At Bloomberg Pursuits, we love to travel. And we always want to make sure we’re doing it right. So we’re talking to globe-trotters in all of our luxury fields—food, wine, fashion, cars, real estate—to learn about their high-end hacks, tips, and off-the-wall experiences. These are the Distinguished Travel Hackers.
Curator and creative director Ximena Caminos was brought up in Buenos Aires, where she worked at Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Bueno Aires (Malba) before leaving for a personal and professional partnership with her now ex-husband, Alan Faena.
Together, they masterminded his namesake hotels in Argentina and Miami Beach; Caminos’s focus was establishing the complexes’ art world credibility via exhibitions, site-specific commissions, and dedicated cultural centers. Caminos was the driving force behind the Faena Forum art center in Miami, which launched with much fanfare two years ago during Art Basel Miami Beach. (Caminos remains a consultant with Faena.)
Flying around 400,000 miles per year, Caminos is a devotee of American Airlines Inc. and is part of its ultra-elite tier, Concierge Key. “I get a lot of benefits from that,” she says. “And I use it a lot.”
She lives in Miami with her children. Here are her travel tips.
There’s a secret to curing jet lag without coffee.
I travel everywhere with yerba mate. We Argentines are serious mate addicts; it’s our version of green tea, an infusion that you can drink all day and keeps you going. I take it specifically in the morning—like Americans or the Europeans take coffee—but coffee gives you shakiness, and it’s short, a 20-minute boom. Mate is not aggressive for your stomach, and it will keep you up but not in a shaky way. I make my own special version of it, sometimes with coca leaves I smuggle from Colombia, and chamomile with a little honey, so it’s 70 percent mate. Because it’s a ritual, I bring my own cup and bombilla, which is that metal straw. And even a thermos, which I bought in Iceland by Laken. If you borrow a thermos in any hotel, it will normally smell of coffee.
It pays to not plan ahead.
So to me, travel is breaking down the routine if the rest of the year you really have to work hard. I never book tickets in advance. I tend to change the dates so much that it ends up being more expensive [to pay change fees] than if I buy them at the last minute. Also, when you buy at the last minute, you can get amazing perks as well. Many times, I’ve found, you can get really good deals in the last 24 hours before a trip. We are slaves of time, of the clock, of our duties, of the routine. That routine sterilizes your mind.
Want to really get to know a city? Use Jorge Luis Borges as a tour guide.