One of the speakers at TBEX 10 last weekend was Kelley Ferro of TripFilms, a YouTube-like website that is exclusively devoted to vacation videos.

The site features thousands of videos with travel pointers. Many of them are shot in Latin American countries such as Buenos Aires or Mexico.

The videos can be a bit amatuerish and uneven in quality. But the website’s ranking system enables visitors to find the better ones fairly quickly.

One of my favorites was the video below about some interesting outdoor markets in Mexico City. It gives a nice overview of the following mercados:

• El Chopo – caters to a punk or underground music crowd,
• San Juan – for foodies,
• Lagunilla – antiques and vintage items, and
• Sonora – herbs and other witchcraft accessories.

Mexico City Markets

Below are seven quirky facts about countries in Central and South America. (Two of the entries were suggested by a Latin America Fanatico via Twitter).

1. Venezuela adopted its own time zone in 2007. The time the country adheres to is 4.5 hours behind GMT. Before the change in 2007, Venezuela was 4 hours behind GMT. Critics claim that Hugo Chavez implemented the change to put his country on a different time zone than the U.S. (thank you @meningioma).
2. A new constitution approved by Ecuador last year grants rights to nature. Under the constitution nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.”
3. Costa Rica has no military. It was abolished in 1949.
4. It was not legal to obtain a divorce in Chile until 2004.
5. In Chile, which is home to one of the world’s most arid deserts, water rights are considered to be private property. (thank you @jillybean65).
6. Presidents in Mexico are limited to one six-year term. There is no vice president.
7. In Brazil, 90% of new cars have flex-fuel engines that can run on any mixture of petrol and ethanol.

Got a quirky fact about a Latin American country? Leave a comment.

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After a long day of traveling, my family and I arrived at our hotel in Guadalajara, Mexico. But our reservation was not in the hotel’s computer system. I pulled the print out of our reservation through Orbitz from my wallet, and the hotel clerk gave us a room.

But he insisted on keeping my print out. “The business office is closed on Sunday, so I can’t make a copy of it,” he explained.

Tired, and wanting to grant my son’s pleas for a dip in the pool, I agreed to allow the clerk to keep the only evidence I had that I already had paid for a three-day stay at the hotel.

It all worked out—as it has most of the times someone in Latin America has asked (or required) me to trust them.

Latin America and the U.S. hold different attitudes about trust. In the U.S., we generally have a “trust, but verify” mind set. Most of us don’t take offense when a vendor asks to see our picture I.D. before taking our credit card. She’s not judging us, she’s just doing her job.

For some types of transactions in Latin America, such as cab rides, the “trust, but verify” ethic is appropriate. I never get in a cab without asking “cuanto cuesta?” or (how much?).

When I arrived at my language immersion class in Guatemala a few weeks ago, I had taken my American attitude about trust with me. My first day of classes started at 8:30 am, but the ATM wasn’t available until 10. “Is it okay if I pay during the mid-morning break?” I asked the school’s director. Shrugging her shoulders and smiling at me, she said it would be fine. By 10:30, a full week of classes and transportation back to the airport were entirely paid for.

On my last day of class, a student I had gotten to know told me he needed to hit the ATM. “I’ve taken three weeks of classes and I haven’t even paid them yet,” he said.

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Like many good business ideas, Salsa Retreat is the brainchild of a talented person who was looking to fill a void: a vacation on which people could enjoy Salsa dancing and yoga in a scenic, relaxing atmosphere.

By choosing to offer all of these things in Oaxaca, Mexico, Alice Kupcik –the founder of Salsa Retreat, added some more key ingredients to the mix, including first-class dance instructors, memorable side trips and distinctive cuisine.

Looking to fill some time between jobs, Alice wanted to take a vacation that offered the perfect balance of stimulating activities and relaxation.

She was searching for an experience that would allow her to put aside serious thoughts for a while, yet help her to recharge her batteries for new challenges ahead.

Alice ended up taking a trip to Quito, Ecuador where she spent time taking dance lessons and learning Spanish.

Yoga, the Missing Ingredient. But the experience was missing some of the elements she was looking for. While the activities were fun, she would have returned feeling more refreshed if she could have spent time taking yoga classes.

