Djenne-- Growin' a beard so I can get in here

For several years I would wake up in the back on my VW van, crawl into the front seat and start driving wherever I wanted to go and stay for as long as I wanted to. I was just telling some friends of mine how much I loved discovering Peshawar, after too many months in Afghanistan, by just driving through the Khyber Pass til I found something that looked inviting. I loved the stately horse drawn cabs. All the horses had bright red plumes. And I never saw so many weapons for sales in one place in my life. It would be an NRA member's wet dream. (Well, not this week; I understand the Taliban has it surrounded and it may fall. It would be like the U.S. losing St. Louis or Denver.) Anyway, I'm in the middle of planning a trip to Senegal and Mali. Literally in the middle; I started planning 5 months ago and I'm leaving 5 months from now. Long gone are the days I just hop into the front seat and drive through a pass to see what I find on the other side. As part of my long drawn out preparations for Mali I've grown a beard and I'm taking Muslim lessons so I can get into the great mosque in Djenne, which was closed to non-Muslims in 1996 after a French fashion photographer from Vogue took inappropriate pictures-- soft core porn in the locals' eyes-- in the holiest house of worship in the country. Sometimes you just have to plan.

But not this week. I just got to Mexico City and it was as last minute as I can imagine travel these days. Toon, my best friend from my days in Amsterdam, e-mailed me on Wednesday and said he and his wife, Mieke, would be celebrating his birthday in Mexico City. I said I'd meet them and an hour later had found a good fare on Alaska Air and a decent deal at the Embassy Suites, which Trip Advisor rated as the #1 hotel in town. And here I am.

First off, it is hardly the best hotel in town. It basically is just a gussied up... Embassy Suites. The Four Seasons, which offers rooms at the same rate if you insist ($150/night), is way better. But the Embassy Suites is good enough and I'm perfectly happy here, despite the fact that the wireless connection is slow and costs $11/day and I hate being ripped off. I asked the concierge to make a reservation for me at Izote, one of the best restaurants in town, if you're looking for modern innovative Mexico cuisine, rather than lard and stuff that'll stuff your arteries up. This place was unpretentious and simple in ambiance and... well, I want to eat there every meal, every day. Chef /owner Patricia Quintana is a genius-- and a genius, it turns out who trained under my favorite chef in the word, Paul Bocuse. The hotel told me it was unsafe to take a normal taxi from Reforma to Polanco but that they would send me in the hotel car. That wound up costing $20. I laughed at myself for getting hustled and walked halfway back and then took a mini bus the rest of the way-- it started raining-- for 25 cents.

Oh, and speaking of raining, the one preparation I did make was to check the weather. Since it's been in the high 90s and low 100s in the L.A. area lately and Mexico City is further south, I had no intention of bringing a jacket. So I checked the Google and noticed it is quite cold-- as well as rainy. Sometimes you just gotta plan, even if just a little. Right?

When I was on the plane I asked the Mexican stewardess how to get to Reforma and she said everyone takes a taxi but that the subway was just as fast, a fifteenth the price and convenient and clean and safe and all that. I took her advice and it was just as she said. And it left me off a few blocks from the hotel. As I started walking towards it I discovered something I never had noticed before: Mexico City is the gayest city in the world. In fact, there were no straight people. I had left the Insurgentes metro stop and was walking down Amberes. It was just a colorful jumble of gays and lesbians. Then I figured I must be in the middle of an event. And although, it turns out that this is Gay Pride Weekend, that was in another part of town and this just turned out to be a neighborhood that's pretty festive all the time. I mean I knew Acapulco and Puerta Vallarta are gay havens but I always remember Mexico City as kind of staid and a bit uptight. Things sure have changed! Tomorrow: the Dolores Olmedo Museum in Xochimilco.

