Short answer: very, very safe. If you're looking for trouble-- in Mexico City or anywhere else-- you can surely find it. But all the hype about Mexico City being a dangerous place for American tourists seemed to me to be completely unfounded. I had a quasi-revelation while I was there about why. There's a subway stop at the airport. It costs 25 American cents to go anywhere in the city. I took it to my hotel and it was simple and clean and took 25 minutes. A taxi takes between an hour and an hour and forty-five minutes... depending on congestion caused by road building. And taxis cost... well, that's where the hype comes in. It's an oft repeated truism in Mexico City that if you take a "street cab" you could be kidnapped and held for ransom. It has happened-- only not to tourists. It has happened to rich and upper middle class Mexicans. There appears to be a ring of kidnappers in cahoots with some elements of the police who kidnap rich Mexicans and ransom them. The game doesn't work on tourists.

I took street taxis around Mexico City frequently. No problems whatsoever, although the fine folks at the hotel, especially the door staff, were adamant it was dangerous. A metered "street taxi" from my hotel to the great restaurants in the Polanco district costs around $3. The hotel cars that are always being pushed charge $20 for the same ride and the SITIO cabs the hotels claim are safe also try getting away-- no meters-- with $20. Those numbers explain the hyped up danger stories. The motive is very significant profit. The American ex-pats I spoke to in Mexico City laughed about it. They all take street cabs.

No matter where I travel, the employees at the upper end hotels always tell me "it's too far to walk." It never is. In Mexico City they also claimed it was too dangerous for me and my two robust friends to walk from Paseo de la Reforma to a market about a mile away. The walk brought us away from the architecturally stunning Reforma and into the "real" day-to-day Mexico City. Dangerous? Not even a little.

Last week I mentioned I was going to go to El Museo Dolores Olmedo in Xochimilco. It took almost an hour by subway and then a little train ride (25 cents on each). It costs $4.50 to get in, although they accepted my L.A. County Museum of Art membership card as a substitute and they accepted a teacher's ID from a friend. (All 3 museums I went to happily accepted the L.A. museum card for free entry.) Anyway, Dolores Olmedo, who died 6 years ago, was Diego Rivera's patron (and longtime lover-- and, rumor has it, also Frida Kahlo's lover, if more briefly). Her gorgeous, magical estate in the middle of the city-- although it certainly seems like you're far from any city-- has been turned into an art museum specializing in the works of Rivera and, to a lesser, but still significant, extent, Kahlo. I had been to Mexico City many times before but had never gone there before. I'm sure I'll be back... every time I visit Mexico City.

The Tamayo Museum in Chapultepec Park was a huge disappointment. I remember it as a spectacular building housing an even more spectacular collection of Tamayo art. The building is still super. The art... no. There were no Tamayos. Instead there were 4 absolutely wretched exhibitions that had to be justified with long explanations because they were so obviously mediocre. The first one we wandered into was 3 rooms of photos of toilet paper and urine by a radical Brazilian named Artur Barrio. A few years ago I decided to stop being a member of the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A. because the work grasped at trying to be art and instead was just a bunch of ugly intellectual polemics. Barrio's work was far worse than anything I ever saw at MOCA.

Canadian photographer Jeff Wall had an exhibition that wasn't offensive at all-- nor was it remotely interesting. It just filled some space with big, well-lit photos. Swedish photographer Henrik Hakansson also had a huge exhibition. It could have been called "Snapshots from my dull trip to Chiapas."
Pablo Pijnappel I would have voted to pass on but my two companions are Dutch and they were fascinated by his Dutch last name. We gave his unremarkable video a minute before leaving, a minute more than it was worth. Almost any random YouTube clip would have been more interesting and artistic.

El Museo de Arte Moderno has a kick-ass sculpture garden

Fortunately I then remembered that across the street, still in Chapultepec, was one of the western hemisphere's greatest modern art museums, the Museo de Arte Moderno. There were plenty of Tamayos, of course, as well as a spectacular sampling of Mexico's greatest contemporary artists: Rivera and Kahlo of course, and Siqueiros, Gerzco, Orozco, Galan, Costa, Carrington, etc. Between the permanent collection and the unbelievable sculpture garden, it is easy to while away a day at this beautiful oasis. We also saw a career retrospective of Remedios Varo Uranga. At first I thought the work was by some hippie in the 60s who was smoking a lot of Acapulco gold. Then I realized she was born in 1908 and had a vision way ahead of the trends. Definitely worth checking out.

