I first ventured to this region in the early 1980s, long before Cancún had earned a reputation as a must-see tourist resort and the region had been dubbed the Riviera Maya.

    How did I "discover" Mexico's Quintana Roo?

    While living near San Francisco, my home for 20 years, I happened onto a book at a garage sale titled "The Lost World of Quintana Roo"' by Frenchman Michel Peissel. Although the book was (and is) long out of print, the adventure it told of the author, then a 21-year old Harvard business graduate, who walked from northern Quintana Roo near Puerto Morelos to Belize in 1958 fascinated me and triggered a trip to the Mexican Yucatán.    Read on...

    Was there a Margarita behind the Margarita? Of course. But contrary to what you may have imagined, this woman was not a Mexican beauty, but instead a fledgling Hollywood starlet.

    And though other Margarita namesakes have surfaced and vied for this distinction, this starlet has all the trappings of the real McCoy.    Read on...

    When we moved to Mexico in 1997, we took our three month old cat with us, too. His name is Max, he was born on the 4th of July, and we got him from the San Francisco SPCA on Union Square where they’d set up a tent and were trying to unload kittens. There were little charmers in the cage and Max was the most bodacious of the bunch. Even when a two-alarm SF fire truck went raging past, he didn’t back away while I was trying to pet him through the wire. He was the one.

    He’s been neutered and had his shots. That was his life story–and what was ours, the SPCA authority asked. Well, we explained, we were leaving for Mexico in a few weeks and wanted to take a cat with us. We were cat lovers and we trusted the SPCA when looking for a kitty.    Read on...

    Images of swashbucklers with gold teeth, black eye patches, and peg legs come to mind. Or Johnny Depp. But in reality, many of the pirates who navigated the waters just off Quintana Roo's shores from as early as the 1600s were men with unlikely backgrounds for the sport they took on. A handful were full-fledged gentlemen, most had seafaring backgrounds. Many were sanctioned by queens or governments. A few even ended up with titles, and some were hailed as heroes.  Read on...