Pity the poor beer connoisseur heading to Latin America. In many countries, one brand dominates. In others there are several labels—all brewed by the same company. In general it’s a sea of light lagers meant to be served very cold on a hot day.

Mexico has long brewed some of the best beers around, but even there the multitude of brands are produced by just two companies. And now one of those companies is fully owned by the Anheuser-Busch/InBev conglomerate. The behemoth bought what it didn’t own of the brewer for $20.1 billion.

These monopolies or duopolies survive because friendly governments have put up lots of barriers to keep anyone else from spoiling things. Until a few decades ago, laws weren’t so loose in the U.S. either. Once local brewers were allowed to flourish, they did so in a hurry.

There are a few bright spots in the region that can give us hope:

Costa Rica – This country, formerly dominated by one brewer, is now home to five start-up microbreweries. That’s enough to justify a real Microbrewery Beer Festival this past April. Costa Rica’s Craft Brewing Company has the best distribution so far, though oddly enough they don’t have a website—just a Facebook page.

If you like a good beer or three, stay where it’s served and you won’t have to drive. Volcano Brewing Company on Lake Arenal is also a hotel! (Rates are great too.)

Chile – Lots of Germans settled here, so there must be good beer—right? A lot of them seemed to land in Valdivia, the epicenter for the craft beer movement in Chile. One brewery is even called Kuntzmann. I had the pleasure of trying a Svot amber ale while I was in Chile on a wine tour (shhhh, don’t tell), and it was divine.

Brazil – This could be the market that really makes it for the craft brew industry. A huge population, rising wealth, regional advantages because of distance, and a populace that drinks as much beer as soda. According to this article, “Some of the most popular brands that are all worth a try while in Brazil are Colorado, Coruja, Dado Bier, Bierland, Mistura Clássica and Bamberg.”

Mexico – It’s not that there aren’t any microbrews in Mexico: you’ll just have a really hard time finding any of them. I lived in Guanajuato for seven months before I even saw one in a restaurant or bar. Thankfully you’ve got Bohemia and Negra Modela from the big boys (two of the few with an alcohol content over 4.5%), but seek out the others in Mexico City or Guadalajara.

Have you found any craft beers in your travels in Latin America? Clue us in!

I just attended Mexico’s main annual travel trade conference, held this year in Puerto Vallart/Riviera Nayarit and got the scoop on what’s new and important in Mexico Tourism. Despite the drumbeat of negative press, Mexico had a record year for visitors in 2011, with nearly 23 million people arriving from international destinations. The U.S. sent a few less, but Canada sent 7% more and new markets like Brazil (up 67%) more than took up the slack.

On the destination front, I’m really pleased to see a concerted and aggressive effort to spread out the tourism base to lesser-known towns and cities, especially those that aren’t beach destinations. The Pueblos Magicos (Magic Towns) program has been so successful that it has grown to 54 destinations. It gives special places with character extra funds to spruce up the city and up the game in terms of infrastructure and hospitality staff training. It encompasses places like the town of Tequila in Jalisco, Patzcuaro near Morelia, Todos Santos north of Cabo San Lucas, and Jerez near Zacatecas (a shop there pictured to the right).

The national government is also putting resources into specifically promoting the UNESCO World Heritage cities. For the most part these are safe, beautiful, under-the-radar cities, places like Campeche (west of Merida), Zacatecas, and my sometimes home of Guanajuato.

Travel Alerts

Another big initiative has been in getting the U.S. State Department to be more specific and accurate in its travel alerts. This has been a productive dialogue, with the alerts getting much more useful now (instead of just treating the whole country the same) and they’re even using maps to pinpoint problem areas. Unfortunately, Texas, a state that thinks it’s an independent country, has ignored all that and once again told Spring Break students to “avoid Mexico.” This despite the fact that the most popular resort areas for Americans/Canadians are far safer than Houston or Dallas by any crime measure you look at.

More and Better Air Connections

It’s no surprise that the death of Mexicana a few years ago put a serious dent in the flight options for visiting Mexico, especially from Europe. Other airlines have stepped in to fill the gap in some cases, but it’s taken years for the country to claw its way back and it’s currently at 88% of the international routes it had before that. Getting there, but still not ideal. So the government is pushing hard to get more flights in and are having some success that should improve the situation, both from Europe and the U.S. There’s a lot of work behind the scenes on this, so it should get better late this year and next.

The flip side of that is that the domestic air situation has improved dramatically. There are now five viable and seemingly healthy airlines making domestic flights and some to the U.S.: Aeromar, Interjet, Volaris, Aerobus, and the old standby Aeromexico. If you live in the Southwest, one of these guys may be serving a city near you or will start soon. I’m excited that Interjet is now offering a flight from Miami to Mexico City.

