Category — Travel

Now available for a limited time only in beta on Everlater, you can use the new Discover feature to search for any place you’re thinking about visiting and find out more about what others have thought of it! This is a great feature that we’ve really enjoyed experimenting with and wanted to let everyone else explore as well.

In Bariloche, Argentina, Annie describes a restaurtant called Tarquino: “This place was made completely out of Patagonia Cypress and resembled a hobbit house. Not only was the building made of wood, but there were very large trees that were scattered throughout the restaurant that were growing through the roof. It was a traditionally Patagonian menu. The food was delicious!” Don’t miss the chance to eat Patagonian food in a hobbit hole!

In Bangkok, Thailand, Norm warns about the gem scam, which sounds like something you definitely want to avoid. “I would hate to say that all locals are out to get you in Thailand, because they aren’t. Like in most countries, the bad ones get to you first and the good ones are only likely to run into you if you are in distress. The famous gem scam is very relevent here. Guys standing on the streets looking like pedestrians or standing in front of a tourist sight claiming that it is closed until a later time or that your clothes aren’t sufficient enough to enter are preditors waiting for prey. They then proceed to offer you a ridiculously cheap tuk tul ride to another sight as well as a thailand tourist office to get info on the city and assure you that the driver will bring you back on time to see the sight you are trying to see right now. Apparently if you accept they take you to hell and back stopping at all their buddies “gem” shops while forcing you to buy expensive colored glass that they claim to be a big score stone.”

Finally, in Barcelona, Spain, Zach and Tyler made some amusing comments about the spicy food and the sweet old lady’s house where they stayed. On food: “Know your gut. Can you handle spicy foods? If you can’t, do not try to impress your friends by trying to. You will definitely pay for it later, and you don’t want to be in the middle of a museum or tour when the food finally hits you…” On lodging: “Some Old Lady’s house. The locals sure are friendly! Too bad she didn’t have any pillows…”

What are you waiting for? Start searching, see what you find, and then get out and discover your own adventures on Everlater!

I started out studying Environmental Engineering in college. Then I found out that I wouldn’t be able to study abroad unless I could afford to take an extra year to complete my degree - so I switched to Journalism and Spanish Literature and went to school for a semester in Chile.

Perhaps this was a rather dramatic reaction (I also wasn’t really enjoying the Engineering school, at all) but it also seems to me that the general lack of encouragement to study abroad that exists in certain departments and colleges across the country represents a critical failure of the US higher education system. In a world that gets smaller every day, shouldn’t study abroad represent an important, if not required, element of any complete college education?

Aside from the whole global village, world-is-flat issue, in my experience there is almost no better way to learn than by traveling. Traveling requires you to make complex plans and fast decisions, think differently, and deal with unfamiliar situations.  You will often need to learn at least a little bit of a new language, try new foods, and experiment with new ways of living life.

Of course, there are ways to travel abroad to the most exotic of locations without exposing yourself to a single lesson-learning moment, and there are ways to challenge your thinking without leaving your home town. The point is simply that travel tends to present people with great potential for learning opportunities, as Gary Arndt describes in his recent article on what he learned while traveling around the world. “Three and a half years and 70 countries later,” he explains, “I’ve gotten the equivalent of a Ph.D in general knowledge about the people and places of Planet Earth.”

The educational value of travel should be considered as a potentially essential component of the US higher education system. In a world of increasing interconnectivity and diversity, having some experience and understanding of another culture and a different language is an important element of being able to interact with and relate to other citizens of the world.

Americans in particular could certainly use some encouragement to travel: although sources vary, the number of Americans who hold passports seems to be somewhere around 20 percent, which has almost certainly increased dramatically since the new requirement to have one to visit Mexico and Canada took effect. There are a number of reasons why Americans may travel less than others, as Gary Arndt describes:

“Americans don’t travel overseas as much as Brits, Dutch, Germans, Canadians or Scandinavians. There are some good reasons for this (big country, short vacation time) and bad ones (fear and ignorance). We don’t have a gap year culture like they have in the UK and we don’t tend to take vacations longer than a week.”

