Mesilla, New Mexico: Discovering A Different Side Of The Southwest

by Laurel Miller on

A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to El Paso on short notice for a magazine assignment. I found it enjoyable, but on my final day, I was itching to get out of the city limits and explore before my evening flight. Every local I talked to gave me the same response: go for a scenic drive out to Mesilla.

Located just 44 miles northwest of El Paso on the fringes of Las Cruces, Mesilla is a historic village established in 1848. Perhaps best known as the location for Billy the Kid’s trial, Mesilla has also played an integral role in the development of the Southwest, in part because it was along the Butterfield Stagecoach Line. I’m obsessed with all things New Mexico, but despite numerous visits to the northern part of the state, I’d never been south of Albuquerque. I was an easy sell.

The drive to Mesilla presents a dramatic contrast in topography. About 30 miles past the arid plains and stark Franklin Mountain range of El Paso, the Rio Grande grows from a trickle to substantial enough to support lush vegetation. I’d never seen a pecan tree before, and suddenly I was passing thousands of acres of them, in all their towering, leafy glory (after Texas, this region – Dona Ana County – is the nation’s largest producer). There were fields of onions and chiles (Mesilla is just 42 miles away from Hatch), and vast dairy farms. As a former ranch kid, I instantly felt at home.

As you enter Mesilla off of Highway 10 West, there are indications you’re approaching someplace special. Walk a couple of blocks down to the historic Plaza, and it’s impossible not to be charmed. Despite the inevitable souvenir shops, of which there are only a few, a number of buildings are on the historic register. The vibe isn’t one of touristy kitsch, but rather, small-town Southwest. There are coffee houses, cafes, boutiques, antique stores, galleries, wine tasting rooms and museums. A chocolate shop sells small bags of dipped pecans, while Solamente!, a specialty food boutique, offers tastes of the region in the form of green chile-spiked pecan brittle and salsas.

I whiled away a few hours by strolling the Plaza and talking to the handful of vendors who sell their wares from tables around its perimeter. This is the place to buy a bag of pecans and homemade bizcochos (buttery little cookies), or a pair of earrings. The Basilica of San Albino dominates the north end of the Plaza, and is open to visitors from 1 to 3 p.m. daily, except on Sundays. Afterward, I sipped an icy horchata and read on the shady patio of a coffee house. It’s unthinkable (to me, at least) to be in New Mexico and not eat. The region’s most famous restaurant, La Posta, is around the corner from the Plaza. This stunning 19th-century compound was once part of the Butterfield Stagecoach Line, but today it’s better known for its green chile enchiladas and signature Tostada Compuesta.

Before heading to the airport, I drove the few miles down a back road to Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park. Unfortunately, it was still closed for the season, but the drive meanders past pecan orchards, crumbling adobe homesteads and tranquil farmhouses. Horses graze in verdant pasture, and fields of onion with their flowering lavender heads intersperse the orchards. It’s lovely, and a side of New Mexico I’ve never seen, used as I am to the dramatic ochre landscape, canyons and severe mesas of the north.

At the end of a business trip, I’m often content to just get to the airport early, and spend the time people watching and reading. My jaunt to Mesilla was a reminder that sometimes it’s worth the extra effort to hit the road instead.

Amazing Time-Lapse Video Of Vivid Sydney Light Show

by McLean Robbins on

“TIMELAPSE – Vivid Sydney 2013 Launch” from Vivid Sydney on Vimeo.


The video above captures an incredible light show happening at the Sydney Opera House as part of the fifth annual Vivid Sydney festival.

The largest light, music and ideas festival in the Southern Hemisphere, Vivid Sydney features lighting installations around the harbour foreshore, live music performances at Sydney Opera House and over 120 creative industry events.

Part of a tourism push, the festival has grown year over year and is expected to attract 550,000 visitors this year alone.

The artists making up the show come not only from Australia but from the USA, Germany, Italy, Greece, Malaysia, Korea, Poland, Brazil and New Zealand.