Howie at Iguazo after the "safe incident" in Buenos Aires

The most regular Google hits this site gets come from people finding a piece I wrote last Christmas called Is Morocco A Safe Place To Visit?. My conclusion, having visited the country a dozen times since 1969, is that it is. Now you don't have to go traveling around the world to find trouble; trouble'll find you anywhere, and certainly in Paris, London, New York, L.A., San Francisco, Sydney... yeah, anywhere. My luckless friend Roland has been to Marrakech three times and was robbed the first two times he was there. But I rate Marrakech safe, as well as the other big cities listed above, and Buenos Aires unsafe. Let me tell you why I came to that conclusion.

A few weeks ago, just before leaving for Buenos Aires, I was laughing about how Bush's drunken daughter was robbed in San Telmo, a Buenos Aires hotspot (while surrounded by her Secret Service bodyguards). I was laughing because there's no amount of grief that could come to that infamous family that I wouldn't find amusing-- and because the daughter is just like the father: an irresponsible jackass who can't figure out how to behave among people. However, once I spent some time in Buenos Aires I started feeling badly that I had laughed. Everyone gets robbed in Buenos Aires. Everyone? Well, no, that was an exaggeration. I wrote something the other day about how Americans that are afraid of anything foreign can stay at the Park Hyatt and be in a virtual plastic bubble of American-ness (including a safe and prophylactic environment).

On the other hand, I haven't met a single Argentine without a story about crime in Buenos Aires. Everyone who hasn't been robbed has a brother or sister or best friend who has. My friend in bucolic Posadas has two sisters who moved from Misiones to cosmopolitan Buenos Aires. Both have been robbed numerous times; one was robbed 6 times! Buenos Aires crime isn't all directed at tourists. It's directed at everyone, including tourists.

Conventional wisdom for travelers is always to be alert and use common sense and then you won't be a victim. Mostly that works. But it works less well in Buenos Aires. The stories are legion! You get everything from the mundane stuff: pickpockets, purse and camera snatchers, crooked taxi drivers... to some really exotic shit: roofies in the drink at night/naked and penniless in a strange place in the morning. I ran into a guy from Milwaukee who had driven his motorcycle all the way down from Wisconsin to Argentina. You have to be pretty tough to do that. And then he got to Buenos Aires. Tom has a great web site about his trip, and the whole thing is worth reading just because he's such an engaing writer with a refreshing perspective. But here's a segment about his misadventures in Buenos Aires:

Sadly, the two most entertaining things to write about are also the most unfortunate for me. First, I was robbed. And, second, I flirted with the possibility of serious personal injury.
 
The robbery took place in the morning at a small park in one of the three medians that separate the lanes in the 14-lane avenue I referenced earlier. I was reading the paper, enjoying some breakfast, when I suddenly realized that a bird had just pooped in my yogurt and on my leg. I figured this to be revenge for not sharing my donut with the crowd of birds gathered around my feet. At right around this time, a man in his 50's walked by and motioned to the birds in the tree directly above me. I stood up to survey the breadth of the poop, at which point the man directed me to a cement post a short distance away where he claimed there was water. Near the post a woman in her thirties noticed my leg and offered some of her Kleenex while addressing me in an apologetic tone. I was not in the mood to have people wiping poop off my leg, so I brushed them away. It was on the way back to the hotel that I realized that my camera was not in my pocket.
 
I also had had a video camera and some cash on me, so they didn´t fleece me completely But I was pretty irritated, and I had evil thoughts of breaking all of that woman´s fingers one by one.  Strangely, the more I thought about it, the less upset I got. It's one thing to be robbed, but to be bamboozled by a three-person (including the deuce squirter in the grassy knoll) squad in an elaborate artificial poop ploy is quite another. I admired their audacity and originality, and, as an aside, I believe that the fake poop recipe involved a spicy mustard.

Actually, it isn't all that original. They were doing the exact same thing in Delhi in the 70's, around Connaught Place. It's just one of countless schemes Porteños have come up with to separate people from their money and possessions. Why Buenos Aires?