While it’s certainly true that factors like geography and employment policies are hard to change, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do something about changing other factors that could increase travel. Promoting college study abroad programs would be a great way to begin shifting the American approach to travel while simultaneously improving the quality of our higher education system. Depending on the program and the college, study abroad can even be cheaper than a regular semester at school, with many of the more affordable programs offering great insight into a very different way of living.

Check out a recent study abroad trip to Spain, record your own experiences on Everlater, and share your thoughts on traveling and learning with us in the comments here or on Facebook!

JetBlue’s All You Can Jet passes are not designed for people who fear airport security, turbulence, or angry flight attendants. They are not designed for those who would rather get to know just one or two places really well. They are not designed for the weak.

All You Can Jet is designed for the traveler who thinks that red-eyes are a great chance for a good night’s sleep, that 12 hours is plenty of time to get to know what a city is like, and that the person with the most destinations wins. These are the folks who believe that they really can visit every major metropolis and most of the other interesting parts of the world before they die - they’re already halfway through the list and they’re not even 40 years old yet (maybe close, but who’s counting?) These are the true travel junkies, and these are their stories.

For Andrew Hyde, traveling all over the country with All You Can Jet is just the beginning. After that he’s going to South America, Africa, India, Nepal, SE Asia, China, Australia and New Zealand - or at least that’s the general idea. Some of you might want to point out that he’s skipping Europe entirely, but what you would have failed to recognize is that Andrew had probably already seen everything in Europe, twice, by the time he was 13.

Although in contrast to Andrew, Ben Hughes is simply sticking to the US, he has taken such a systematic approach to his itinerary that he appears to be at least as serious about travel as Andrew is. “To help pack in as much travel as possible I first collected an inventory of JetBlue routes to the west coast and back through JFK and Boston - to my knowledge JetBlue doesn’t have a published recent timetable. From there I optimized the trip based on several factors:

* Maximum red-eye flights - it’s a free night’s sleep!
* Arrange for 2 day stays over the two days I can’t fly: Friday and Sunday.
* Stay more than one day in: Seattle, New York, Boston, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
* Arrive in west coast cities as early as possible for a full day’s visit.
* If at all possible connect through JFK over Boston since there is wifi and I prefer T5 over Boston’s crappy Logan airport.
* I’m moving to San Diego in November so would like at least some time there to look at apartments, etc.

With these optimizations in mind I’ve come up with the following (tentative) itinerary:

To get an idea of what these trips will look like once these intrepid travelers actually complete the journey, check out Ryan Wanger’s All You Can Jet trip from last year, which received thousands of views from people interested in finding out just how exhausted he was after starting in Colorado and then jetting back and forth across the country to different cities on both coasts.

Who will jet more this year than Ryan did last year? Check out some of the other cool 2010 All You Can Jet trips on Everlater here, and here, and also here, here, and here.

Are you doing an All You Can Jet trip too? Travel blog your trip on Everlater, share it in the comments here on the blog, and post it to your friends on Facebook!

I just got back from a family vacation to Cape Cod, and aside from the obvious highlights of sand dunes, oysters and drinks on the boat to and from Nantucket, another positive detail of the trip was actually our flight attendant on the way home. With the recent story of the renegade JetBlue flight attendant making headlines around the world, our cheerfully hilarious Southwest attendant provided a refreshing and interesting contrast. Was Steven Slater justified in his dramatic response to an unruly customer, I wondered, or should he have found a different job long ago, leaving his position open to someone who might have enjoyed it more and giving him the opportunity to discover work that didn’t make him go nuts?

On the one hand, flight attendants do have a hard job in the sense that they often have to deal with rude and exhausted customers who don’t seem to realize that the person serving them their tiny $6 cocktail is probably pretty tired too. Steven Slater has been hailed by many in the service industry as an overnight hero, championing the cause of the beleaguered employee who has had to happily endure one too many insults at the hands of demanding and self-absorbed customers. Having worked in the service industry myself, I was able to instinctively sympathize with this perspective.

