Travel الســفر

Free Web Hosting Provider - Web Hosting - E-commerce - High Speed Internet - Free Web Page

To listen to some poor folk, the French are so suffused with national pride that travelers should expect either to be completely ignored, run over by reckless Renaults or to see an awful lot of Gallic nasal hair. The same frog-o-phoebes try to convince you that the French take credit for the size of their Alps and think that the waves break on their beaches with French accents.

Regardless of the prevalence of the myth of French arrogance, Gallic noses are justifiably held in the air when surveying châteaux of pre-Revolution munificence, the Napoleonic grandeur and latter day pizazz of Paris and other urban centers, and the museum acreage devoted to the display of the French and the fabulous. The encroachment of Le Big Mac and Duck à la Donald has induced palpable groans from cultural xenophobes, yet the French lifestyle is still supreme. From chic coastal strips to cobbled country coves, from breakfast croissant to dinner's just desserts, France does it with style and aplomb (and the odd nuclear bomb).

Mexico is a land of extreme diversity: the superficial glitz of fly-in fly-out tourist resorts coexists with awe-inspiring ancient cities, and snow-capped volcanoes slope down to pine forests, deserts and balmy tropical beaches. The bursting industrial megalopolis of Mexico City is a one-hour flight from the resource-rich southern state of Chiapas, where Indian insurgents recurrently tangle with the ruling party's paramilitary forces. Up along the northern border, Mexico's disorienting tumult of heritages merge with the air-conditioned cultures of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Mexico's landscape and its people reflect the country's extraordinary history - part Indian, part Spanish. One look at this country is enough to remind visitors that there is nothing new about the so-called `New World'. Despite the considerable colonial legacy and rampant modernization, there are still over 50 distinct indigenous peoples, each with their own language, maintaining vestiges of their traditional lifestyles.