The other day I mentioned I had gone to the culinary apex of Mexico City, Izote. The following night my friends wanted to eat on the roof of their hotel, the Best Western Majestic, which has a great view of the Zocolo and the National Palace but extremely mediocre food. We made up for it the following night when I got the fantastic concierge at the Embassy Suites to recommend something as good as Izote. He did: Pompano. It's not far from Izote in Polanco and, like it, it offers a modern-- and healthful-- delicious take on Mexican cooking. It's a seafood restaurant and the sampler of 3 cerviches was, simply put, the best cerviche I had ever tasted. Everything each of us ate was spectacular and I can't recommend this place too highly. It's at #42 Moliere in the old Jewish section of town (and not far from a fully functioning synagogue at Eugenio Sue).


UPDATE: BUT THINGS ARE DETERIORATING

The good news is that prices are going down on hotels and tourist-related things. The bad news is that Mexico is rated about as likely as Pakistan to disintegrate! The U.S. Joint Forces Command warns that Mexico's "government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."

OK, that thing turned out to have a few small shrimp in there. But when I first opened it, it looked like just cabbage and rice, which seemed a bit odd until I saw the dude next to me squeeze that little tube of Korean gochujang chili sauce into the rice and mix it up. There weren't any "chicken or fish" choices either...it was just this. Frankly I'm surprised that they even served us a meal on such a short hop out of Beijing. But this definitely was a nice and peaceful flight on Asiana.

by Michael Snyder

Every year, I head to New Orleans to participate in the pre-Lenten carnival. I’ve done this without fail for two decades-- even in February of 2006, mere months after the natural disaster-- and the less natural Bush-connected aftermath-- that has since come to define the area in many minds.

I choose the early weekend of the twelve-day festival that culminates in Mardi Gras, because it offers plenty of celebration with easier access to amenities, but fewer yahoos over-indulging, acting the fool, and making the rest of us pay for their folly. There is a stretch of Bourbon Street that should be overseen by the NCAA, since many nights, teams of drunken college students appear to be competing in the sport of distance vomiting. That sort of behavior increases during Carnival season, but it’s easy to avoid when you know where it tends to happen.

So I went back to New Orleans yet again. I couldn’t not go. And I was so happy to be there. In its own way, this trip was as lovely as all of my prior visits, despite the knowledge that so much has changed, will never be the same, and needs to be done to insure the town’s future. At least, the entertainment districts were in good shape-- with the exception of a few storefronts that remain shuttered. Music rang out of every corner, whether it was a ragtime band on Royal Street, trumpeter Leroy Jones at Preservation Hall, the old-timey New Orleans Jazz Vipers at the Spotted Cat, or vocalist John Boutte and his ensemble at d.b.a. As usual, there were moments that I’ll absolutely cherish:

Sunday night, I ate dinner at Coop’s-– an informal joint in the French Quarter-- with a buddy from San Francisco and the great singer-songwriter-guitarist Alex Chilton of Box Tops and Big Star fame. I was still recovering from the indulgences of the previous night’s costume party in the two-story warehouse of a renowned local artist. I’d had my fill of the weekend’s street parades with float-riding maskers tossing beads, aluminum doubloons, plastic cups and who-knows-what-else at rambunctious crowds. I’d had the thrill of watching the afternoon’s Krewe of Barkus dog parade as a thousand cleverly-costumed canines dragged their masters through the Quarter to the cheers of appreciative onlookers. (This year’s Barkus theme was “A Streetdog Named Desire.” Loved the dachshund in the torn t-shirt with the name “Stanley Bow-Wow-Ski” scrawled across its back.) I was ready for the joys of good Cajun-style cooking and good company.

Local resident Chilton lives in the Tremé, the primarily African-American neighborhood that spawned jazz giant Louis Armstrong, and he’s been happy there for many years. Yet these are troubling times. Between bites of an oyster po’boy, Chilton expressed his concern over the loss of thousands of hard-working lower-middle-class New Orleanians who were flooded out of their homes by Hurricane Katrina and may never come back. Suddenly, he noticed the sound of R&B queen Aretha Franklin coming over the restaurant’s sound system. She was singing the Burt Bacharach-Hal David classic “I Say a Little Prayer.” Chilton marveled at her stirring gospel inflections that clearly turned the object of the singer’s affection from a boyfriend or new-found lover to a certain Lord and Savior. “Not what Burt and Hal intended,” Chilton said with a grin, before devouring the rest of his po’ boy.

