Solo Trips and Safety Precautions

So Josh is leaving for Guatemala this weekend and has taken to telling me all the horror stories he keeps reading about on the state department website. Here's a tip people. Don't tell your spouse, partner, significant other that you're about to take a trip where X number of people have died by [insert horrible death]. We don't want to know!!!!!! But, this gets to my point of personal safety.

Saftey on trips should never be an afterthought. Despite Josh just now telling me these things, Im SURE (Im giving you the stink eye Josh) he looked into this beforehand. When traveling anywhere outside of the United States it's really imperative to check out the saftey reports from the State Department travel.state.gov website and also search for any recent news articles. These will provide you with vital information on where not to go, what not to do, and who not to talk to. Also, if you can, check with your hotel's concierge once you get there to get the low down on the area and whether or not there are any areas you should avoid.

It takes so little time to do these things but don't brush them aside. They could literally save your life!

Extreme Sheep from Wales!

This was just too good not to post. Some shepherds in Wales went all out with their sheep and did some AMAZING stuff. I don't know whether to think they had too much time on their hands or bow down to their logistical awesomeness. Now THAT takes some planning!

Traveling Cheap....really cheap

British blogger Paul Smith is now my personal hero. He's trying to see how far around the world he can get using only the power of the social networking site Twitter. It reminds me a lot of this game show that was on a few years ago called Beg, Borrow, or Steal (of couse I would hope he wouldnt steal anything lol). In BBoS you had to complete tasks (which I think included traveling) by relying on the goodness of others. Mr. Smith has added an extra dose of feel good by using his travels to raise money for charity:water which works to provide clean drinking water for people in developing countries.

Looks like he's trapsing around LA at the moment after suffering a bit of a defeat in New Zealand when he found out he couldnt go to Campbell Island, a famous and vitally important (ecologically speaking) unihabited island that is also a World UNESCO Heritage Site.

You can check out his blog here: http://twitchhiker.wordpress.com/

You can "tweet" with him here: http://twitter.com/twitchhiker/

Find out more about charity:water

BEWARE...The Yondi is so cute it could be fatal!

If you haven't already, you really should sign up for the Trunki World email newsletter. For one thing they have these great little stories about all the Trunkis comings and goings but you also get to hear about great new stuff like this....

It's the new Yondi and OMG is it adorable! The one for older kids even has an MP3 player pocket! Seriously, who comes up with this stuff?! Someone over there got an extra cuteness gene and is now using it to take over the world! I hope to see this around lots of little sleepyheads soon. I think I need to go watch a cop show to counteract this imagery.

Going Green?

So lately I've been thinking about looking into trying to offset our carbon footprint in an effort to be eco-concious. I already recycle, use reusable shopping bags for grocery shopping, use as many non chemical cleaning products as I can, etc. so why not go carbon neutral too?! Well, it seems that it's not that easy. There doesn't seem to be any real regulation in this new industry and while some companies say they are carbon neutral, it turns out that's about as reliable as a bag of fat free potato chips. In short, Im still looking around and digesting the options. Where's Al Gore when you need him?