For the first time this year, the area’s famous Harbour Bridge will also be lit up on its western face, and, with a creative touch, the light show will be controlled by the public from an interactive touch screen, through a collaboration with Intel and with Sydney’s 32 Hundred Lighting.

The Darling Harbour is also part of the show, featuring water fountains, water projection screens and light shows.

We love the above video and only wish it was set to music so that we could feel more like we were really there! If you’re in the area, please send us your comments below – we’d love to hear how it looks, sounds and feels to be there live!

Australia’s 2013 Great Victorian Bike Ride Heads Down The Ocean Road

by Kraig Becker on

We’ve noted before just how popular cycling holidays have become in recent years as active and adventurous travelers look for new ways to explore their favorite destinations. Few of those holidays can rival Australia’s annual Great Victorian Bike Ride, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year by riding the Great Ocean Road, one of the most breathtakingly beautiful routes that you could ever hope to pedal.

The 2013 edition of the GVBR will get underway on November 23 and run through December 1. The nine-day tour will set out from the spectacular Blue Lake, located near the town of Mount Gambier in South Australia. From there, the route will wander for 610 kilometers (379 miles) along the Great Ocean Road and into the Otways, a lush and ecologically diverse rainforest punctuated by dramatic rock formations and towering waterfalls.

Tickets for the 2013 GVBR went on sale a few days ago and are already moving fast. The ride is limited to just 6000 participants, which sounds like a lot but previous years have actually sold out quite quickly. Anyone interested in joining in on the fun should book early to avoid getting completely shut out. Organizers say they have already seen a record amount of interest in the ride this year with entries going quickly.This is a fully catered camping tour that provides riders with such amenities as luggage transport, a medical team, traveling cycling repair facilities and a cafe. That frees up participants to just climb on their bikes and enjoy the ride, which should be a spectacular one along a very scenic route. It also gives the riders an opportunity to interact with the local Aussies and experience the hospitality that they are so famous for.

Entry fee for the GVBR is $895 AUD for adults, $655 AUD for children ages 13-17 and $330 AUD for kids 6-12. Riders who are 5 and under can join the tour for free.

If you’ve been considering a cycling tour but weren’t sure exactly where you’d like to go, the Great Victorian Bike Ride may be just what you’re looking for. It is a wonderful blend of adventure, scenery and Australian hospitality that shouldn’t be missed. For an idea of what to expect on the road, check out the video below.

Coney Island 2013: Weathering The Storm

by Elizabeth Seward on

When the first structures were being built in Coney Island in the 1840s, the surrounding community was in uproar. Residents wanted to preserve the land’s natural beauty. In the early 1900s, the City of New York endeavored to condemn all buildings south of Surf Avenue and the amusement community of Coney Island opposed the city. Amusements on the beach were demolished under the direction of urban planner Robert Moses in the ’40s and ’50s. He cleared the land for the New York Aquarium, Abe Stark Ice Skating Rink and low-income housing. Once Moses was through with his Coney Island renovations, only a few areas remained protected for amusement use only and that small designation was a response to public complaints.

Fred Trump attempted to build luxury apartments on the beach in 1964. He spent a decade in court fighting for a rezoning to no avail. By the 1970s, few visitors traveled to Coney Island and the city attempted to bring popularity back to the area with gambling casinos, taking note from Atlantic City. Gambling remained illegal in Coney Island, however, and vacant lots dominated areas that would have been lined with slot machines and card tables.

Under Giuliani’s reign, the sporting complex called Sportsplex was erected. Because the Thunderbolt roller-coaster stood in the line of view from the stadium, Giuliani had it demolished one early morning. Bloomberg took interest in developing Coney Island, but when the Coney Island bid for the 2012 Olympics was lost, the plans for revitalization went to the Coney Island Development Corporation. A company called Thor Equities began buying up property in Coney Island and while evicting businesses along the boardwalk, they released a plan to build a luxury resort as well as a new amusement park. The city approved a plan to construct 4,500 new unites on the beach in 2009. Part of what makes Coney Island what it is is that the community has long-offered low-income housing, but only 900 of these new units are categorized as being “affordable.”

