Affordable Travel

Photography in Mexico and Guatemala’s indigenous regions is some of the best in the whole world. The native Mayan costumes are worn by residents on a daily basis; and the people are for the most part very warm, friendly, and photogenic. Tourists are especially fond of taking photographs of children, churches, and ceremonies, because of the obvious attraction of the subjects. But in recent years especially, some photographers have made the mistake of taking photos without first asking if it is okay, and for some this has resulted in violent confrontation and even death.

There are some rural dwellers in these regions who are highly suspicious of outsiders, and they have good reasons to be. In San Cristobal, for example, in the Chiapas mountains of Mexico, many residents were slaughtered during a confrontation with government officials who were representing large business corporations who forcefully entered the Chiapas area in order to establish factories on the indigenous people’s land. And in Guatemala, 30 years of genocidal war that began in the 1950s has left people highly suspicious of outsiders, because outsiders used to come and kidnap their children.

When taking photos, always ask first, and make sure that the people you ask understand the language you are speaking (many don’t speak Spanish or English but other dialects). Once you have permission, you can capture some wonderful portraits, but beforehand, be respectful for your own sake and the sake of those you wish to photograph.

Not too long ago you could rent a very large house in historic Antigua for less than $300. Now you are lucky to find a one bedroom apartment in the old part of town for that price, because so many tourists have moved there to take advantage of the low cost of living and the beautiful quality of life that can be had by those who have money and move into this resort-oriented town. Although life in Antigua for most people - the local natives - is still especially difficult, in a nation where most of the population lives in poverty, for those who have wealth, or even a moderate income based on the standards of major industrialized nations, life is quite luxurious.

Rentals or leases in historic Antigua in 2004 had risen sharply from the year before, and now you can rent a very comfortable two bedroom dwelling for about $500-$600 dollars, or a rather posh and elegant colonial dwelling with updated amenities, for twice that amount. You will have easy access to the downtown area, and the infrastructure for high speed Internet access and cell phone service is excellent.

Of course if you want to save money, you can easily find off-season rentals by the month for about $200, that provide you with a private room and a private or shared bathroom, kitchen privileges, a furnished accommodation, maid service, and utilities such as electricity.

Belize in Central America is one of the best destinations for travelers who are interesting to snorkel and dive. An abundance of natural marine sites with clear water and exotic reefs awaits you in places including Caye Caulker, a town of less than 1,000 people. It is a great spot for travelers on a tight budget, and has the look of old fishing town with weather beaten shacks. Snorkeling and underwater tours are the main thing to do in Caye Caulkner, and even though Belize coastal areas can become very hot in the summer months, coastal breezes here help to keep the weather relatively comfortable all year ’round.

There is not much to do in this sleepy little town except to snorkel, but if diving is your idea of good entertainment, you will find plenty of coves and reefs to keep you occupied for days on end. At night you can wander into the simple restaurants, bars, and cafes for some mild entertainment, but the simplicity of this laid back town is really the main attraction, and if you are in need of a modern nightlife, you might get bored very quickly. You can hire boats and gear on the cheap, and for the best snorkeling, you can hire a guide boat to take you to dive locations like Blue Hole and Shark Ray Village, for around $100 per trip.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a vacation destination all by itself, and connects the beautiful Mountains of Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, one of the largest wildlife reserves in the world and home to the original settlement of the Cherokee. Along the Parkway are many other worthy destinations, including a mineral museum and an historic pioneer cemetery. But one of the most significant, and one of the best places to begin a tour of the Blue Ridge Parkway, is the Folk Art Center located at Milepost 382, near the town of Swannanoa, NC.

The Folk Art Center is operated by the National Park Service, is a non-profit showcase for the 1,000 members of the Southern Highlands Craft Guild, and is also a Park Ranger Station where you can get all sorts of maps, information, and advise about exploring the Blue Ridge and other national parks, including of course the Parkway itself. At the Folk Art Center you will find hand made woolens, hand carved furniture, handcrafted jewelry and ceramics, and a library full of books for sales on subjects ranging from arts and crafts to wilderness identification of plants and birds. You can even find the ideal walking stick, carved from native hickory or oak, to take with you on your hikes through the region’s many forests. And the Folk Art Center offers a nice spot to rest, relax, and have a picnic before you get back on the road, and public restrooms and pay phones are available whenever the Center is open for business.