“Yoga compliments the dance practice perfectly,” Alice explained.  “Flexibility, balance and a good posture are needed for any type of dance, and yoga practice helps to improve all three.  Plus, stretching before dance practice helps prevent injuries.”

Thinking there must be other people who would enjoy dancing and practicing yoga in a scenic atmosphere, Alice set about creating her own dream retreat.  This meant combining her two passions: Salsa dancing and yoga.

The final element was a special place to make the experience memorable.  The obvious choice for Alice was Oaxaca, Mexico.

“Oaxaca is safe and welcoming,” Alice explained.  “You can explore the historical center of the city on foot at all times of day or night, visit art galleries, museums, markets, shops and stores or enjoy a coffee in the Zocalo under the shady trees and listen to a live band.”

Launching Pad to Local Culture. It’s also a launching pad for side trips aimed at absorbing the local culture.  “We start the week off with a trip to the Tllacolula market on Sunday, which offers a glimpse into pre-Columbian Mexico,” she said.  “The women are still wearing traditional clothes and most people are speaking Zapoteco instead of Spanish.”

Often, it’s the sweet treats that steal the show. “Everybody’s favorite part of the market tour,” Alice said, “is the visit to the chocolate store.  Here you can custom make your own hot chocolate mix by picking the cocoa beans and other ingredients such as almonds or cinnamon sticks.”

Later into the retreat, the group visits Monte Alban, the site of the Zapotec pyramids.

Oaxaca’s Salsa Connection. But the main focus of the retreat is Salsa dancing, and Oaxaca is an important part of the equation. “The Oaxacan Salsa community is tied closely to the Salsa Congress and competition scene in the U.S.,” Alice explained. “Many Salsa instructors from Oaxaca compete and teach in the U.S., so they know the most current teaching styles and methods and what students want to learn.”

The retreat works with a dance company in Oaxaca that regularly performs in Salsa competitions. The Oaxacan dancers teach attendees important skills such as memorizing choreography and overcoming stage fright.

“Everything that you do that is not in your nature makes you grow, “Alice observed “and in the end it’s a lot of fun.”

“It’s part of our Salsa workshop to perform in front of our group and show what we have learned,” she said. “Allowing your performance to be videotaped and then watching yourself afterward, is worth a thousand private lessons.”

Distinctive Cuisine. When the group isn’t dancing or taking in Oaxaca’s beautiful sights, they’re enjoying the region’s distinctive cuisine. “We stay at the Casa Colonial, a unique guest house with an amazing cook, Teresa, who has worked there for 27 years,” Alice said.

“Each meal is a celebration that the group experiences together at a long table in the beautiful dining room,” she said. “We get to try a lot of the classic local dishes, such as Black Mole as well as Teresa’s delicious creations. Her food is excellent and healthy. But there’s plenty of sweet deserts, too, and lots of hot chocolate.”

“Thankfully, group members burn so many calories dancing during the day that they can afford to make these culinary indulgences without fear of gaining weight,” Alice added. “In fact, some participants lose weight during the week.”

Friendly, Supportive Atmosphere. Perhaps the most important and lasting benefit group members take away from the retreat are the new friendships that arise in the supportive atmosphere. “We always have a strong and supportive group energy,” Alice said.

“I see people opening up and blossoming during this week together.  I was always convinced that people would enjoy this type of travel, but what I have seen on my retreats was beyond my expectations and I am very grateful for that.”

Thanks to Salsa Retreat for sponsoring this blog post. Information about the dance retreats, including a schedule of activities and a listing of upcoming retreats is available on Salsa Retreat’s website.

Find out more about Salsa Retreat by visiting its Facebook Fan Page.

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The U.S. State Department’s most recent update to its Travel Alert for Mexico continues to emphasize that the country’s major resort areas or tourist destinations have not seen the level of violence that exists in the border regions and areas along the major drug trafficking routes.

Since 2006, the alert notes, three times as many people have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez, in the state of Chihuahua, across from El Paso, Texas, than in any other city in Mexico. Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana are the locations where more than half of all reported murders of Americans occurred in Mexico in FY 2009, the alert said.

