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.
Q: What's the most surprising/unexpected place you're ever visited?
A: A friend of mine was mentioning that Honduras was really great. I hadn't really thought too much about Honduras other than in the movie Ishtarwhen Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty were like these failing, wannabe Simon & Garfunkel. I ended up going to this island off of Honduras called Roatan, which is UN-be-lieve-a-ble. For me, heaven is an ocean that you can see the bottom of. The white sand. The blue water. That's Roatan completely — so much so that when I got there I was like, "OK, I guess I have to learn how to scuba dive." And I did. It was very, very cool.
Q: What's your favorite vacation spot?
A: Anywhere where I'm on vacation. I don't have a favorite one necessarily. I've been to Costa Rica twice and I liked it.
Q: Can you offer an insider tip or recommendation for your favorite vacation place?
A: Don't let your dog get to your passport. It's very hard to explain to the customs official. They don't really go for the excuse, "My dog ate my passport." It created a hairy situation for me one time. I got detained because I had bite marks in my passport. My friend's dog had used it as a chew toy. The customs officer did not want to believe me. That happened entering Costa Rica, but I think they had recently had some problems so they were particularly on edge.