Waynesville, North Carolina is a rather small town in western NC, in the beautiful (and popular with tourists of all ages) Blue Ridge Mountains. People visit Waynesville in hopes of finding a retirement getaway, to use a week of vacation time to explore the mountains, or on weekend in the autumn to see the leaves turn colors. And, of course, to attend the Ramps Festival. But in this case ramps is not one of those inclines you drive a motorcycle, bike, or car over but rather, it is a delicacy harvested in the wild that you eat.

Ramps are a pungent type of green, akin to spring onions, and when they are ready for harvest in May, people use them in casseroles, omelets, salads, and entrees. At the Ramps Festival of Waynesville, they use them also as an excuse to have a huge town celebration, including a ramp eating contest, square dancing, arts and crafts booths, and a farmers market where you buy your own ramps, fresh from harvest. One of the most popular events is the team competition for cloggers. Clogging is an old fashioned type of dancing related to both square dancing and tap dancing. The performers wear country and western outfits and beat their boots in time to the music, while kicking up a storm on stage. So if you want to get a real “taste” of mountain life, enjoy a plate a ramps while taking in all the other sights and sounds of the Waynesville Ramps Festival.

Nothing compares to the flavor of an old-fashioned, small town, country auction. They haven’t changed much over the decades, and they still depend on the natural-born charisma and well-honed linguistic skills of the auctioneers themselves. Professional “criers of the bid” know how to orchestrate their sales with the tempo of a sports announcer at a horse race - fast, intense, and unpredictable - creating a sense of exhilaration and urgency. Their showmanship and salesmanship combine in a way that harkens back to the vaudevillian era, when traveling merchants or performing artists would create an entire tent show to help captivate an audience.
And the bidders themselves are equally responsible for elevating an ordinary sales event into some of the best free entertainment a people-watcher could ask for. A fast-paced, spontaneous game of wits and wallets is often sparked between bidders, and it can be thrilling to observe.

Public auctions take place in rural communities around the USA all year round, weather permitting. Many are held on Saturdays, in a large building or under a big tent, with refreshments sold in the back, and attendance is free. And you don’t have to be a high roller to bring home a bargain. The last time I attended an auction, I bought a cardboard box containing seven clay flower pots, a screwdriver, a plastic coffee cup, assorted bolts, screws, and washers, two broken crayons, an empty shotgun shell, and a partial roll of duct tape, all for two bucks. (OK, so maybe it wasn’t the deal of a lifetime.) It’s a lot of fun, you can pick up items that you normally wouldn’t find at a yard sale or store, and it can add lots of flavor and excitement to a trip along the back roads and through small towns, that might otherwise seem uneventful or boring to you on a long trip.

Few people know the truth of the identity of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is actually a national park. It is in fact one of the largest - and the longest for sure, of all the massive national parks in the USA park system, stretching for miles through the rolling Blue Ridge mountain range. The Park is not only responsible for the roadway itself, which was created as a scenic route through this part of the country, but it also encompasses many thousands of acres of other land adjacent to the roadway. The Blue Ridge Parkway for example has several thousand acres of wildlife habitat, hotels and campgrounds, and historic cemeteries within its inventory of responsibility, and is considered by many scientists and researchers to be a repository of unlimited plant species that could and probably do hold the answers to most of the “miracle drugs” of the future. Drugs like aspirin, that is considered one of the most important modern medicines, derive from trees like those grown in the Blue Ridge forests, and preserving the parkway and its adjacent forest life is a great challenge to those who work as stewards of the parkway.

