On a Taco Mission in San Francisco

October 14, 2010 By Remy Leave a Comment

I visited San Francisco for the first time earlier this year.  As a traveler, the city can be overwhelming – so much history, so much culture, so many tourist traps.  I decided to skip the Fisherman’s Wharf and the cable cars and instead caught the BART to the gritty Mission District.   Home to a huge Latin American population, the Mission is revered among taco lovers for its cheap, authentic Mexican cuisine.  I spent a day trolling the neighborhood’s main drag for the perfect taco and wrote about the experience for BCBusiness Magazine.

Travelling to San Francisco

Remy Scalza; Special to BCBusiness

October 2010

At the southern end of Mission Street, amid the fruit stands and pawn shops, is a sign that reads simply La Taquería.  Here in America’s taco heartland – San Francisco’s gritty Mission District – that name speaks volumes.  There are dozens, possibly hundreds, of taquerías packed into the neighborhood – humble taco joints serving Mexican street food to clientele who know their jalapeños from their habaneros.  To call yourself La Taquería – literally, the taco stand – in this context is brassy, even confrontational.  It says, “I alone am worthy of the name: the one, the only.”

With carne asada like this, however, it’s hard to argue.

The Mission District is just a brisk subway ride from the cable cars and fishermen’s wharves of San Francisco’s well touristed center.  But in appearance, demographics and culture, it’s a world away.

Click here to read the full article on BCBusiness.

Filed Under Food & Wine, Published Articles

Cabo Polonio: Lonely but lovely Uruguayan beach

September 22, 2010 By Remy Leave a Comment

Great beaches – wherever they are – seem to have an incredibly short life span.  Once they’re discovered, in come the condos, the patio dining and the shops selling t-shirts and cheap boogie boards.  Natural oasis becomes man-made playground and the charm is lost.  The challenge, of course, is finding a beach before it reaches that point on the curve; i.e. with just enough amenities to accommodate the hardy traveler but none of the commercial excess.  Cabo Polonio, an isolated beach town on the tip of South America in Uruguay, fits that bill nicely.  I recently wrote about a stay there for the Toronto Star.

Cabo Polonio: A lonely but lovely Uruguayan beach

September 1, 2010; Remy Scalza – Special to The Star

CABO POLONIO, URUGUAY—It’s well past midnight when Joselo, the blind bartender with silver hair past his shoulders, brings up the story of El Pingüino.

“Four penguins washed up on shore,” he says. “I took them all in . . . but El Pingüino was special.”

Joselo is speaking by candlelight in his eponymous bar in Cabo Polonio, a tiny beach town about 150 miles east of Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo. The candles aren’t for effect. Cabo Polonio, a thirty-minute dune buggy ride from the nearest highway, has no cars, no paved roads and, apart from its signature lighthouse, no municipal electric power.

“When the bar would fill up, I used to bring [El Pingüino] out on the dance floor,” Joselo explains. “He’d walk right through the crowd . . . completely at home.”

Welcome to Uruguay, a place where dancing penguins hardly seem out of the question. A diminutive, Dorito-shaped country of 3 million wedged between Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay remains largely untouristed, nonglobalized and just plain quirky. Of the dozens of towns, cities and villages strung along its Atlantic coast, no two are alike. Cut off in capes, isolated on rocky points, marooned behind dunes, each has evolved along its own, often eccentric, path.

To read the full article on the Toronto Star website, click here.

Filed Under Published Articles Tagged With Cabo Polonio, Remy Scalza, Uruguay

Million-Dollar Shopping Zone

August 26, 2010 By Remy Leave a Comment

Next-door neighbor to both Iraq and Iran, Kuwait is in a volatile part of the world.  But in the decades since Iraq’s invasion, Kuwait has prospered off of a steady stream of oil revenue.  Today, the country is something of a contradiction:  A conservative Muslim state where Sharia law prevails and a consumer-oriented society where lavish wealth has encouraged lots and lots of shopping.  I visited Kuwait recently and spent some time in the country’s largest mall.  I wrote about my experiences for National Geographic Traveler.

Million-Dollar Shopping Zone

By Remy Scalza; Special to National Geographic Traveler

Just beyond the gleaming new subdivisions built in the desert, it rises – glorious and shimmering – in the Kuwaiti heat.

With 250 stores covering 2.5 million square feet, The Avenues is neither mosque nor desert palace but Kuwait’s largest shopping mall, a temple to the cult of consumerism.  I’ve come to be initiated.