The May 6th alert also offers these grim facts and statistics:

• in Monterrey, drug trafficking organizations have kidnapped guests out of reputable hotels in the downtown area, blocking off adjoining streets to prevent law enforcement response
• in April 2010, a grenade was thrown into the U.S. Consulate compound in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas
• three persons associated with the Consulate General were murdered in March, 2010
• in late 2009 and early 2010, four visiting U.S. citizens were murdered in Gomez Palacio, Durango
• between 2006 and 2009, the number of narcotics-related murders in the state of Durango increased ten-fold
• the city of Mazatlan has experienced a recent increase in violent crime, with more murders in the first quarter of 2010 than in all of 2009
• in April 2010, the Secretary for Public Security for Michoacán was shot in a drug trafficking organization ambush
• in April 2010, three innocent bystanders in Acapulco were killed in a shootout between Mexican police and drug trafficking organization members during broad daylight in one of the city’s main tourist areas.

I would still visit without hesitation any of the major cities or tourist destinations in Mexico. To put the number of U.S. citizens’ deaths into perspective, it’s worth noting that over 5 million Americans visited Mexico last year (including myself).

But still, it’s troubling that a U.S. consulate and employees were attacked. Also, I would say that Acapulco qualifies as a major tourist region.

If nothing else, it seems that the drug cartel crisis is continuing to rage on unabated.

Photo by joseloya (Via Creative Commons)

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One of the hardest things to get used to in the U.S. is the loneliness, my friend told me at his party a few years ago. He had moved to Maryland from Mexico as a teenager. Happily married and successful in his career, he’s the picture of the American dream.

Plaza Tapatia

I’ve met his parents, siblings, aunts, and cousins. They’re a gregarious group who know how to enjoy life.

While own extended family’s gatherings are about as often as the next funeral or a wedding. We’ve never come close socializing as much as my friend’s family.

Bafflement. This left me feeling somewhat baffled by his admission that he felt lonely.

It wasn’t until I visited Guadalajara last summer that I began to understand what he meant.

As my family walked along the huge public squares in the middle of the city’s historic district, we observed parents playing with their children families and couples kissing.

It all seemed perfectly natural. But the scene was a sharp contrast to suburban USA.

Car Trips and Air-Conditioned Homes. I’m always amazed at all of the people who live on my street who I hardly ever see. We’re all relaxing in our air-conditioned houses before our next car trip to work or our kids’ soccer games.

When it was time to leave Guadalajara, we took a cab to the bus station. Like every other cab driver we had met there, he knew more about the U.S. than we knew about Mexico. He told us that his wife and children were living with his mother near San Francisco. He was planning to join them in a few months.

But he didn’t seem to be looking forward to it. “All there is in the U.S. is work,” he said. “We have more freedom here.”

Just before Arizona enacted its law aimed at giving law enforcement officials increased authority to verify people’s immigration status, the Fiscal Policy Institute issued a report contradicting some widely held perceptions about immigrants.

It turns out that the typical immigrant isn’t the low skilled laborer in the food or construction industry. Rather, the FPI report finds that immigrants “are spread quite broadly across a wide range of occupations in most metropolitan areas.”

In the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., the report said a quarter of all immigrants work in managerial and professional specialty occupations (24 percent) and roughly another quarter (23 percent) work in technical, sales, and
administrative support occupations.

In 13 of the 25 largest metro areas, there are more immigrants working in the mostly higher-wage white-collar jobs than in the mostly lower-wage service, blue collar, or farming fishing and forestry jobs, according to the report.

Undocumented Immigrants. The report notes that most undocumented immigrants work in generally lower-wage jobs in services (30 percent), construction (21 percent), and production (12 percent).

One of the report’s main findings is that an immigrant work force has a positive effect on a city’s economy. But it’s the lower skilled immigrants that seem to make the biggest impact.

For example, the New York Times noted that:

In metropolitan Denver, where the economy doubled between 1990 and 2008, 63 percent of immigrants worked in jobs on the lower end of the pay scale.