Dan Brown is the head of the park, as the Chief Park Ranger for the Blue Ridge Parkway, and he says that his two biggest challenges in that role are development and air quality, because many short sighted developers want to cut into the forests and erect condos and hotels, and traffic along the parkway and nearby highways creates deadly air pollution that threatens the fragile ecosystem. But he says that the biggest pleasure of the job is the feedback he gets from tourists who visit the parkway and find it one of the greatest travel destinations on earth.

“What I was opposed to was the high route they had planned originally,” explains Hugh Morton. What he refers to was a scheme called for a section of the Parkway extending to the top of Grandfather Mountain, to elevations of 5,000 feet. It would have required an 1,800-foot tunnel through Pilot Ridge, and during wintertime the road would have been unsafe to use because of ice, snow, and fog. To descend from the proposed high route and connect with the already-completed Parkway at a middle elevation would have been especially tricky, according to Morton, whose family has owned the Grandfather Mountain for many generations and runs tourist there as a family enterprise.

“There would have been a bunch of hairpin curves and a switchback, where we now have the environmental habitat, in order to get back down. It was a dangerous, impractical road they had planned.” Morton protested against the idea, which included a controversial plan to make the Parkway a permanent, year-round toll road. North Carolina Gov. Luther Hodges agreed with Morton’s position, and even President Eisenhower got involved in working out a solution. Eventually, under the administration of Gov. Dan Moore, a compromise was reached based on Morton’s first suggestion.

“We had already provided 125 acres per mile for the construction of a middle route, which is where the new road was finally built,” remembers Morton. “I like to call it the Blue Ridge Parkway Viaduct, because that’s more helpful to visitors trying to locate it. There is a creek that goes down through there along the bottom of the Viaduct, and hardly anyone knows where it is.” Now tens of thousands of visitors have access to his mountain, without extraordinary driving hazards, all year ’round.

Not far from Charleston South Carolina is a beach that is less well know, not nearly as crowded, and has one of the largest and nicest public piers in the entire USA. Folly Beach until just a couple of decades ago was a fishing town that could not attract tourism because people considered it a stepchild to the nearby Charleston and beaches north and south of there like Savannah and Litchfield. But that is beginning to change, and although there is some unwanted and rather short sighted (some would call it reckless) building and development (like the multi million dollar private condos recently erected near the light house point, obscuring much of the local scenery - Folly still has lots to offer.

Only on especially high traffic days like the USA holidays of July 4th and Labor Day does the beach become too crowded to really enjoy. Otherwise, especially on weekdays, it is a clean, uncluttered beach that stretches for miles and is only used by a scant few tourists. There is inexpensive lodging nearby - one house that holds about 12 people can be rented for less than $400 for a three-day weekend and is just two blocks from the ocean.

Deep sea fishing can be done from boats or just by going to the end of the fishing pier, where people regularly haul in large fish like Marlin and carp. And there are plenty of restaurants and clubs for every taste, and meals can be had in a wide range of prices.

Japanese tourists were frightened by the sight of Lucia standing next to their bed in a luxury hotel room in the middle of the night; Germans were critical of the hotel’s security; Americans and Canadians thought it was just awesome, and local Swedes found it highly amusing and uplifting. But you probably will not catch Lucia making the rounds in hotels anymore, since the days that tourists expressed their fears to the police. But she is still a vibrant part of the winter culture all over Sweden.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, each village in Sweden chooses a beautiful young woman to play the part of the legendary angel named Lucia who wears flaming candles in a tiara on top her head and walks around blessing people with an entourage of young boys following to hold the train of her gown. She is part Pagan goddess, part Mother Mary, and part guardian angel, and has been a part of the traditional heritage of Sweden for centuries. You can give her alms, flowers, or gifts, and the ones of believe in the power of Lucia say that your entire year will be brighter and more blessed thanks to her beatific gaze.

While in Sweden, be sure to try their special bread loaves that are spiced with the exotic cardamom spice that comes from Central America and India. Or score a loaf at the village bakery to share with Lucia, if you are lucky enough to find her beside your bed one night.