Tag archives for Mexico
Strange Planet: Freeze Frame Falls
Posted by Giovanna Palatucci on December 6, 2010 Take a closer look. You won’t be splashing around in these falls anytime soon. That’s because what appears to be water spilling over the cliffs is actually a natural rock formation. Hierve el Agua, which ironically translates as “the water boils,” is located just over 70 kilometers from Oaxaca City in Mexico. The falls, formed…
Cancun’s Disappearing Beach
Posted by Intelligent Travel on November 30, 2010 Contributing editor Charles Kulander offers a reminder to the delegates gathered at the COP 16 climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico this week. As delegates from 193 nations convene at COP 16, the 16th annual climate change conference now meeting in Cancun, local environmentalists point to a pressing sustainability issue right on their doorstep: Ever…
Eat Your Grasshoppers
Posted by Intelligent Travel on November 17, 2010 Emily Chaplin‘s Mexican homestay involved a peculiar yet crunchy snack. I had been duly warned. But somehow, when relaxing outdoors admiring a serene mountain view, the offer of a handful of roasted grasshoppers still managed to catch me off guard. Eyes closed, I reached out my hand, threw the selected victim into my mouth, and…
Mexico: Yucatán’s Natural Wonders
Posted by Intelligent Travel on October 20, 2010 Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is crowded with natural wonders, and on Tobias Nowlan‘s recent visit, he was able to experience several of them with the help of local guides. Below, he offers a quick selection of some of the region’s more unusual adventures. @font-face { font-family: “Cambria”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size:…
Strange Planet: Mexico’s Underwater Sculpture Garden
Posted by Janelle Nanos on October 13, 2010 This is no ordinary reef. British artist Jason de Caires Taylor created these 400 sculptures from casts of real people, and he’s placed them on the ocean floor outside of Mexico’s Isla Mujeres National Marine Park. The work is called “The Silent Evolution,” and is part of the Museo Subacuatico de Arte (MUSA); its aim…
Mexico’s Stone Soup
Posted by Intelligent Travel on October 4, 2010 Sarah Borealis traveled to Mexico on a research trip with Tulane University’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies, and while there, discovered a tasty tradition brewing in El Tule. Below, she describes the ancient tradition of making stone soup. In the summer of 2008, I traveled to the town of El Tule, in the state…
Mexico’s Green Oasis
Posted by Intelligent Travel on September 13, 2010 With its high-rise hotels and crowded beaches, Cancún, Mexico is, in many ways an environmentalist’s tourism nightmare. It would have been easy for the country’s government to keep cashing in on the concrete jungle that lined the coast, but there has been a move in Mexico to think about the long-term environmental impacts of resort…
Cabo Vows
Posted by Intelligent Travel on February 1, 2010 Sheila F. Buckmaster, Traveler editor at large, just came back from a destination wedding in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It was my first Destination Wedding–”my” not as in “bride,” but, rather, “guest.” And it was in one very special destination: Cabo San Lucas. Whales, beach, and margaritas. Sunny Mexico, where smiles are in abundance. Good…
Bus2Antarctica: Oh Mexico
Posted by Intelligent Travel on January 8, 2010 Andrew Evans is hightailing it through Mexico and Central America in an effort to catch the Sea Lion, a National Geographic/Lindblad expedition that will take him from Costa Rica to Panama on his way to Antarctica. Here’s a glimpse of what he saw of Mexico from the bus window. The acronym ADO stands for Autobuses…
Bus2Antarctica: Border Crossing
Posted by Intelligent Travel on January 7, 2010 Andrew Evans is traveling by bus from D.C. to Antarctica and just recently passed through Mexico into Guatemala. After stopping to sleep, he got the chance to describe crossing over the U.S./Mexico border. Most people don’t realize that Texas is nearly as long as it is wide. So it took me nearly eight hours of…
Where the Whales Are
Posted by Meg Weaver on December 22, 2009 While just about everyone has tinsel, eggnog, and Santa on their minds these days, I’m thinking of heading south of the border to catch a glimpse of the migrating gray whales. Each winter, Pacific gray whales (among many other marine mammal species) cruise about 10,000 miles round trip from their summer feeding grounds in the…
Mexico’s Garden of Art
Posted by Intelligent Travel on December 3, 2009 Sabina Lohr took a break from touristy Cancún, Mexico, and learned that getting off the beaten path is only a few steps away. Just a short ferry hop from Cancún, Mexico, colorful Isla Mujeres is an spot where day-trippers commonly escape for a while from their all-inclusive hotel vacations in the mainland’s hotel zone. This…
Sneak Peek: Our Destinations Rated Issue