On the other hand, my Southwest attendant got a standing ovation just for reading the safety instruction manual in a funny accent. At the end of the flight, he made a joke about the amazing gentleman at the front of the plane who was about to turn 92 years old - so please, he said, wish our pilot a happy birthday on your way out. The pilot, who looked to be closer to 32 than 92, really did come out to say hello to everyone as we shuffled off the airplane, and we all grinned at both him and our funny flight attendant, thanking them profusely for an excellent flight. We had actually landed a little late, but nobody seemed to notice. We were so easy to please that for a joke and a funny accent, we were practically ready to stay on board for the next leg of the trip, wherever they were flying.

Flight attendants may not have the best job in the world, but there are certainly ways to make it fun enough that instead of getting hit over the head with carry on luggage, they get applauded. I don’t know if my funny flight attendant uses the same jokes every time, or sometimes doesn’t have the energy to joke at all, but I do know that after my trip to the Cape I’d much rather fly Southwest than JetBlue… although I definitely wish I’d gotten ahold of one of those All You Can Jet passes! Stay tuned to the blog for an All You Can Jet feature on Everlater coming soon, and happy travels!

Traveling in a foreign country can be really exciting, but it can also be a little scary sometimes. What if you get lost, robbed, or trapped by a crazy storm? Although there may not be much you can do in the event of a flash flood or an earthquake, for many of the more common challenges associated with traveling, either knowing the language or knowing someone in the area can work wonders, transforming your trip from a harrowing experience to a thrilling adventure. Of course, being able to know both the language and a local is ideal, but what if you can only have one? Which gives you a greater advantage and why?

The answer to this question probably depends a lot on where you’re going and what you want to do when you get there. For example, when I was out trekking around in Patagonia, speaking Spanish came in very handy for finding rides, getting advice on hikes and routes, and asking about where to stay and eat. I also happened to know a mountain guide who helped me climb up some pretty big volcanoes, but if I hadn’t already known him I could have asked around in Spanish to find someone else.

In contrast, when I visited my friend in Prague, I really just wanted to experience the culture, and she was the perfect tour guide for getting to know the true character of the area. As the exotically unfamiliar sound of Czech flowed past me, we went to bars and drank 25 cent liters of beer, wandered through the fields near her grandma’s house picking berries and swimming in the river, and hitched rides between castles and cities around the country. Her grandpa even made me try pickled sausage, which I politely pretended to enjoy, prompting him to offer me several more that I was unable to finish.

Generally, for trips that involve more constant travel across larger distances doing something active like trekking or riding a bike, knowing the language may be more useful, while for more cultural experiences focused on a particular city or region, knowing a local will probably provide more context. No matter where you’re going or what you’re doing, it’s always a good idea to learn at least a few key phrases - and of course, record your trip on Everlater so your friends can see what you did and plan their own trip!

Happy travels,

Beth

This is a guest post from Joel Wishkovsky, founder of Nudgems.com, fun greetings from independent artists & musicians.

The best part of traveling to Central America is that no matter where you go, you are likely to be off the beaten track.  There is so much that its quite overwhelming and a lot of people ask me for advice when making plans.  Here are the 9 places I most often recommend:

