Life as a relentless art and history nerd gives you strange proclivities. You pour over the collected letters of obscure writers and artists; the lower echelons of your bookcases become heavy with thick volumes of memoirs from generals whose names most people have forgotten or never learned to begin with. You find yourself awake at…
On December 17, 2010, a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in an act of desperate protest that not only changed Tunisia, but would spark revolutions across the Arab world. The day after his self-immolation, Tunisians outraged by corruption, poor living conditions, and a lack of free speech took to the…
The waitress was explaining that the spaghetti dish came with a sheep-cheese that tasted something like parm—“No I don’t want that.” My cousin shook his head. “Do you have normal cheese?” When our food was served a few minutes later, he frowned. “It’s not even red. Why is it green?” “You asked for spaghetti with…
Visiting Belgrade is like coming to at the end of an all-weekend blackout and realizing that you’re in some relic of a punk bar that used to be famous back in the 1980’s. The decor varies from nostalgically beautiful to grimy, and the people range from instantly amiable to despondently depressed. Everyone is drinking cheap…
Martinis and Bikinis with a View…the Womb of Wealth…From Pretension to Porters…Am I Being Robbed???…the Cannabis Club…Room Service Smorgasbord…the Fantastic Tab and Grace Under Pressure Nothing wipes away travel exhaustion like martinis, oysters, and an eighth-story view of Barcelona, so when I arrived at the Majestic Hotel to find that my room wasn’t prepared…
Almost everyone in Puerto Escondido falls into one of three categories. First, you have the locals–a hearty laughing, generous, only occasionally overly-Catholic people. Then you have the middle aged white people (most commonly Canadian, American, or German in that order) who have come to collect tropical-themed shirts and wide-brimmed hats. Finally, there are the hippies.…
It was an accident, discovering how to attract a vulture within photogenic distance. I had been stretched out on the beach for some hours, alternating between reading and leaping into the ocean whenever my skin began to simmer underneath the delightfully murderous heat of the midday sun. At the moment this particular stretch of beach…
As we left the party—which was at a weird outdoor spot called la Piedra—Cortez speculated as to whether it was safe for us to separate and walk home alone as the unpaid pimp could be lurking anywhere. I was of the opinion that they had moved on to other, more profitable targets. “But hell,” I…
I was forced to leave a lot of stuff behind to make room in my bag for all the mezcal, which after much tasting and little prodding I realized I must bring to share with my people of the north, far as they were near the hinterland of Canada. Specifically, a passionfruit infused blend that…
When all is said and done, there are really only a handful of reasons anyone foreign ends up in Puerto Escondido for any sizable amount of time—to surf, to buy property and prepare for the Tourist Boom the coming of which we all recognize and fear, and to hide. The landgrabbers are largely focusing their…