Had your fill yet of insipid travel articles headlined “Top-10,” “Best,” and “Worst”? Then go get some nourishing stories from Perceptive Travel, home to well-written narratives from book authors on the move.

The new issue just went up and, as usual, it’s an eclectic collection of travel tales from around the globe.

Michael Buckley checks into a Korean temple to commune with fighting monks. Chris Epting, author of 18 books on interesting places, returns to where he grew up for some personal landmarks of his own. Carla Seidl recounts her experience of spending more than two years in a conservative village in Azerbaijan.

Graham Reid is back to run down some worthwhile world music releases from Africa, Brazil, and Sudan.

I have three new travel book reviews up. Well, they’re related to travel anyway. Sorta…

And of course we’re giving away a prize, like we do every month. If you’re quick and sign up for the newsletter before mid-day Thursday, you can get in on winning a Alpental Fleece Jacket from ExOfficio. If you’re too late for that, go join the Perceptive Travel Facebook page and you’ll have another shot at it.

One of the cool things about living somewhere instead of just passing through is you have the time to check out things that don’t get much space in guidebooks—if they’re mentioned at all. Yesterday I took in a Mexican rodeo where the participants were women in fancy ruffled skirts riding sidesaddle. (More on that later.)

But Friday afternoon I knocked off work early, ate a 30-peso lunch at a local market ($2.50), then hiked up to the local cemetery.

Sure, that’s an odd sightseeing destination, but Mexican cemeteries are almost always fascinating, no matter what city you’re in. The actual graves are usually above ground, either in some kind of elaborate enclosure or in a mausoleum-type enclosure where the bones are stacked like file cabinets. There’s no charge to look around and as long as you’re respectful it’s okay to wander and take photos.

Perhaps I’ll return at night during the Day of the Dead. Meanwhile, here’s a more sedate daytime slideshow tour. Enjoy!

Editor’s Note August 29 – The weekend after I posted this, Mexicana officially declared themselves dead and they have canceled all flights.

Living in Mexico as I am right now, I’m particularly interested in how this Mexicana Airlines train wreck will play out. Ever since they declared bankruptcy it’s been a complete nightmare for customers who had bookings, some of whom I know personally. As this excellent Smarter Travel blog post says, Mexicana has basically been holding customers’ money hostage, refusing to cancel flights but also refusing to honor the flights or transfer the customers to another airline either. So all that cash is in limbo.

There are some odd twists to this story, one being that their budget arm Click is still flying, apparently because it’s financed as a separate company. An investor group just coughed up $50 million to supposedly give the company a lifeline for 100 days. Will it be enough?

In a country with only two major airlines and a few budget ones that just fly a few routes from oddball hubs (Toluca, Monterey, Tijuana), Mexicana’s implosion is messing up a lot of vacation and business plans.

When flights go back on sale they’ll probably be heavily discounted, but my advice would be to avoid this airline like it’s a drug smuggler with swine flu. There’s a very real chance you’ll never see your money again after you buy a ticket and you won’t fly either. Even with the cash, they’ve got to convince people to keep working for them and flying the planes despite a hazy future. Go to Vegas instead and at least you’ll get free drinks if you lose everything.

But hey, the Mexican buses still rock.

Fish Market in Santiago (pescada $2.40 a kilo)

Usually when I’m doing one of these price rundowns for a country, it’s to show you what a bargain it is in one of The World’s Cheapest Destinations. When I went on a trip to Chile this past week for a wine tourism article though, I knew that would not be the case. Chile is, in most respects, at the top of the pyramid in Latin America. It’s got the most stable government, the best infrastructure, water you can drink, and a great airline—LAN.

So traveling here feels like it does in most developed nations: predictable (in a good way), hygenic, safe, and well…easy. There are a few relative bargains, but for restaurant meals, airport taxis, and hotels, expect to pay about what you would in the U.S. Especially now with the exchange rate around 500 pesos to the dollar.

The Santiago Metro will get you around most of the city for a buck in off-peak hours, a bit more during rush hour. Here’s more on that in English from the Urban Rail site. A short taxi ride will only cost you a few dollars and riding one of the 17 funicular trains up the hills of Valparaiso will only cost you around 25 cents U.S. Long-distance buses are nice and comfortable and cost $2 to $6 per hour of travel depending on the class. The best overnight bus from Santiago to Puerto Varas, for example, is $60 for 10 hours, while the cheapest is $26 for 12 hours.

Chilean wine is one of the world’s best values, as you’ve probably noticed already by browsing your local store. If you’re going to spend $10 or less on a bottle of Cabernet, Chardonney, Savignon Blanc, or a blended red, your odds of getting something really good are better if it’s from Chile than from anywhere else. (In the interest of research, I tried about 100 wines the past week, so I should know.) Buying locally in Chile, there are only a few labels that can top the $20 mark at retail, so you drink well there and the mark-up at restaurants as in Argentina is low enough that most everyone orders wine with dinner.

Seafood is abundant and reasonable, though again you’ll pay more for it here than in neighboring countries. In general the food is excellent, whether you’re eating at a great locals’ hangout like Liguria—where most dishes are under $10—or a fancy “tough to get a reservation” place like Pasta E Vino at The Aubrey.

The price that really hurts the most in Chile though is the one you’ll pay just to enter the country: $140 if you’re American. You’re down that much plus your long-haul flight cost before you even step out of the airport. That hurts. It’s good for the life of your passport, but if you’re like me and up for renewal soon, you’re SOL on that. You’ve just made a fat donation to the Chilean government and you won’t even get a thank-you note.

Santiago -- Still Standing

It’s an easy trap to fall into: hear a news story about a travel destination, log it into your permanent memory, and then forget to ever edit or clarify that impression.

We humans are wired to find shortcuts and quick connections, so that random impression about a place heard on the news two years ago tends to stick around far longer than it should. I have been reminded of this as I’ve toured around central Chile the past week, searching in vain for signs that a huge earthquake hit the country earlier this year (February 27).  To hear the tourism people tell it though, the aftershocks from that earthquake are still reverberating through the economy every day and business is still down.

Sure, a few southern port cities got damaged badly—especially from the tsunami that followed—but in Valparaíso even it’s hard to tell it was 8.8 on the Richter scale. Life is pretty much back to normal and has been for a while.

Yes, close to 500 people died, many buildings were damaged, and the wine industry lost some production from busted tanks. (There’s a sad picture to ponder: rivers of wine running out from buildings). Overall though, this is a country with a sound government and a good infrastructure, so things recovered quickly. And besides, after the airport reopened a few days later, everything was the same as ever in places like Atacama, the ski slopes, and Patagonia.

What other places are you looking at as if time stopped six months ago—or six years ago—back when you heard something bad on the news? Greece? Honduras? Thailand? Egypt? Arizona?

Reboot, then educate others.