On Monday afternoon, the day after the Grammys, I was walking down Frenchmen Street in the Faubourg Marigny district next to the Quarter. I’d just been hanging out with fervent NoLa musician Kenny Claiborne, the guitar-slinging soul rebel who defied civic, state and national troops in the wake of Katrina; stayed in his home after the citywide evacuation; and, with the aid of a gas-powered generator, his home studio and a couple of speakers on his balcony, played DJ eight hours a day for his few remaining neighbors, the police, soldiers, and relief workers. With a microphone in hand, he asked passersby for requests, spun his favorites, and called it Radio Marigny. He’s a remarkable guy.

Anyway, I was heading back to Decatur Street to quaff a pint of Crescent City Brewhouse’s Carnival Bock, and suddenly, there was legendary producer-composer-keyboardist-singer Allen Toussaint driving his shiny convertible, top down, a female companion by his side. They slowly tooled past the strip of hotspots on Frenchmen: Ray's Boom Boom Room, Café Brazil, d.b.a., the Spotted Cat, and the venerable Snug Harbor where pianist Ellis Marsalis-– father of jazz masters Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo, and Jason-- is in residence with his trio every Friday night. The previous evening, Toussaint was in Los Angeles to attend the Grammy ceremony. “The River in Reverse,” his 2006 collaboration with Elvis Costello, had been nominated in the category of "best pop vocal album,” but John Mayer won the award.

Hours later, Toussaint was back home to New Orleans, and cruising along in elegant fashion. People on the sidewalk greeted him with words of respect and encouragement. All on Frenchmen who saw him knew him and gave him his props. Toussaint-- local royalty-- acknowledged each of them with a gracious nod, and motored on.

Despite the banners and posters trumpeting “Rebuild, Restore, Renew” or similar positive sentiments, a number of T-shirts for sale at various souvenir shops in the Quarter tell a different story. Of course, there are the usual vulgar inscriptions such as the popular “I Got Bourbon-Faced on Shit Street.” Then, there are shirts of a different stripe, reading “Make Levees, Not War”; “FEMA: The New Four-Letter Word,” “F.E.M.A.: Fix Everything My Ass”; and, both lurid and pointed, “Katrina Gave Me a Blow-Job I’ll Never Forget.” All of it is justified. It’s been way over a year since the flood. The fix-up has been slow and, in some sectors, non-existent.

After what Katrina did, did the weather deities think that a tornado or two could faze the Crescent City? Lightning flashed, wind howled, rain came down, and at least one tornado ripped through and ripped up the streets on the night before I left town, by then, completely spent from my long weekend of food, drink, music, dance, and camaraderie. A number of buildings were leveled, some people were injured, and an elderly woman died. More tragedy for a locale that has far exceeded its recommended dose. Yet…

The next day dawned sunny and warm. Around noon in Armstrong Park’s Congo Square, the current model of Paul Kantner’s Jefferson Starship played a free concert sponsored by Microsoft. A polyglot crowd whooped it up to a lively Starship career retrospective, preceded by a few songs from a reconstituted Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Yep. The party resumed, and will continue into next week. It'll only stop when Fat Tuesday turns to Ash Wednesday, and Lent begins. Caught in the vortex of Carnival, people will willingly succumb to pleasure and (thanks to spicy food and excessive drink) pain until the madness ends. Then, it’ll happen again next year.

You can’t stop Mardi Gras.

I finally made it down to Teppei's new extension Hanare for lunch today (thanks for the heads-up). It was a bit confusing at first, as you had to order before going in, choosing either the buffet or the bara chirashi. The buffet had already been obliterated by the time I got there, and really didn't look appealing. I thus fell back on the bara set (99B Tanjong Pagar Road, 6222-1976).

It's too bad then that the bara chirashi was overseasoned and crudely cut. Granted, at those prices, I wasn't in much of a position to complain (especially when you could stuff yourself with all of the rice and otsumami that you wanted, just like you could back at his proper restaurant). But if had wanted a bara chirashi at this kind of price range, I would have gone to Meii Sushi over at International Plaza.

So yes, next time I'll pass on this and go for the buffet instead; the curry looked like it might be worth a try. Still, if it weren't for Teppei's name, I wouldn't have even come here. At least one doesn't have to wait in line like one does at his original place; it's precisely because of that line that I haven't been there in a million years. It used to be so easy to just walk in at lunchtime.