One of the best things the U.S. has going for it, is its ability to attract people from all over the world and allow them to become “American” in both the legal and cultural sense of the word. It’s a quality that’s too important to be spoiled by one state’s ill-conceived immigration enforcement policy.

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The number of U.S. citizens traveling to Mexico by air so far this year is down compared with the same period last year, according to the U.S. International Trade Administration’s Office of Travel and Tourism Industries.

In January, 2010, about 440,000 Americans took flights to Mexico. For the same month last year, it was about 445,000.

Mexico started 2009 beset with negative news coverage about the drug war. Soon after the media frenzy died down, the country faced a travel ban resulting from the H1N1 or swine flu outbreak. As a result, Mexico recorded a nearly 11 percent decline in U.S. visitors or a total of about 5.2 million in 2009.

On Pace for a Better Year. But it seems unlikely that Mexico will experience another month like it did in April last year, when the country saw a nearly 50 percent decline in U.S. tourists. Barring a terrible incident such as the H1N1 virus, Mexico is well on pace to significantly improve its statistics from last year.

The number of Americans traveling to Mexico continues dwarf the figures recorded for Central and South America, which each had about 200,000 U.S. visitors in January.

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Photo by Kevin Dooley (Via Creative Commons)

Mexico and the U.S. are quietly working out an agreement under which the U.S. would expand Medicare benefits to cover health care in Mexico, according to a recent column by the Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer’s column includes some interesting statistics:

• the nearly 1 million Americans living in Mexico is likely to increase to 5 million by 2025,
• there are already, 5 million American retirees living abroad–about 2.2 million of whom are living in in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Brazil,
• health care expenses are about 70 percent cheaper in Mexico than in the U.S.

He says the key to allowing U.S. health benefits to pay for medical expenses incurred in Mexico will be getting hospitals in the country certified by the U.S. Joint International Commission, which attests that health care providers meet U.S. standards.

As things stand now, U.S. expats who are eligible for Medicare must travel back over the border to receive covered medical services.

Of course like most ideas involving health care, the notion of using public funds to subsidize medical treatment in Mexico has its detractors. A story in Time magazine about this in December noted that:

Resistance to the expansion of Medicare to Mexico is coming from some health-care industry groups like the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association, according to David C. Warner, who teaches public affairs at the University of Texas LBJ School. Warner says these groups see it as the beginning of a slippery slope that will lead to expansion of Medicare coverage to places like China and Eastern Europe where health-care costs are rock bottom.

Fighting for this reform is Paul Crist, who founded an advocacy group called Americans for Medicare in Mexico.  The first step to making the group’s goal a reality is launching a pilot project, which requires congressional support. So far, it seems like the group has had limited success convincing members of congress to support its proposal.

But the effort has a lot of factors going for it, including:

• the largest segment of the U.S. population–the baby boomers–are aging,
• Hispanics are fast becoming a powerful voting bloc in the U.S.,
• the U.S. government is in debt, and
• the recent economic crisis has depleted many retirees’ savings.

Photo by Bill Lapp

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On her Across the Border Blog, Anna Cearley details the findings of a recent survey that found that many U.S. retirees are living comfortably in Mexico for less than $1,000 per month.

Among the survey’s finding was that Mexico may become an alternative for U.S. retirees facing economic challenges in the future.

Given our current financial woes, it’s no surprise that Americans have been increasingly considering retiring in low-cost Latin American destinations such as Mexico.

But what sometimes gets lost in the retirement planning calculus are other key factors such as what it will be like to actually live among people in another country and share their culture.

A comment to Cearley’s post by the blogger for The Real Tijuana notes that to live in Mexico for less than $1,000 a month, a U.S. retiree would most likely need to live inland among the locals rather than in a “posh gringo beach community.”

Living among the locals requires learning Spanish as well has how to get along with neighbors.

The Real Tijuana also notes that:

Most gringos who live here are not cosmopolitan at all, rather, most have never been outside the U.S. before and tend to distrust anyone who is not WASP.

U.S. expats who are unable to get along with their neighbors, Real Tijuana says, are more likely to run into trouble with Mexico’s immigration authorities.

How does one learn how to get along with their neighbors in Mexico? We’ll have to read the Real Tijuana blog to find out.

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