Traveling with the Stars: Jordana Spiro
— -- Actress Jordana Spiro, who plays a sports columnist in the TBS sitcom My Boys and whose movie The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, opens in theaters Aug. 14, prides herself on being a budget traveler. She's off to explore Russia this month after finding a $400 round-trip ticket online. "That's like going out to dinner in New York," the New York native exclaims. Before departing, she shared her travel highlights and tips with Kelly Carter for USA TODAY.
Q: Where have you been recently that you liked or were surprised by?
A: I went to Xilitla in a region of Mexico called San Luis Potosí. It's really small and tucked away but it was one of the more exciting camping trips I've ever taken. A bunch of friends that live in Mexico City knew about it. It wasn't even mentioned in Lonely Planet (guidebook). It's about a 7-hour drive from Mexico City and it's a mountaintop village nestled in forests and rivers and waterfalls. It's a small town that is quaint and charming with cobblestone streets.
There's this area called Las Pozas that is a huge sculpture garden. This artist named Edward James was a big fan of surrealism and I think was a big benefactor to Salvador Dalí as well. He decided that he wanted this almost adult playground where art and nature could come together in a sort of participatory way. When you're walking through this forest you come across these huge surrealist sculptures that they invite you to climb on. You're camping by this river, which is beautiful. You're in this gorgeous forest and hiking along. All of a sudden you come across this spiral staircase that winds 30 feet in the air and leads to nothing. You can climb up it. One night we took a flashlight and a bottle of wine and we climbed it at night. They have all of these natural water pools and you can jump off the rocks into them. It was just an incredible experience and very affordable and unique.
Q: What's the best place you've ever visited?
A: One of the most visually stunning places I've been to was in Ha Long Bay in Vietnam where they have something like 300 square miles of islands. I did a little kayaking trip around those about three years ago. Everything can be organized for you at a reasonable price that is very competitive for the market there. A friend of mine, who I met while doing a volunteer trip in Tanzania, said he was going. That is the nice thing about budget traveling. As long as you can handle the plane ticket and you have the time off then as long as you're willing to rough it a little bit then you don't have to factor in too much cost. Although I wouldn't turn down luxury in a heartbeat.
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