When I made my big VW van trip to India in 1969-71 I remember this bizarre sensation I got sometimes, especially in Afghanistan and Nepal, that I wasn't merely traveling in space but also in time-- backwards in time. Like that first day in Herat, especially after smoking hash stronger than acid with some tribal elders, I started thinking I was back in Biblical times. Nothing to do with anything about the Bible, just it was a long time ago.

Well, it's almost 2007 and... today I was feeling like I was in pre-call center India circa 1970. Ever since I left Buenos Aires I've been feeling more and more like Joseph Conrad... descending... or a Paul Bowles character. Here are some notes I jotted down on the bus today after I had somehow managed to get out of Brazil and into a more-chaotic-than-normal Paraguay:

Ciudad del Este is one of Paraguay's two portals to the modern world, a border town on the bank of the Parana River across from Foz Iguassu in Brazil. You'd think it would be more... um... cosmopolitan than the rest of the country. If it is, I'll be pre-Biblical in no time at all. This is a foresaken hellhole with garbage-strewn streets and the air of decay, really seedy decay. All the strides Brazil and Argentina have made to become thoroughly integral parts of the 21st Century global economy... well, I'm not even seeing a baby step over on this side of the Parana.

This morning I woke up in the Tropical Hotel Cataratas inside the ecological Iguazu Falls National Park that spans chunks or Brazil and Argentina and which I plan to write about at great length when I get home and can show you my wonderful photos. But now I'm on the other side of the Friendship Bridge, after great exertions. It feels like I put enough time and energy in to have gone hundreds of miles instead of a dozen. But in many ways it feels not like a dozen or like hundreds but like thousands of miles. It sure ain't Kansas... nor even the most extreme and distant corners of Brazil or Argentina. And no one has ever mentioned "ecological" to the folks hereabouts, believe me. The sky darkened ominously as we crossed the border and it started to rain-- the first rain I've seen since arriving in South America.

Early this morning CNN informed me that there is rioting in Asuncion, the capital. It wasn't anti-American or even anti-Bush and I figured it didn't look threatening enough on tv for me to change my plans. When I eventually got to the bus station in Foz I was soaked in sweat and disgruntled. It was then that the bus company agent informed me that the Brazilian buses were refusing to cross the border because of strikes and demonstrations in Paraguay. (A little aside: I could have saved myself a lot of hassles. First off I should have taken a plane. It costs $45 from Ciudad del Este to Asuncion on TAM. I had called TAM, a Brazilian airline, and asked if I could fly from Foz to Asuncion. They said they had no direct flights but I could fly from Foz to Sao Paulo to Asuncion for $900. They neglected to mention they fly direct from the airport 10 miles from Foz, just over the Brazil-Paraguay border. Second, I should have taken a taxi from the hotel to the bus terminal instead of 3 buses, but the taxis-- and all other services--have special prices for foreigners. A Brazilian would pay around $15. For a foreigner it's $75. I'll get more into this when I write about Iguazu after I'm back in the U.S.)

Anyway, before I interupted myself, I was saying how the bus agent explained there would be no bus to Asuncion. However, he offered to take me in a couple of private cars to Ciudad del Este where there is a bus going to Asuncion. Okey-dokey. He didn't even charge me and I wound up in some kind of a parking lot in this filthy squalid dump on the border and then on a small, uncomfortable, freezing bus with a boisterous Brazilian couple. It only went in second gear. Eventually he stopped at an actual bus terminal and the bus filled up with people going to their capital city. Maybe the extra weight allowed him to get into the higher gears. It was a 5 hour trip.

I felt like I was back in India: scrawny chickens, scrawny cattle, scrawny dogs, scrawny children all over the roads. Verdent green everywhere, tropical vegetation, smoke from fires permeating everything... hovels lining the 2 lane highway (Paraguay's best road). This is the developed part of the country. Up north, where Bush's ranch is, it's supposed to be backward, really backward. Anyway, down here in developed Paraguay there were virtually no cars, just trucks and buses. India has come a long way; Paraguay hasn't.

Asuncion is quite a step up from what I just described-- but hardly a modern city; hadly a city at all, in fact. There are open sewers where sidewalks should be. I'm in the tropics. It could be Africa. It sure couldn't be Buenos Aires or Montevideo.

