Travelogue
Senior editor Pamela Colloff, writer-at-large Suzy Banks, and others talk about this month's cover story, "Down Mexico Way."
texasmonthly.com: Why a cover story on Mexico travel? Who came up with the idea and why do it for October?
Suzy Banks: I think it was less about why than why not? TM had never done a Mexico issue or anything much at all about Mexico travel. I think it was Skip Hollandsworth who first pitched the idea based on a similar (but, of course, not as fabulous) piece in New York magazine. Then everyone got excited about the prospect of getting to leave the state.
Joe Nick Patoski: Because we're Texas, and it's Mexico. Anytime is a good time. October is a pretty good time to think about going because it gets cold in Texas and Mexico is the one sure place close by where you know you can find hot sun from November through March.
Patricia Sharpe: Evan Smith came up with the idea, as far as I know. October is just a perfect month for travel to almost any country, so that was a no-brainer.
texasmonthly.com: Once it was decided to do a feature, how did you end up with your particular assignment?
SB: Senior editor Quita McMath pushed hard for me to cover Morelia and the craft towns surrounding it.
JNP: There are lots of off-the-beaten-path places I've found over the years, and just as many places like that that I've only heard about and haven't checked out. I suggested several of those places, including some in Chiapas, some in the less-explored stretches of the Yucatan, and some within a two- or three-hour drive of the border. We weeded it down to somewhere on the Pacific with jet service nearby, meaning you could get there nonstop from a Texas city and not waste a whole day of a three- or four-day weekend changing planes in Mexico City. I talked to a lot of my fellow Mexico-philes and I surfed the Internet. I first heard about Yelapa twenty five years ago when I was reporting on Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue for Rolling Stone. The tour had all these interesting characters including T-Bone Burnett, Joan Baez, Kinky Friedman, playwright Sam Shepard, and Bob Neuwirth. Austin was its last date. Afterward, Dylan and some of his pals were headed to Yelapa. Thankfully, the place is still pretty hard to get to. The government hasn't built a road through the mountains and jungle yet. Otherwise, it'd be overrun.
PS: I asked several chefs and Mexico travel leaders what they considered the best cities in Mexico for eating. The consensus was Mexico City, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Jalapa—well, also Verazcruz. The agreement was almost unanimous. By process of elimination, Puebla ended up the winner (somebody else was writing on Mexico City, and we had recently covered Oaxaca). Puebla is the birthplace of not just mole poblano but also of chiles en nogada, a dish of stuffed chiles with a fresh walnut sauce. I don't know of too many other cities that can claim to have invented two dishes that have become part of the national cuisine.
Skip Hollandsworth: As much as I wanted to find some exotic out-of-the-way location for my trip, I also realized that was not the way most people experience Mexico. At Terminal B of DFW International Airport, you can see one jet after another take off for Mexico. They are filled with passengers who are on what is known as a package tour. They call up a travel agent who books them on a tour that takes care of absolutely everything. (The tours are operated by such companies as Adventure Tours and Funjet.) For one price, all the traveler has to do is show up at the airport with his or her passport or birth certificate (the tours also operate out of Houston and Austin), get on a charter jet, fly to a city like Cancun, go through customs, get on a bus provided by the tour company, and be driven straight to a huge resort beach hotel where all food and drinks are free. These are the "all-inclusive" vacations you see advertised in the Sunday travel sections of the newspapers.
texasmonthly.com: Had you ever been to your assigned destination before? If so, when?
SB: Nope.
JNP: My wife, Kris, and I went to Puerto Vallarta in the mid-eighties. The hotel, beach, and pool were nice, although the vendors were annoying and it was the first time I was exposed to time-share salespeople. I guess it was relaxing, but when we went to the old part of town and saw how much the city had grown, I started wishing we'd been there before Liz Taylor and Richard Burton made Night of the Iguana.
PS: Puebla was new to me. When I found out it was the fourth largest city in Mexico, I was amazed because I had never even considered going there. It is not well known to Americans, even though there are quite a few flights in and out every day. Mexicans vacation there quite a bit, though.
SH: No.
Pamela Colloff: I'm embarrassed to say that I had never been farther south than Mexico's border towns, so Mexico City was dramatically different for me. I was interested in the melding of colonial and indigenous cultures, which is much more pronounced there in the capital than along the border.
texasmonthly.com: Were you afraid to travel to Mexico? If so, what precautions did you take? If not, why not?
SB: I didn't have to be afraid; my mom handled that for me. Sure, Mexico has some special crime problems, but the way I figure it, I could be kidnapped in Austin and locked in my trunk and drowned in Town Lake. (How this makes me feel safer I'll never know.) My destination, Morelia, isn't overrun by U.S. tourists so there probably isn't the criminal network set up to pry on visitors that you can find in some other parts of Mexico. I never felt the slightest hint of danger in Morelia, and in fact, felt much safer there than I did on a subsequent visit to Seattle. I am spooked about cooties in the water and some of the food, so I did get the hepatitis shot, although I felt sort of silly doing so.
JNP: No. Pam Colloff sent out an e-mail advisory from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about getting hep vaccinations. I called around and eventually found out the shots wouldn't be effective for at least three weeks. So we went without.
PS: I'm afraid only of traveling to Mexico City and certain states that have a reputation for drug trafficking. Downtown Puebla is very safe, very clean, very middle-class. Of course, any large city has its seedy, risky neighborhoods, but you just make a point of staying out of those, as you would in this country.
SH: Here's the thing about one of these "all-inclusive" tours. You do not have to know a word of Spanish. You don't have to worry about drinking the wrong water. And as long as you stay in the resort, you don't have to worry about the exchange rate between Mexican and U.S. currency, which can be a relief to first-time visitors. But it's the kind of trip that can also be rather sterile if you don't make some effort to get out of the resort and experience Mexico. You could be in Florida, for all you know.
PC: I was definitely wary of going to Mexico City. Several years ago, a long-time Texas Monthly writer was badly injured when he was shot during a botched robbery in Mexico City. He had hailed one of the city's many green Volkswagen taxis, which is how nearly every scary story I heard about Mexico City began. When we were in Mexico City, we were very careful about getting into authorized taxis only—taxis that our hotel called for us, for example.
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