Dan Holmes.com

It’s never been easier to travel, as airlines, hotels, resorts, and travel-related retailers are clamoring to attract us to use their services. The website TravBuddy.com is a great place to get travel info and much more.

The best thing about TravBuddy.com: Social networking. The site allows users to find travel buddies planning to travel to the same places at the same times, or to learn about destinations from people who have been there or actually live there. In fact, some users find friends on TravBuddy who they can travel with or get help from when they take their trip.

Another wonderful part of the site are the reams of travel reviews. There are, as of last count, more than 17,000 reviews of restaurants, bars, hotels and attractions. Need to know where the best martini is in Madrid? You can find out. Want to find the best place to rent a kayak in Sydney? That’s there too.

Users can also create travel-based blogs and upload travel photos. The photos (750,000 have been posted to blogs so far) are a great way to actually see places you want to go to, but the blogs are a little thin. Though TravBuddy boasts 65,000+ blogs, most of them are old our rarely updated, and many of them offer little to help you plan a trip. The reviews are best for getting the nitty-gritty details.

As of March 2008, TravBuddy has nearly 1,350,000 registered contributors and it’s growing, as it has been featured prominently on the NBC Nightly News, Popular Science, Real Simple Travel, and other media outlets.

I signed up on TravBuddy a few months ago because I’m going to the South Pacific in 2009. In a very short time (within hours) I had connected with folks who had been where I plan to travel and they gave me valuable tips. I also met several very friendly TravBuddy users who gave me advice on booking flights. The community at TravBuddy is wonderful.

The worst thing about TravBuddy.com: the blogs are not updated frequently (user-driven so that’s to be expected somewhat). For that reason, the site just misses a 5-star rating.

The least you need to know: TravBuddy.com is a social networking site to connect travelers with similar interests and itineraries. It’s especially appealing to adventure travelers, the types who cringe at the thought of a bus tour or a guided walk through a museum. However, it still offers a community that will benefit all types of travelers. It’s a fantastic way to safely connect with people in the places you want to travel to, to learn the secrets of enjoying that destination. You may also make a travel buddy who will throw on a backpack and take the trip with you!

Website rating: 4 out of 5 stars

URL: www.travbuddy.com

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

I like this quote and just wanted to share it.

For the longest time, since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to sail on the ocean to faraway and exotic islands. The more remote, the better. That dream has been on my mind a lot lately - the notion of “escape.” Paul Theroux is fortunate enough to be able to take those escapes for a living. The American travel writer has several bestsellers to his credit, including The Mosquito Coast, which was made into a movie.

I’ve been reading The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific, in which the author tells of his journey by kayak to the Cook Islands, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Vanuatu, Easter Island, and more exotic (or not so exotic) island locales. It’s brilliantly written.

When Theroux confronts a new culture on one of the islands, he doesn’t enter into it with a desire to change it, or make judgments. Instead, he embraces it and honors it through his respect for the land and the people he meets. Sometimes, the people he met meets are hostile, as when a group of islanders, all teenagers, mocked him and threatened him as he paddled to their shores. But his quiet and chilling confidence continutally led him out of harm’s way. Over and over again, he met islanders who changed his life and outlook on the world we live in.

Theroux has a wonderful way of finding stories among the people and places he blends into as he travels at the most basic level. This isn’t a travel guide for sight-seeing tourists, it’s a bible for the adventurer.

Be sure to browse other Books by Theroux from Amazon.com. He’s really the best of this genre of travel writing.

In my continued effort to cover all things adventure-related, I ran across this news snippet this morning…

The wife of missing millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett must testify in court before a judge will consider declaring him ‘presumed dead’ … [A]nd allow for legal and financial matters to be addressed, including an estate records show is worth more than $10 million.”

Full story:
Judge likely to declare Fossett “presumed dead”

FAQ about Steve Fossett:
Wikipedia entry for Steve Fossett
Disappearance of Fossett baffles experts

A man from Seattle named Erden Eruc is in the midst of a daring adventure around the world using only human-powered means of transportation. He left the U.S. in a rowboat in July and is currently in the Pacific Ocean on his way to Australia. Eventually, he’ll climb several mountains, including Mt. Everest, and journey to the Dead Sea (the lowest point on Earth). Utilizing satellites, this amazing web site allows students to track his journey on a daily basis:

Around-n-Over program.