Posted by Janelle Nanos on October 21, 2009 Our November/December issue is on its way to a newsstand or mailbox near you – and features our sixth annual Destinations Rated Survey. Conducted by the National Geographic Society’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, this year’s survey looked at how tourism is impacting some of the iconic places we first surveyed in 2003 and rated in…
Jenss Family Travels: Journey’s End
Posted by Rainer Jenss on August 4, 2009 For the past year, Rainer Jenss and his family have been traveling around the world and blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. This post marks the last dispatch from their journey, and the end to an incredible year. You can see where they’ve traveled by going back through the archive of their…
Tour Guide: Baja Sur Outback
Posted by Intelligent Travel on August 4, 2009 Irony was not lost on Elizabeth Seward when she climbed into a Hummer to take an eco-tour through the Mexican outback. But the rugged terrain in Baja Sur, while being tough to navigate, offers hidden delights. Baja California Sur swells with tourism, despite the drug cartel wars intimidating those watching the news everywhere–or at least…
Cooking Classes on the Road
Posted by Intelligent Travel on August 3, 2009 One of the best travel souvenirs to bring home is being able to recreate the dishes you ate on the road. Freda Moon offers a quick guide to some local, authentic cooking courses in the two places where she divides her time, Mexico City and northern California. It was in Oaxaca City, the capital of…
Jenss Family Travels: En Route to Paradise
Posted by Rainer Jenss on July 22, 2009 Rainer Jenss and his family are wrapping up the final stops of their around-the-world journey, and they’re blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys’ Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids. Most travelers have probably heard the expression, “It’s not…
Swim With a 40-Foot Whale Shark
Posted by Meg Weaver on July 9, 2009 If you’re thinking of heading south of the border this summer to take advantage of low fares to Mexico, consider the upcoming Whale Shark Festival on Isla Mujeres, in the state of Quintana Roo on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The festival runs this July 15th through the 19th. The festival is billed as an ecotourism,…
Jenss Family Travels: Costa Rican Adventures
Posted by Rainer Jenss on July 8, 2009 Rainer Jenss and his family are wrapping up the final weeks of their around-the-world journey, and they’re blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys’ Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids. Of all the things we’ve experienced over the course…
Jenss Family Travels: Costa Rica
Posted by Rainer Jenss on June 29, 2009 Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they’re blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys’ Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids. When our TACA flight from Lima finally touched down in the capital city…
A Second Chance: Greening El Salvador
Posted by Jeannette Kimmel on May 28, 2009 For years, El Salvador has gotten a bad rap. Not that civil war has anything to do with it, but every country deserves a second chance, right? According to recently launched campaign, EcoExperiencias El Salvador, the country offers a truly off-the-beaten-path look at Central America. Guests can explore the many museums and restaurants of San…
Report from Cabarete: Where Life is a Beach
Posted by Beth Lizardo on April 8, 2009 On a wet, dreary night in March last year I got a phone call from my parents. They were having dinner on the beach in Cabarete, a small Caribbean beach village on the northern shore of the Dominican Republic. I could barely hear my mom over the voices and music in the background. “You would…
Monarchs Gone Wild
Posted by Marilyn Terrell on January 12, 2009 Friend of IT and World Hum contributor Jerry V. Haines has been chowing down on cheap eats in Morelia, Mexico, where butterfly madness is going strong, and wrote about it in his CasualEats column for the TravelBeat network. He picked Morelia because it’s a college town and he figured that students know how to eat…
Baja Update: Danzante Hotel Loses its Battle
Posted by Intelligent Travel on November 25, 2008 Traveler photographer Ralph Lee Hopkins, who shot the images in our current feature, “Is Baja on the Block?” emailed us the other day with some frustrating news. In the Nov/Dec issue of Traveler, the Danzante Resort was mentioned in James Conaway’s article, “Is Baja on the Block?” as the closest thing to a sustainable resort…
Preserving Baja’s Coastal Treasures
Posted by James Conaway on November 20, 2008 Jim Conaway’s feature in this month’s issue, “Is Baja on the Block?” looks at how the spread of tourism and development is threatening the integrity of Baja California in Mexico. Here, he introduces some of the people trying to help sustain the marine heritage of the region. Peter Patterson looks more like an American teenager…