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Ravaged by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, Coney Island’s future once again seemed to be in the fickle hands of fate. Coney Island was hit harder by the storm than many other areas of New York City. Salvaging what was left of the historic boardwalk and amusement area seemed nearly impossible in the wake of the treacherous storm.

“Our park is devastated,” Deno Vouderis, a member of the family that owns the Deno’s Wonderwheel Amusement Park, told NPR’s Zoe Chace shortly after the hurricane hit. The motors in his haunted house were dead. Everything she saw during her tour of his property seemed flattened. But when she made the trek out to Coney Island again for the opening day of the Wonderwheel Amusement Park, she saw something she hadn’t expected to see again, particularly not so soon after the storm: functioning rides, doors open for business and rides welcoming the public.

In a follow-up report on the destination, Chace worked to discover what revived Coney Island so quickly. Deno’s Wonderwheel Amusement Park didn’t have the kind of insurance that other structures throughout New York that quickly recovered and rebuilt did. While FEMA and other aid groups were doing their best to assist residents whose homes had been destroyed, Coney Island business owners followed an informal but traditional route and sourced the funds they needed to rebuild from family members, friends, patrons and other members of the community. The Vouderis family did this, as well. They also put a hefty amount of rebuilding charges on their credit card.

“We have here something that shows the resilience of New York,” New York Senator Chuck Schumer said on the Coney Island 2013 Opening Day. His mantra of the day, as reported by Chace, was, “Keep going and reopen.”

***

I went to Coney Island twice in January. I dressed in my snow gear and walked along the boardwalk and the beach. Most things were still closed; even the waves seemed eerily silent then. I went back again a couple weeks ago to an entirely different scene. People were lined up at Nathan’s and weaving in and out of the businesses that were open. Although much of the boardwalk was still closed that afternoon, oxygenated blood was clearly pulsing through the community. But the future of Coney Island, keeping with tradition, still seems vague. An Applebee’s is opening in June not far from the beach. A chain candy store will soon be doing business near the adored Williams Candy shop. Coney Island has admirably handled the blows from the hurricane, but how the small businesses there will weather the storm of corporate expansion remains to be seen.

While walking back to our car, a man beckoned my husband and me over toward him from behind his carnival game’s counter. The game seemed simple, though I knew the odds were against us. If my husband could just pay the couple bucks it took to play the game and then make every shot into the makeshift hoop, he could choose any prize he wanted, most of which were stuffed animals that looked like they’d been there for a while, and even get his money back. The catch? For every shot he missed, he had to lay down as much money as he’d already invested in the game. He made almost all of his shots, but the stakes began to raise and before we knew it, we were out of cash.

“Got money in your bank? There’s an ATM right there,” the man said, pointing to the conveniently placed ATM. My husband could have continued playing and won back all of the cash he’d spent, but we left the $10 with the man working the game. The owner of that stand, like the owners of all other businesses that have reopened in Coney Island, only has his gate drawn up today because he knows the rules of the game: keep investing even when the odds seem against you and hope the cash doesn’t run out.

Bun Snatching At The Bun Festival In Hong Kong

by Adam Hodge on

On May 17, a good chunk of East Asia had a day off to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday (Southeast Asia will celebrate it next week). It happens that in Hong Kong the Enlightened One’s birthday coincides each year with a Taoist celebration called the Bun Festival. The culmination of the Bun Festival occurs at midnight of the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, when “bun snatchers” climb a 60-foot tower of buns and collect as many buns as will fit in their bun sack.

Yes, buns. Those doughy things you eat.

The Bun Festival has roots in the Taoist “Jiao” festivals, where communities pay homage to deities in order to foster peace in the coming year. The origins of the Bun Festival itself are vague. The common and possibly apocryphal story is that offerings were made to Pak Tai, the God of the Sea, in order to protect island villagers from pirates. Another history says it began during the days of Hong Kong’s bubonic plague epidemic, when Pak Tai again was asked for relief from the disease.

These Taoist Jiao festivals were apparently widespread before Mao-era suppression brought most religious activities to a screeching halt on the mainland. But the Bun Festival carried on unabated in Hong Kong – that is, until the late ’70s, when tragedy struck.