1. Playa Santa Teresa (Costa Rica): This little surfing village is only accessible by unpaved roads and offers super cool hostels, great party scene and world class surfing.  It’s a popular destination for people trying to find themselves, you are sure to meet some interesting people.
2. Parque National Corcovado (Costa Rica): This national park’s severe remoteness keeps all but the truly committed from visiting.  It is therefore one of the most beautiful places in the country.  I prefer the coastal crossing into the park because it’s more adventurous and you’ll see more animals.  Take care in finding a boat guide that does not smell like alcohol and try to leave at a time that does not have you doing river crossings at high-tide.
3. Casco Viejo by public bus(Panama City, Panama):  The vast majority of Panama City is new, cosmopolitan and well groomed.  The old town, however, has had issues with squatters and has not yet been fully renovated.  Try to lose yourself in the old streets and picture Panama city before the canal and American influence.  The best way to get there and see the rest of the city is by local bus.  You can’t miss them since they are 1960s American school buses decked out with Jesus figurines and crazy colors.  They are all privately owned and so they compete for your business.  This means they will cut each other off, speed, and otherwise jockey for your attention.  Try not to leave Panama without riding a bus.
4. Isla Cebaco (Panama): One of my favorite places in all of Central America is a tiny island with few residents, no running water and is only accessible by tiny fishing boat.  It’s a great place to spend a few days camping, fishing and surfing.  It was here, surfing on a remote beach with my friend that we decided to quit our jobs and launch a startup.  To get here, go to Playa Mariato and look for a fisherman willing to take you to the island in exchange for a tank of gasoline, be patient as they don’t use watches or care about time.
5. San Blas (Panama): This chain of 350 tiny islands is one of the world’s truly amazing places.  It is remote, inhabited by fiercely independent Kuna Indians and requires significant effort to reach.  Once you reach the eastern shores of Panama, either by a 3 hour 4×4 drive from Panama City or by small charter flight, you’ll want to hire a local to ferry you to the islands.  He’ll pick you up in the mornings, take you to snorkeling spots or to uninhabited beaches and arrange a time to pick you up.  Expect them to be grossly late whenever they say they’ll come for you, if you have flights to catch plan at least a full day of leeway.
6. Isla Ometepe (Nicaragua): One of the gems of Nicaragua are twin volcanic islands in the middle of Lake Nicaragua.  They are accessible by Ferry and there are plenty of cheap taxis on the islands to take you around.  Not many Americans make it here and therefore life is cheap, fairly authentic and the beaches are natural.  If you have some time, try to take a tour of the island’s rainforests and waterfalls by horseback.
7. Granada at dusk (Nicaragua): This Spanish colonial town is what you may expect when you think about Central America and unfortunately it is packed with tourists during the day.  Luckily most of the tour groups seem to head out of town to nearby resorts or back to the capital at nightfall.  With it’s lantern lit streets, cobblestone roads and authentic feel this is a great place to wander at dusk.  It’s still Nicaragua, so be aware of your surroundings but I felt more safe here than in any other town in Central America.
8. Amapala (Honduras): This tiny island was one of the first cities in Honduras and served as its main port for many years.  It was so prominent, that it’s unique port facilities are featured on the country’s currency.  Hardly any foreigners come here, so it’s completely authentic and extremely cheap.  They have a number of resorts on the island intended for Hondurans with beautiful black sand beaches, nightly salsa dancing and extremely cheap beer.  To make the trip, head to La Flor and negotiate space on a small cargo boat headed to the island, don’t be shy about sitting on the fishing gear or snuggling with the canned goods.  If you like off the beaten track, this is you place.
9. Comayagua (Honduras): This was the original Honduran capital.  It is a beautiful town bursting with colonial authenticity, art and culture.  Like Granada, this town offers you the ability to stroll it’s streets and imagine what life was like in colonial times. The best part is that in this town things have not changed much since those days, certainly not the pace of life.  I don’t typically endorse museums in Central America, but the history museum here has some truly awesome stories to tell about the country and is hosted in a beautiful Spanish fort.

If you’ve been to Central America, share your travel stories and photos with us your friends and family and with us at Everlater.  If you are going, we hope to follow along!

We’ve just created the very first Everlater Group - a mini-network of travelers using the JetBlue All You Can Jet Pass. The promotion, $599 for a month of unlimited flights, caused quite a stir amongst travel junkies - many of whom came to Everlater to record their trips.

The page highlights:

• Who is in the group
• Where those travelers are
• Their latest stories & photos
• The most popular destinations

Members of the group can also find other members with overlapping itineraries - in case they are looking for travel partners along the way. (For reference, my trip overlaps with others in the group 25 times!)

We’ve also launched a contest. The All You Can Jetter with the best online travel journal will win a bunch of great prizes (notably an exclusive Everlater Trophy and a custom badge for their trip). Details here. Voting begins October 12th.

