could find. I visited nearby pyramids, went to a play, and hung out with friends in several other historic neighborhoods. It was one of the best vacations of my life.

Of course, they occasionally kill someone and sew his face to a soccer ball, but for you as a tourist, this only means your plane ticket will be cheaper because all the other Americans are scared out of their minds.

If Mexico still sounds too risky for you, that’s OK, but you sure as hell better forget about the 2016 Olympics. Last anyone released official statistics, the murder rate in Brazil was 24 per 100,000 people.

Tourist trap

Peter Krupa — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:41:48 +0000

Source: Living and Working in Mexico

The owner of a blog called Living and Working in Mexico just so happened be among the 2,500 tourists left stranded in Aguascalientes, Peru (near Machu Picchu) during the recent flooding. His account is one of the very best examples of travel writing worth reading:

I ended up spending three nights in Aguascalientes. It was like a huge experiment in communal, international living… Every nationality behaved in somewhat characteristic ways. The Brazilians and Uruguayans organized football matches with the local kids. The Argentinians almost rioted but also led the organizing process. The Chileans were super-super-organized with different people assigned to be responsible for food, accommodation and health. The English deigned to get themselves organized. The Mexicans left a big Mexican flag in the Plaza with a note for people to write their names. The names appeared but I never saw anyone there. The American government was said to be providing four small helicopters for just American folk. It was rumoured that when the committee of delegates from each nation were meeting and rejected the idea that these helicopters should only be for Americans, then the Americans never participated again in the meetings and did their own thing. The Australians celebrated Australia day on Monday 25th January and it was said there was no more beer left in the town the following day.