I did manage to find a haute cuisine restaurant and it was completely delicious-- Mburicaò. I had a grilled local river fish on a bed of lightly curried vegetables and it was fantastic and there was lots of it. It was like $12. No one spoke English and there was no menu in English. No one speaks English anywhere in Paraguay so far. Oh, the guys at the desk of the hotel speak English-- a bit. I have a feeling that's the only qualification needed to get the job-- a little English. I mean it is a Sheraton.


UPDATE: ASUNCION LOOKS BETTER IN THE LIGHT OF DAY

It's still very much a third world city, but the nice bright sunshine helps highlight some charms. And this Sheraton I'm at isn't really in the center (where the open sewers have been paved over). I can see that my hopes to actually visit the Bush ranch are unrealistic. There are no roads and the few people in the lightly inhabited area don't speak Spanish, just Guarani. There are no buses or anything like that that get anywhere near the region and I was told that the only way to get close to it is to rent a private plane-- or hike... for a couple of weeks. Every single person who I discussed it with have told me I would be killed if I tried to go there. I think I'll try the downtown siteseeing instead.


UPDATE: AH... THERE'S A REASON SO FEW TOURISTS COME TO PARAGUAY

India is more interesting. I did manage to see all the mains sights in Asuncion. I probably inhaled enough toxic fumes to have taken 5 years of eating raw food and taking 30 supplements a day off my lifespan. The heat and humidity are staggering. The traffic congestion is beyond anything conceivable in L.A.


There is apparently no such thing as zoning in Asuncion. It's kind of interesting; it's the most mixed used place I've ever been to. Everywhere you look you see a meticulously kept colonial mansion--and that's not a style; it's a house built when Asuncion was the capital of the southern part of the Spanish Empire-- delicately painted sky blue or rose pink, sitting next to a greasy car repair shop/junk yard with rusting hulks of trucks in front of it. And next to that an optomitrist, a clinic, a mall and 20 kiosks. Speaking of optomitry, it is apparently the primary profession hereabouts. Remember how I mentioned that Buenos Aires has more hairdressers per square inch than any other place on earth? Asuncion has more optomitrists than any other place on earth. I will insert a photo here when I get home. I took it from the Plaza de Heroes and it shows 8 optomitrists' shops in a row. And every block seems to have one or two. If I had time I would investigate.

I took a city bus downtown. It costs 2,100 guaranis. There are 5,360 guaranis to the dollar. The buses, belching heavy black exhaust, crawl along and never bother closing their doors. People jump on and off at will-- including vendors selling food and drink and whatever else you can imagine. Everyone seems to agree I couldn't get within 100 miles of the Bush estate and that if I did I would never be heard from again. Apparently there's a "low level" rebellion going on in the region and the U.S. has a base up there "training" Paraguayans to exterminate the locals fight the terrorists. Maybe we can ask Jane Harman to look into that.

I am leaning toward heading off to Iberà, a swamp near (relatively near) Posadas in Agentina. It's supposed to be the Serengeti of South America with more species of animals than anywhere else in the hemisphere. The drawback is that there's no easy way to get there-- from anywhere. Next week I'm going to Tierra del Fuego. I met some Brits in Iguazu who had just come from there and they said it was zero degrees. I'm not sure if that is centigrade or fahrenheit-- but does it matter?

Because I've traveled so much and to so many places people are always asking me which was my favorite. For many years I would always say that it was a three-way tie between Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. These were all places I went between 1969 and 1971, places that blew my young mind. I went back to Sri Lanka in 1996-97 and I've been back to Nepal twice as well. Nepal holds up pretty well-- and I'll be writing about my trips there-- but Sri Lanka... well, long civil wars usually screw places up pretty badly. Afghanistan is still exquisite and pristine in my mind. But since those days I've been to many places and eventually Thailand supplanted my Big 3.

Last year, however, I discovered a place I had never been to but instantly fell in love with: Bali. I'm not a beach kind of guy; I always prefer a shark-free/non-sewage dumping swimming pool to the ocean-- and Bali is a small island famous for beach life. And drunken Australians, another thing of no interest to me. I'm more interested in native culture than sunburn and tourists; always have been. In researching Bali, I soon figured out that as long as you stay away from one little tiny area on the Southeast coast, specifically developed as a tourist ghetto so as not to pollute the island's incredible indigenous culture, you can still be in paradise. (Al Qaeda apparently figured this out too and the bombs you've heard about were all in the tourist ghetto area.)