This is the first time we’ve ever had Groups before, but it gives us some great ideas for the future. Take a look at the Everlater All You Can Jet Group. What else would you like to see added to groups? Can you think of some creative ways that travelers would want to utilize what we’ve built?

Last summer, I traveled to Peru and Bolivia for 5 weeks. The weekend after I returned (to Boulder, my new home), I drove to Crested Butte, CO. While stopped atop the continental divide, I wondered: Why did I fly halfway around the world when there is such amazing natural beauty in my own backyard?

With that in mind, check out some of my favorite places that you probably haven’t heard of:

#1 - Havasu Falls, Grand Canyon, AZ

(Photo courtesy of TeecNosPos)

Pros:

• Beautiful waterfalls (the larger Mooney Falls is just a mile or two downstream)
• Incredible swimming (the best I’ve ever had, anywhere)
• Impossibly tropical water in the Grand Canyon
• The hike to Mooney Falls climbs down chains and through tunnels in the cliff face

Cons:

• 12 mile hike one way to get there
• Must book weeks/months ahead
• Scorching hot in the summer
• Will likely be crowded

Summary: A must do for anyone who loves hiking, swimming holes, and adventure.

Door County, Wisconsin

(Photo courtesy of WisDoc)

A longtime vacation spot for locals, Door County (that thumb that sticks out from Wisconsin) is a cheaper, less preppy version of Massachusetts’ Cape Cod.

Pros:

• Fantastic sandy beaches
• Relaxed Pace
• Lakeside houses hidden in the woods along unpaved roads
• “Sick road cycling” adds @mudandcowbells

Cons:

• Mostly a summer getaway

Summary: A fantastic way to spend a laid-back summer vacation with nature.

Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado

(Photo Courtesy of SC Fiasco)

Pros:

• 700 foot high sand dunes at the foot of 14,000 foot, snow-capped peaks
• Camping allowed ON the dunes!
• Can easily ditch the crowds on even the most crowded days of the year

Cons:

• Hiking in sand gets old. Even the hikes that skirt the dunes are mostly sand.
• Few safe options besides car camping when there is lightning
• No water in the dunes

Summary: If hiking, sand dunes, and mountains are your thing - you can’t go wrong. Even seems like a good place for kids.

Letchworth State Park, Western NY

(Photo courtesy of Zhang Yuan)

Ever heard of the Grand Canyon of the East? Me neither, but somehow I ended up stopping here on a cross country road trip.

Pros:

• This huge canyon appears out of nowhere in otherwise flat terrain
• Lots of camping options
• Great (mostly flat) hiking along the gorge and through dense forest
• Lush

Cons:

• Probably only worth a two day visit

Summary: Good hiking and forests, but also good if you just want to drive from view to view. A huge, scenic gorge/canyon in nowheresville New York - who knew?

Black Hills, South Dakota

(Photo courtesy of dclamster)

South Dakota, no offense, is mostly pretty flat and boring. But in the southwest corner lies both The Badlands and Black Hills.

Pros:

• Mostly undeveloped, yet with the right amount of tourism
• Check out two of the longest caves in the world (Jewel Cave and Wind Cave, plus 6 others)
• Easily day trip to/from Badlands National Park

Cons:

• I didn’t know how much there was to do, and so I didn’t plan in enough time!

Summary: Caving, hiking, and rolling mountains enthusiasts rejoice!

Traveling to faraway lands is an enlightening and valuable experience. But don’t forget, there is plenty of natural beauty in your own backyard. Any suggestions for places I might have missed?

Whenever Natty or I talk to anyone about online travel, we inevitably talk about or reference TripAdvisor somewhere in the conversation.  This is because TripAdvisor (and its partner websites including virtualtourist.com, independenttraveler.com, etc.) has, by far, the most extensive database of user generated reviews and the most active base of users of any travel information site.  TripAdvisor completely dominates the market despite a horrible design, deceptive sponsored links, multiple pop-up ads and disorganized site layout.