Read more . . . .

Filed Under Published Articles Tagged With Kuwait, National Geographic Traveler, Remy Scalza

Water into Wine: Drought in Canada’s Wine Country

August 7, 2010 By Remy Leave a Comment


Photo: Remy Scalza


The Okanagan wine country in western Canada is an amazing success story.  Twenty-five years ago, nobody had heard of the place and the only wine being made there was barely drinkable plonk.  Today, it’s one of North America’s most promising wine regions, lauded by The New York Times as the “Napa of the North.”  But behind the beautiful countryside and increasingly impressive wines is a big problem: lack of water.  Much of the South Okanagan is desert, and the demands of agriculture and a new wave of wine tourism have stretched limited water resources nearly to the breaking point.  I wrote about the region’s water problems and growing pains in a recent article for BCBusiness, a magazine based in Vancouver.

Tourism Threatens Water Security in the Okanagan

By Remy Scalza for BCBusiness Magazine

In the bone-dry southern tip of the Okanagan Valley, just outside the town of Osoyoos, a network of footpaths winds through thickets of sage and antelope brush. Braving the midday sun, a few hardy hikers – red-faced and sweating – push down the trail, leaving faint footprints in the sand and keeping an eye out for the rattlesnakes that make their home here, in Canada’s only desert.

What awaits around the final turn in the trail must first seem illusion, a trick played on the eyes by the shimmering South Okanagan heat. Abruptly, brush gives way. Neat rows of vines rise from the desert floor, leaves interlacing into a vast and improbable tapestry of green.

Here the path dead ends, sparse foot traffic giving way to the steady pulse of people and cars in the parking lot of Spirit Ridge Vineyard and Resort, one of a wave of new wineries and resorts to open in the South Okanagan in the last five years. In shorts and visors, visitors by the mini-busload spill into the wine shop, restaurant and wellness spa. Out back small children throng an oasis of pools, while duffers hack away on the Technicolor greens of a nine-hole course edged by sand and sagebrush just beyond. Surrounding it all, running right up to the 226 desert suites and vineyard villas at the sprawling resort, are grape vines: Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Merlot, ripening in the summer sun.

Click here to read the full article on BCBusinessOnline.ca.

Filed Under Food & Wine, Published Articles, Vancouver Tagged With BCBusiness, drought, okanagan, Remy Scalza, shortage, South Okanagan, tourism, water, wine country

Brazil’s Backyard Jungle

July 19, 2010 By Remy Leave a Comment

Pretty much everyone knows that Brazil is home to the Amazon jungle: one of the wildest and most biodiverse places on the planet.  But Brazil also has another jungle: the mata or Atlantic rain forest.  And, in contrast to the Amazon – which is hard to get to and tends to attract mainly hardcore adventure types – the mata is right next door to some of Brazil’s biggest cities – Rio and Sao Paulo.  For travelers who might not have the budget or inclination to see the Amazon, the mata offers a unique glimpse of real jungle – howler monkeys, toucans, isolated and unsettled beaches, dense old growth forest.   Plus, you’re never far from a clean bed, a nice restaurant and a cold caiparinha.  I wrote about some recent experiences in the mata for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Brazil’s backyard jungle a rugged, restful strip

Remy Scalza, Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, July 18, 2010

In downtown Rio de Janeiro, in the shadow of one of the city’s most famous landmarks, concrete jungle meets the real thing.

Just past the double-decker tour buses and cable cars that zip up Sugar Loaf, Rio’s granite dome, an inconspicuous footpath makes a beeline into thick forest. Winding past trees draped with vines and clinging plants, I climb higher and higher above the city. At one turn, micos – tiny monkeys with pinched-up faces – glare from a tangle of treetops.

Though the Amazon gets most of the press, Brazil is also home to another jungle: the Mata, or Atlantic rain forest. Defiantly wild – with biodiversity levels rivaling the Amazon’s – the Mata surrounds Rio and Sao Paulo, stretching in a thin strip all along Brazil’s central coast.

For travelers like me – nature lovers but not full-blown “Survivor” men – this translates into a unique one-two punch. Choose your trails right, and you can start the day tramping through protected Mata in the company of toucans and howler monkeys and finish it sipping caipirinhas on the beach with Brazil’s buff and beautiful.

Click here for the full article at the San Francisco Chronicle.
Filed Under Published Articles Tagged With Atlantic, Ilha Grande, mata, Paraty, rain forest, rainforest, Remy Scalza, San Francisco Chronicle
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