Infrastructure

While our crumbling U.S. infrastructure is suffering from political gridlock, Mexico is going full speed ahead. Nearing completion right now are a bridge over a gorge that will allow fast transit between Mazatlan and Durango. That cuts down the driving time between the U.S. and Mazatlan to 12 hours. There’s also a new airport highway that will get you to the Golden Zone faster.

Other major highways are cutting down bus or driving times. Examples are Morealia to Zacatecas, Mexico City to Puebla, and Oaxaca City to Huatulco.

Also, the Green Angels roadside assistance program has expanded into a general tourism assistance hotline. If you have a problem on your vacation, call 078 from a local phone. They’ll help you sort it out.

Related links from Luxury Latin America:
The best hotel in Patzcuaro, the best hotels in Guanajuato, and the luxury hacienda hotels in Campeche.

10 million say "This isn't so scary after all"

The U.S. Department of Commerce just released its outbound tourism numbers for the first half of 2011. Despite all the thumping negative drone from 24-hour news outlets during that time, approximate one out of every three Americans leaving the U.S. went to Mexico. Around 10.3 million people.

You could argue that a chunk of that was probably cross-border trade and family visitation, but three million of those were by air. To put it in perspective, more people flew to Mexico than all of Asia combined and that number was just slightly below the total for all of the Caribbean.

As far as I know, not a single one of those 10 million got beheaded.

See all our info on luxury travel in Mexico.

My first visit to Chiapas, Mexico started with a wet adventure but then the time in San Cristobal was bliss.

Unfortunately I was hob-nobbing with delegates at the Adventure Travel World Summit most of the time and didn’t get to explore the city as much as I would like. Also, the mayor apparently made a strange decision to “clean up” the city before we arrived and all the street markets were banned from their usual spots. So we got a sanitized view of the city, coupled with double the number of women and children trying to sell things out of a bag to passersby on the sidewalks.

I need to go back.

This is a city that serves up lots of strange, sometimes disconcerting pairs of images. It has a large indigenous population, many of these people still wearing traditional garb. But it is also a bit of a gentrified, hippy-dippy traveler hangout, so you’ve got lots of restaurants and bars in the center that only tourists can afford. (See my review of the awesome Tierra y Cielo restaurant.)

There are little Zapatista revolutionary dolls for sale with masks and guns, plus tables of literature prodding people to rise up and demand more from the government. At the same time, anyone who bought property or opened a business after the revolution petered out wants nothing to do with all that—-life has gotten 10X  better than it used to be.

This is the yin and yang of progress we often see when a no-go zone becomes a tourist hot-spot in a decade or less. There’s probably no right answer on how to deal with this really. Some people prosper from the new influx, some hate it and wish there was a more fair distribution of wealth. All we can do as travelers is try to make sure what we’re spending locally is spread around a bit and is helping to improve local lives.

Fortunately, there are almost no chain hotels or foreign chain restaurants in San Cristobal de las Casas and many of the vendors are no more than one step removed from the handicraft makers. The city and state pumped a lot of money into building upgrades and other public works before this conference, which supplied a lot of jobs. The arrival of 800 tourism professionals certainly helped the cause last week, some of the tour operators probably making plans to bring visitors here in the future.

There’s one luxury hotel in town, Parador San Juan del Dios, and we’ll be posting a review of it in November. Meanwhile, enjoy the images here. I must confess half of them were taken by my wife while I was holed up in a conference room or theater. Next time, more time to wander!

For more information on this beautiful spot in the mountains of southern Mexico (the state borders Guatemala), see the Chiapas Tourism site or the San Cristobal de las Casas section.

When people think of travel to Mexico, they are more likely to think of lying on a beach than of doing adventure activities. That’s not for lack of offerings though. With almost as much geographic diversity as the U.S., plus a jungle, coral reef, and cenotes, this country has plenty to get the pulse racing.

They’re committed to getting the word out too. Right now I’m at the Adventure Travel World Summit, which is held in a different destination each year. This time it’s in Chiapas, Mexico, in the beautiful city of San Cristobal de Casas. Before arriving here I spent four days touring around the jungle areas of this lush state, rafting and hiking. (Plus I got to see Palenque for the first time in my life.)

Besides laying out all the money to host some 800 adventure travel people from 40+ countries, the featured speaker was someone quite special: the president of Mexico. Yes, the leader of the whole country, Felipe Calderon. There’s a show coming out this fall, Peter Greenburg’s Royal Tour, that has Senor Calderon rappelling down into a cave, ziplinging, and scuba diving in a cenote, so I think he’s the real deal.

I’ll be talking with lots of tour operators here trying to figure out who is a step above the pack in catering to upscale adventure travelers. We hope to bring you feature stories later on some of these unique offerings.