TripAdvisor has built themselves to be at the center of the online travel information universe.  We strongly believe that network effects have, at this point in time, firmly ensconced TripAdvisor’s position.  This is because they are the only site that has the depth and breadth of reviews to drive users to their site, and conversly, they are the only ones who have the vast number of users to entice reviewers to review purely based on the impact of their reviews.

There are no less than twenty different sites attempting to unseat TripAdvisor.  However, none are having a large impact and this is directly derived from a classic chicken-and-the-egg problem: they are struggling to attract users to review, and with no reviews, they are struggling to attract users.  Some sites, such as WAYN.com among others, have resorted to enticing users through point systems (sometimes redeemable for real-world services) to write reviews.  Others have resorted to large scale traffic generation schemes to drive users to their site.  Regardless, it doesn’t appear that it’s working.  A post on compete.com’s blog shows that, if anything, TripAdvisor’s reach is expanding after a 2008 site redesign.

Another takeaway from the Compete post is that over 1% of TripAdvisor users contribute reviews.  Given their huge inital base, the expansion of their database is expanding far more rapidly than newer entrants.  Competitors to TripAdvisor will have to drive the percentage of users contributing reviews much higher than TripAdvisors (already impressive) 1%, making the barriers to entry for online travel information sites almost-impossibly high.

They have a huge user base and that drives fantastic results.  According to Expedia’s 3Q08 press release, the TripAdvisor Media Network had revenues of $236m ($314mm annual rate) — nothing astounding, compared to the billions that GOOG generates, the billion that myspace generates or the estimated $300m that Facebook generates.  However, due to the fact that travel advertising is extremely valuable online (something that the Everlater team has not overlooked), TripAdvisor CRUSHED the margins of all of these other online media companies — their reported operating income (actually OIBA per EXPE reporting) margin is 53% (compared to GOOG’s roughly 25% margin, and Fox Interactive Margins of 0-10%), meaning they are on pace to earn operating income of $165m — margins and profit that are almost unheard of in the digital media space.

We (at Everlater) have several takeaways from TripAdvisor’s dominance:

1. Travel advertising is a great place to be. While no one knows exactly where the economy is going to go, and whether online advertising will be worse or better than the whole, we do know that we are positioning ourselves to take a slice of the tastiest part of the online advertising pie.
2. Content is king. We are building a media site, and our content is the most important part.  Because we are not targeting the travel information space, we are targeting an active contributor user percentage much higher than 1%.
3. Paying users doesn’t work. This takeaway is courtesy of TripAdvisor’s competitors.  If we ever have to entice users to contribute content to our site, then our business model is broken, rather than our marketing plan.

For those of you who don’t know (and shame on you), Couchsurfing rocks!   Couchsurfing is a community seeking to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance and facilitate cultural understanding.  It is a huge inspiration to Everlater.

More 411 on CS’ing (know the lingo). People from all over the world have created profiles on Couchsurfing, opening up their couches to fellow travelers for nothing more than stimulating conversation and cross cultural exchanges.  Yes, you can Couchsurf from Angola to Afghanistan, and Antarctica to Aruba.  There are no fees or rules, just a commitment from all members to honor the values set forth by Couchsurfing, a communal desire to unite the world and expand cultural awareness and the kindness of anonymous people knowing that a home is better than a hotel and a friend is better than a tour guide.

Nate and I have Couchsurfed all over the world, from Stockholm to Delhi, Buenos Aires to Bogota and even New York to San Diego.  We have met amazing and inspiring people, and more than anything, been overwhelmed at the incredible openness with which people have embraced us, complete strangers, into their homes and told us their stories.  Couchsurfing communities around the world gave us personalized tours and experiences never found in guide books, helped us travel on a budget by reducing accommodation expenses, connected us with local traditions, enabled us to build a global friend network and broke down cultural barriers and stereotypes helping us repair a negative American image around the world.

Couchsurfing is an amazing movement exhibiting the beauty of humanity.  Barriers are nothing but human creations to separate, Couchsurfing ignores barriers and builds bridges.  We are inspired by Couchsurfing and amazed by the community.  Couchsurfing is a non-profit, check them out and if you believe, think about supporting this incredible movement.