Random Descriptions of My Travel Adventures

This weekend I was driving in Juarez and came across two police vehicles, an ambulance, and several cars blocking two lanes of the road. Normally when you see this particular arrangement of vehicles in Juarez the worst possible scenario immediately comes to mind. As I passed the cluster of vehicles I looked over and rather than the horrific scene I had braced myself for, I saw a group of people gathered around an injured dog. As horrible as I felt for the injured dog I had to smile knowing that despite all this city has been through the violence inflicted on Juarenses has not extinguished their humanity.  I'm so very proud and lucky that I get to live amongst such wonderful and resilient people.

It has been a long time since I have posted and I do wonder, how long does it take until Blogger boots you off the system for inactivity? I'm defending my dissertation in less than a week and looking for employment, so essentially I have been boring with nothing to post about. Hopefully within a week I will be a Doctor (but one who unfortunately cannot prescribe medicine), and in the next six months I will have some sort of job, then the posting shall resume!

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This weekend at the Lath House in Heritage and Science Park in downtown Phoenix is the Tequilaaz tequila and mezcal celebration! I am attending of course and I'm thrilled to see they are honoring mezcal alongside tequila. I am a big fan of mezcal (as you might have guessed from previous blog posts), another product of the agave plant, but I will say it took me numerous attempts at drinking mezcal before I became an avid supporter. Mezcal originates from Oaxaca, or so I have been told, and many regard it as a cheaper, harsher version of tequila. It is definitely true that crappy mezcal can often taste a lot like gasoline but once you have experienced a good mezcal it is a bit of a revelation. I was told that many Oaxacans think that mezcal holds medicinal powers and use it ceremonially and I have to say I believe it; mezcal has made me feel like no other alcohol has, in good and bad ways (avoid the cheap stuff). I'm particularly fond of the drink because it is so important to O...

In my last post I indicated that I would not be taking any trips in the near future. This is not accurate! I'm headed to Tampa, Florida this weekend for the Gasparilla Pirate Fest ! Aaarrrggghhh(said like a pirate), how could I forget my upcoming attendance at this event! Photos of drunken pirates and more Argentina in the near future matey!

Unfortunately, due to dissertation writing and lack of funds, I do not have any fun travel experiences to blog about (though stay tuned for Las Vegas in March) so I thought I would post some photos from an Argentina trip in 2005. I went to visit my friend Shayne who had just finished his second (yes second) stint in Antarctica. I flew down to Buenos Aires and we decided to visit the southern portion of the country. Buenos Aires is a fantastic city, the most European I have encountered thus far in South America. In the photo below I'm standing in front of the obelisk which divides the massive, 9 de Julio, claimed as the worlds largest avenue. A better picture (lifted from the internet) to give a sense of scale. After a few days in BA, we flew to Ushuaia which is at the southernmost edge of the South American continent in the region known as Tierra del Fuego . Not a terribly attractive town, made that much uglier by the giant date stamp in the corner of the photo below. I borrowed m...

A video of my favorite song by my favorite band from Oaxaca. The song, Son de la Barricada, is about the resistance movement of 2006. I lifted this from a blog called Angry White Kid which details the ongoing struggles occurring in Oaxaca. He includes the English translation on his website. The video is shot in a bar called Nueva Babel, one I attended frequently with friends. We saw Raices perform there twice and both times I was blown away by their music.