Forget Lonely Planet and Fodors. At this moment, hundreds of English-speaking expatriates are not only enjoying new lives south of the border, but recording their ups and downs, travels and home life, good eats and unusual finds through digital journaling and photography posted on web logs for the world to browse. After a bit of web sifting, I’ve caught on to a few that really shine: the chosen expatriate blogs are easy on the eye, informative, and fun to read.
www.qualitypeoples.com
Ed Fladung lives and breathes surfing in Bucerias (just North of Vallarta) where he’s been, as his web/photoblog’s heading announces, on a “perpetual Mexican surf sabbatical” for the last four years. Fladung is about as güero as they come, with a shoulder length head of sun-bleached hair and a healthy beach glow. He occasionally appears in the vibrant, Technicolored shots of candid small-town Mexican life he posts — a click on the photography link in the upper right hand corner will send you to an online Flickr gallery which is like peering into a candy shop, sun-saturated rainbow colored pictures you could sort through for hours.
The photography is bright and entries light; his Keanu Reeves-esque surf lingo is endearing and readable. “OK, I’m off to go pre-book our hotels,” he writes in preparation for a surf trip to Bali. “Bummer, I was hoping to just roll up …” And of a boat captain’s suspiciously high fees, “I told dude that’s the gringo rate, that I live in Bucerias and I’d be willing to pay 300 pesos total. Dude said no.” Recent entries include movie reviews of a dozen or so films that passed through his “two horse town,” as well as an anti-Adobe Acrobat rant and several single photograph posts. Check the March 26, 2007 entry to learn how Mr. Fladung ran into members of The Whitest Boy Alive and Broken Social Scene at a local restaurant and witnessed an impromptu acoustic concert (with Leslie Feist on spoons and glasses).
www.droppedin.com
I’ll admit, the tone of this blog was initially off-putting (and beware of strong language, folks), but I’m now a droppedin addict. Maybe it’s the cleverly categorized entries (“Mexico is Baffling: Lace up your Jesus sneakers,” or “Entertaining at Home: Stop drinking you’re already drunk, a story about moderation”). Or maybe it’s the way some of the travel notes sound like poetic verse (“Progreso is a port town and a carnival … It’s got that Coney Island
desperation and democratic fun feel just barely below the surface of good time tourist town in training”).The blog is a joint-effort by an artsy, bespectacled, and often crass 20-something couple from New York who now make their home in the Yucatan. It’s a live staging of the World of Jillian & Malcolm, a strange and beautiful adaptation of two cultures laid out in photostories, lists (from Jillian’s Likes about Mexico: “the sexy ‘conductores’ of Telehit, Uriel and Amanda; Sundays are for bicycles and brunch and dancing; superior chicken”), and ceremony—Jillian pays homage to Grandpa Jack in the form of a pot roast on the Day of the Dead (“I learned a lot about Scotch and comedy from Jack, and so I did my best to honor him, to channel his improvised kitchen alchemy with some simple food and spices”). In the World of Jillian & Malcolm, blue crabs trespass kitchen floors, blackbirds squawking “MEK!” serve as alarm clocks before sunrise, and 29th birthdays are spent climbing the “World’s Deadliest Playground” in Dzilam Bravo and the isolated “casual ruins” of Xcampo. The appeal of this world, above all, is the sheer honesty the authors express about their living adventure, and the love of their new home and for each other that ignites each tale despite occasional irreverence.
www.cancuncanuck.com
The author of this reflective travel diary is a relative rookie to the blogging scene, first posting last October. Four years ago this 36-year-old Canadian came down for a post-divorce yoga recovery in Cozumel, met a charismatic Mexicano in a bar where she ended up doing most of her recovering, fell in love and now lives with her “hubby,” as she refers to him, in Cancun with their two and a half year-old son, Max.
The adventurous Canuck admits the blog is “like free therapy … I love to talk and this is a great way not to be interrupted,” and that’s the sense you get when you scroll through—you might as well be sitting on a bar stool next to her and at least three drinks into the night. She dotes on her little cropped-hair boy, whom she claims danced to opera music while still in the womb and who already enjoys browsing YouTube videos. The Canuck is still struggling with Spanish and growing close to a new extended family (struck by nerves after being requested to address 30 relatives on Christmas Eve: “I fumbled my way through a speech [in Spanish!] and received a round of applause before I collapsed in my seat.”). It will be interesting to see where she takes this blog.
http://mexfiles.wordpress.com
The Mex Files is a priceless resource for expats who don’t read Mexican newspapers but want to keep informed—the blog covers current politics, culture, economics, and some U.S.-Mexico related news. Richard Grabman, a writer, translator, and Mexican historian based in Mexico City, started the project to fill the “need for an English-language Mexican website that wasn’t a tourism site, or ‘my life in wherever-tlan.’”
The site, as any politically oriented forum might be, is somewhat less than objective—the average post includes a translated clipping from a local paper along with a short rant or rave, but not without foundation and historical perspective. See Grabman’s analysis of the potential reorganization of Mexican political parties for an example of the blog’s tone: “With PAN and PRI often uniting to maintain the status quo … the PRI has been trying to re-invent itself to maintain relevance. While it is still Mexico’s largest political party, it seems hopelessly adrift, caught between a growing united left (PRI is technically a socialist party) and the ‘neo-liberal’ PAN.” This webpage demands a bookmark—it’s simple way to keep afloat in an unfamiliar political culture.