The new bun towers (lit. translation: “bun mountains”) are steel-reinforced and authorities only allow harnessed, elite bun snatchers to climb them. The old bun towers, pictured above, are traditionally made with a bamboo frame. And in the ’70s and before, there were no harnesses – and no limits on the climbers. A mass of men would swarm at the towers, sometimes shimmying up the inside and bursting through the top, all trying to retrieve the top bun: the bun that conferred the most honor on the bun snatcher’s family; the luckiest bun.

(In case you’re wondering, the buns are blessed. The big red character on each of them means “peace,” which, as you’ll remember, is the reason the gods are being indulged.)

In 1978, one of the towers collapsed. One hundred people were injured and bureaucrats went into action, canceling the festival. It was only revived 27 years later, in 2005, with strict safety measures in place including limiting the number of climbers to 12. Locals complain that the festival has lost its authenticity because the towers are not a death trap and therefore less thrilling. Personally, I agree with this assessment – things are naturally edgier and more exciting when life is on the line. But I would contend, and I think Competitor #2 (in the pink shirt) in the following video will surely agree, that not all changes have been for the worse.

(You’ll forgive my videography, I was mesmerized by #3’s blistering pace.)

Other Attractions
A note on geography: Cheng Chau, where the BF is held, is one of Hong Kong’s Outlying Islands, which generally see far fewer tourists than Victoria Harbour and her famous skyline of hill-scrambling skyscrapers. So when a festival like this comes along, with its quirky competition and photo-op whimsy, it’s almost bound to be exploited to full effect, which it is.

A friend and I arrived with half of Hong Kong on a 30-minute fast ferry from Pier 5 in Central, but the other half of Hong Kong was already there. Spectators were stacked 20+ deep beside the cramped main street for the 2 o’clock start of the Parade-In-The-Air, arguably the most entertaining part of the festival. With a bit of a squeeze, we managed to get within tiptoe viewing distance of the procession, and at that moment it began to rain, so we only saw umbrellas for the next quarter hour. When the sun returned, so did our view, and the first thing that paraded into sight was a small child hovering above the heads of the onlookers, being borne precariously down the street atop a vertical column of bowls and plates.

The poor kid looked pretty miserable. After the rain stopped and the sun came out, the temperature soared. You’d be miserable, too – the parade lasts two hours and they’re heavily costumed as figures from Chinese history and mythology and perched (or rather hung up by wire frames) atop a sculpture of some sort. One child was dressed in a finely tailored suit, standing on a sword. I have to wonder about the symbolism of that. On the other hand, a few kids looked genuinely thrilled, as below.

Overall, the effect is quite enjoyable. The little human statues are interspersed with loud drums and dancing dragons and lions and flag bearers. The crowd is as photographically enthusiastic as anywhere else in China, with generous and effusive “ooos” and “ahhs” for the suffering children.

Again, I have to wonder what famous figure this was.


As night fell, the elderly locals assembled at a stage between the towers and the Pak Tai temple to watch a Cantonese opera. However, unlike the spectators at the parade, the opera performers’ pentatonic dissonance was appreciated more contemplatively than vocally.

Meanwhile the other side of the island is all day a far quieter place, well enough away from the crowd control barriers and bun sellers. There are several sand beaches, and the eastern cove is actually a great windsurfing venue (it’s home to Hong Kong’s only Olympic gold medalist – a windsurfer).

A stone path takes you out beyond the beaches to some rock formations on the self-described “Mini Great Wall,” which is actually no more than the stone path you’re walking on. The views are terrific, though, overlooking the cargo ship-spotted West Lamma Channel to Hong Kong, Lamma and Lantau Islands. It’s all quite peaceful by the rocky shore, the surf swishing gently over the stones and little scuttling crabs fleeing every which way. So much so that despite the sunset being on the opposite side, we – and many other crowd refugees – chose to linger a little longer before diving back into the madness of the bun tower crowds, who had already staked a place in the ticket queue for a viewing spot beneath the tower.