So I decided to rent a villa in the interior, away from the crowded beach area-- but where? And how? Short answer: a Google search of "Bali + villa" soon brought me to Bali Villas, a great local company that rents out villas to visitors, most of which are owned by wealthy foreigners who only use them a month or two per year. (About 20% of tourists who came to Bali in the last couple of years rented a villa!) The one I rented has 4 bedrooms, lots of common space, a really beautiful swimming pool, 4 incredible people who live in an attached house and do all the work around the place-- including a mind-blowing chef. (She was able to adapt all the traditional Balinese and Indonesian recipes to my dietary restrictions of no sugar and no flour-- and, aside from fish, I'm a vegan; every single meal was MAGNIFICENT.) Also included was a van with a driver, Anwar, who was always there for whatever crazy requests the 4 of us made. I mean, some people love the beach and some love Hindu temples in remote mountains (me) and Anwar worked it all out, always.

Most of the great villas are on or near the beach. Most tourists go to Bali for the beaches. But there are places in the mountains and up near Ubud, the kind of cultural center of the island. Ours overlooked the mighty Ayung River (the photo above was taken from my bedroom terrace) and we never saw another foreigner anywhere nearby for the 3 weeks we were there. We never did find the "village" on a map and it had an impossible, unpronounceable name. It's between Denpasar and Ubud. That link gives all the details, amenities, prices, etc. I'll get into the reasons why I think Bali is the best overall place I ever visited in the next couple of blogs.

The Adventure Racing World Championship is still ongoing in Costa Rica, but as I write this, two teams have crossed the finish line, claiming first and second place respectively. The winners of the race, and this year's world champions are Thule Adventure Team, who finished in 168 hours,  27 minutes. That translates to a little more than seven days or non-stop racing. Second place went to Columbia Vidaraid, which came across the line at 171 hours, 34 minutes. Right now, it appears that Adidas TERREX Prunesco is in position to claim third place, although they aren't home yet.

The race got underway last weekend with the four-person, coed teams facing a 700+ km (435 mile) course designed to test their endurance, skills and determination. At the time, it was thought that the top teams could potentially complete the route in about 4 to 5 days. But, it turns out that was a very optimistic estimate. Thule is perhaps the best team in the sport today, and it took them 2-3 days longer than projected.

As is typical in adventure racing, this course mixed trail running, mountain biking and paddling. It started on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica and finishes on the Atlantic Coast. In between there were miles of rainforest to cross, rivers to kayak and mountains to climb.

Congratulations to Jackie Boisset, Mimi Guillot, Stuart Lynch and Albert Roca, the athletes who make up Team Thule. This win continues a great run for the team, who have been very tough to beat on an international level over the past few years.

Yes, I caved and got an Voigtlander 40mm optical viewfinder for my Panasonic GF1. It's well suited to the Panasonic 20mm 1.7 lens.

But this is not about the viewfinder or how much better the GF1 feels with it...it's about the above 'minimalist' gear which is an option when I'm planning an assignment or a photo trip. I can have all this in a small Domke bag, and have spare room for a book, an audio recorder, an itouch and lots more.

Imagine the bliss of having all one's gear in a small and light bag!!!

Here's a statistic: The combined weight of the GF1, the Acer netbook and a WD Passport hard drive (from their individual listed specifications) is 3.8lbs. The combined weight of a Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-70mm 2.8 lens is 3.9lbs.

Am I contemplating chucking out the DSLRs and lenses? Not at all. What I now have available to me is equipment which, depending on the nature and duration of the trip and/or assignment, is a viable alternative.

The easy one first: the WD Passport 750gb is small and worked well so far. It may not be as tough as a Lacie Rugged, but it's functional, provides ample storage and is inexpensive.

The not-so-easy: I've used the Acer netbook on 3 or more photo expeditions, and it also did okay. However, its Windows XP software is a major irritant, and its Atom processor is really sluggish. I seldom have it process any image files, and just use it to save my RAW files on its 160gb hard drive and on the WD Passport. An eventual alternative to the Acer could be an iPad, if and when it allows connectivity to an external HD.

Another not-so-easy: The GF1 is a delight to use, and the quality of its images is almost as good as from an entry-level DSLR....but almost is the key word. Having said that, it's still a lovely tool to use on walk-abouts, for environmental portraits and as a back-up. It'll be very useful in situations where photography may be frowned upon (like religious rituals) or where one doesn't want to be labeled as a professional photographer.

I'll be taking the GF1 (along with my Canon gear) to Istanbul in a couple of weeks, and will further test its walk-"aboutability".