There are a lot of theories, although I should point out that most of the huge Latin American cities are crime infested and relatively unsafe. Argentina is a very materialistic place and somewhat superficial to boot. Everybody who's anybody-- or wants to be-- wants to at least appear to be on top of things. That costs money. And of the 11 million residents of the city, a great many millions of them are poor. It looks like a very prosperous city, a very, very prosperous city. But you don't have to go far from the core, away from the Microcentro, from Palermo, from Recoleta, Belgrano, Retiro, Barrio Norte before you run into some serious poverty. Shanties surround the city. And there are sections right in the heart of it you don't want to walk through. A ten minute stroll from the 4 Seasons and Park Hyatt you could stumble onto Villa 31, a ghetto that many Porteños claim is at the root of a good deal of the street crime in town. Along with urban myths about how teenage murderers cannot be legally punished and that kind of thing, you get a picture of Villa 31 being filled with young people sitting around and listening to cumbia all day-- think rap and hip-hop-- and very addicted to Paco (think crack). You'll be hard-pressed to find too much sympathy among Argentines for the residents of Villa 31 and the other villas miserias and their unfortunate inhabitants but here's the other side of the story.

So what about me? You know how I walk everywhere-- and at all times of the day and night. I walk for miles and miles in any direction and sneer at anyone who tells me it's unsafe. Did I run into any of the famous Buenos Aires street crime? Not first hand. But that doesn't mean I wasn't robbed. I wasn't robbed in one of the villas miserias though; I was robbed in Recoleta, Buenos Aires' "Beverly Hills." I was the victim of a trick at least as old as the one that Tom fell for with the pigeon poop.

I rented an apartment through a "reputable" Argentine agency that connects landlords with tourists who are spending at least a week in the capital, ByTArgentina. I picked an apartment in an upscale building on Posadas, a pretty posh street. I figured I would play it safe for my first week. What a joke! The landlady, Graciela Ujaque de Narnesi (Grace Ujaque of Buenos Aires and Miami) met me at the apartment and gave me a key to the safe so I could leave my money in it. When I left a week later, $500 was missing from the safe. ByTArgentina promised they'd get back to me; they haven't. Does that mean I won't go back to Buenos Aires? of course not. I'll just be... more alert next time.



WHAT ABOUT MEXICO CITY? IS THAT ONE SAFE?

Like I said, there are problems with all the big Latin American cities, not just Buenos Aires. New Years Eve's Washington Post did a story on the safety of traveling to Mexico's gigantic capital. The article talks about politically motivated problems and common street crime. "Street crime also has long plagued this 580-square-mile, traffic-clogged metropolis of more than 20 million residents. The list of crimes encountered by travelers is daunting: pickpocketing, purse snatching, mugging, armed robbery and rape, according to the U.S. State Department's consular information sheet on Mexico. 'Instant kidnappings,' in which the victims are abducted at gunpoint and forced to empty their bank accounts to pay a ransom, also are common. Even hailing taxis is considered risky. Is a trip to a place with so many sore spots worth it? And if you go, how best to stay safe?"

The writer insists that Mexico City has a lot of draws recommending it. He recommends avoiding certain neighborhoods and suggests avoiding oft-used scams and ye olde bullshyte line about taking "every precaution you would in any large city." As well as carrying minimal cash, leaving the bling back home and trying to "blend in." (The jewelry business in Argentina is ruined because no Portenos in their right minds wear anything real anymore.) He thinks you'll be safer if you avoid areas around the airport and central train station-- a good idea in any big city anywhere-- as well as Garibaldi Square, Pensil, Tepito, Buenos Aires and Santa Julia, the area behind the National Palace and the Zocolo at night.

Everyone says the green and white VW bug taxis are to be avoided. Even a U.S. Embassy employee in Asuncion warned me against them! The hotel concierges say the same thing about the non-radio hotels in Buenos Aires, although I found them problem-free (and less expensive).


UPDATE: GUANGZHOU IS WAY WORSE

Hong Kong is as close as I ever got to Guangzhou (Canton when I was a geography student), although I always wanted to go. After reading about the Hand Choppers, a motorcycle gang that doesn't bother removing a purse or ring but opts for severing the whole hand, I've decided to stick to Shanghai and Beijing.

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."