I’ve posted some info on here before about the ongoing soap opera that is the Yellowstone Club World Blixseth couple, a man and wife that have led a boom and bust life more dramatic than any reality TV script Bravo could throw together. The latest news from the Wall Street Journal has a Mexico twist: wife Edra Blixseth is putting their Los Cabos home up for sale at a list price of $12.88 million.

If you’re interested, it’s a two-acre oceanfront estate with 10,000 square feet of living space inside (six bedrooms) and another 7,000 feet outside.

She was awarded the house as part of the couple’s knock-down, drag-out divorce proceedings, but she has since declared personal bankruptcy. This Los Cabos home pales in comparison to their one near Palm Springs, CA. That listing has “excess” written all over it. The Journal described “a fountain with jets whose sprays rise about 80 feet and a private, 19-hole golf course of about 240 acres. The roughly 25,000-square-foot main residence is decorated with several ceiling murals and has a prayer room and separate wings for guests and children.”

My personal background on all this is that several years ago I was reviewing the property called Yellowstone Club World Tamarindo that was part of their vacation club, located in the Costalegre area a couple hours south of Puerto Vallarta. The lackey general manager pointed to the Blixseth yacht moored off the shore and told me how rich the owner was, that he was a billionaire who traveled the world and was pouring money into the resort to make it the best in Mexico. If you’ve seen the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movie, picture this guy as one of the Red Queen court helpers with pasted on large ears. I could tell then that something was not quite right, but the resort looked great so I moved on.

Thankfully the resort and excellent golf course were quickly bought by someone else and both are still great, as simply El Tamarindo, but there’s no Blixseth yacht in the harbor anymore…

Just two months after instituting a reciprocal visa fee for tourists to Argentina (meaning an extra $131 per person for Americans), the government of Argentina seems to be determined to rankle as many people as possible.

The latest is “the biggest inflation surge to start the year in two decades,” according to the Wall Street Journal, as Argentina Confronts Soaring Inflation. The worst part of this, for locals and tourists alike, is a 25% rise in beef prices. Chronic overspending is to blame, which has led to a big soap opera of the former head of the central bank being fired for not handing the government the bank’s foreign reserves to spend, his refusing to step down, then his being forced to step down when he was barred from his office. Kirchner’s yes-woman replacement is not sitting well with economists or the business leaders.

Bad government policies are mostly blamed for the beef inflation since price controls and export bans have led to a reduction in cattle, from 61 million in 2007 to 50 million today.

Good news for us is, the peso has dropped against the dollar to a nearly 4-to-1 ratio from around 3-to-1 in years past. So prices are rising, but so is the value of the dollar or euro for those coming in from elsewhere.

Your cruise stop in the Falkland Islands may cost extra though. Argentina is trying to force ships to get permission from Buenos Aires to pass through Argentine waters to get there. This move has gotten the support of Hugo Chavez, which tells you how well it’s going to play out with more sane leaders…

Keep an eye on international news if you’re planning a trip to Argentina. Hopefully an international recovery—or new elections—will right the ship before things get ugly.

[photo from Living in Patagonia blog]

The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday about how U.S. hotels are dropping the word “resort” from their name because it’s causing them to miss out on corporate booking deals.

“The Ballantyne Resort in Charlotte, N.C., changed its name during the summer to the Ballantyne Hotel & Lodge after several corporate clients indicated it would have a better chance of landing their business if it weren’t called a resort. Same for the Westin Stonebriar near Dallas, formerly the Westin Stonebriar Hotel & Resort. Ditto the Renaissance Orlando at Sea World, no longer the Renaissance Orlando Resort at Sea World.”

What’s hilarious about this is that it’s all a fake-out to get around silly rules instituted by some silly boss. Because of the AIG fallout last year, corporations are afraid to appear to be living it up too much, so they’re telling their meeting planners to not seek bids from any “resorts.” So the hotels are responding by doing a workaround: changing their name.

Nothing else has changed of course. The spa and golf course are still there, the excursion programs are still in place, the execs will surely be having just as many poolside cocktails as they would have before.

But now it’s not a resort. So we can all feel better about things…now that the letterhead has been reprinted.

See the full article here.

A few notable travel-related news bites from around the Americas…

- Honduras situation resolved…sort of. The U.S. dropped Honduras from its travel advisory after recent elections had a good turnout and went peacefully. Unfortunately, that’s still not the end of it since most governments are not recognizing the new leader as legit and the kicked-out former president is still holed up in the Brazilian embassy. Bottom line though, traveling there should not be affected while this is worked out and places where tourists spend any time, like Roatan and Copan, were never impacted much to start with.

- Speaking of Honduras, lovely Pico Bonito Lodge is offering a 2-for-1 special through January 3.

- We recently reviewed the new Bristol Buenaventura hotel, but parts of it were still under construction at opening. Tomorrow the spa officially opens.

- During the annual World Travel Market  held  in London, the members of LATA (Latin American Travel Association) chose Awasi as the Best Boutique Hotel in Latin America, for the second consecutive year. Awasi is located in the Atacama region of Chile.

- Argentina is once again threatening to impose a reciprocal visa fee ($131 for Americans) for foreigners landing in Buenos Aires by air. Each time they have announced this in the past it has been struck down, presumably because the massively important ourism industry would take a huge hit if it goes into motion, right during a worldwide recession that is especially affecting Argentina. We’ll see if common sense prevails again or if Argentina follows the path of countries that receive fewer North American visitors, like Brazil and Bolivia.

If someone has to drop the asking price of their house from $85 million to $72 million, should we feel sorry for them? That’s what has happened to poor Mohamed Hadid, who is best known for building Ritz-Carlton hotels in the 1980s. If you’re in the market for a 48,000-square-foot mansion, here’s the listing.

While much of the press attention regarding the U.S. property bubble has been about subprime loads and foreclosures in the rust belt, the most breathtaking declines have been in California and Florida—the two states that got the most inflated to start with. Many buyers who got in on their ideal gated community around a golf course are finding that it’s not so lovely when the developer goes bankrupt and the weeds start growing in the bunkers.

So what does this have to do with Latin America? Well for one thing, I’d argue as always that you have to know when things are getting frothy and when there’s still plenty of appreciation left. Parts of Costa Rica and the Los Cabos area of Mexico were looking like nosebleed territory three years ago. Now that the flipping up north has stopped, there are fewer buyers willing to pay California prices for a strip of sand or a penthouse. In most of the rest of Latin America, however, there’s not much downside.

But (and there’s always a but), some developers will always get into trouble by overextending. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Marriott is halting all development of its luxury building projects for owners. “The pullback affects all three formats that Marriott sells under its Marriott and Ritz-Carlton brands…Marriott is permanently exiting development of luxury-residential projects…” The article says that the company basically made no money whatsoever on its own projects after subtracting write-downs.

Sometimes bigger isn’t better.