Mexico has two distinct seasons: rainy (May to mid-October) and dry (mid-October to April). Fortunately, rainy season isn’t a total wash out. When I visited Guadalajara in June, rain was in the forecast each day. But there were only a couple of short showers during my stay. One side benefit was that the few weeks [...]
Posts under ‘Mexico’
Podcasts and Parodies About Latin America
One of my favorite NPR radio shows and podcasts is This American Life. Each week its host, Ira Glass, presents a one-hour program featuring mostly true stories told by everyday people. Usually, each episode includes three different stories with a unifying theme. Some of the shows I’ve listened to recently have included stories about Latin [...]
Fear and Loathing in Acapulco
Guest Post By Richard Arghiris I first visited Acapulco in 2008, during a 10 week research trip for my new guidebook, ‘The Footprint Mexico Handbook’, due for release in spring 2010. Having heard the time-old legends of Acapulco at its heyday, I was initially intrigued by this archetypal pleasure resort. Soon, however, reality dawned. Below [...]
Ranking Government Corruption in Latin America
The anti-corruption group Transparency International annually publishes a “corruption perceptions index,” which measures the level of government corruption in each country. In the latest index, which was released in November, the majority of the 180 countries analyzed scored below five on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (perceived to have [...]
Making It in Latin America: The Writing Life
For this post, I interviewed freelance writer and travel blogger Sarah Menkedick. Besides writing her own blog–Posa Tigres, Sarah is a contributing editor for the Matador Abroad travel blog. She explains how living in Oaxaca, Mexico fuels her creativity. The affordable lifestyle the city offers makes it an ideal locale for a starving artist, she [...]
The Irish Battalion Only Mexico Remembers
The the latest edition of NPR’s Studio 360 features an interview with the traditional Irish group The Chieftains about their new album San Patricio. The band collaborated with some of Mexico’s finest traditional singers as well as Ry Cooder and Linda Ronstadt to tell the story of a battalion of Irish-American soldiers that defected to [...]
Violence Greets Spring Break Season in Mexico
Despite the steady drum beat of bad news from Mexico as spring break season approaches, there seems to be less hysteria in the U.S. about the situation as compared with last year. But the most recent eruption of violence in Acapulco calls into question the progress that Mexico is making in its war against the [...]
Best Seller ‘Born to Run’ Lives Up to Hype
When I first learned of Christopher McDougall’s best selling book about long-distance running I dismissed it as another tale about Mexico’s Tarahumara Indians. It was from McDougall’s story in Runner’s World magazine over a decade ago that I first became intrigued with these mysterious people who can run 100 miles or more on some of [...]
Sign of Spring: An Updated Travel Alert for Mexico
The U.S. State Department’s updated Security Travel Alert for Mexico cautions U.S. citizens against visiting parts of the northern states of Durango and Coahuila. It also cites recent violence on the highways between Monterrey and the U.S. and updates certain crime statistics. While the new version of the travel alert focuses on specific areas of [...]
Mexico’s Tarahumara Indians Spur Me to Run
Looking for a way to make the winter pass by quickly? Sign up for a spring marathon. A couple of weeks ago I registered for the Pittsburgh Marathon, which is May 2. (Less than two-and-a-half months away). After running several marathons over the past few years, I didn’t run any in 2009. Cold, Snowy and [...]
