Sunday, December 12, 2010

Hobotraveler.com

One of the best Websites I have found on budget travel topics is http://www.hobotraveler.com. It is the creation of Andy Graham, an American who has made travelling and writing about it his vocation for the past 12 years. He has visited 88 countries so far, in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. He blogs about his travels frequently, with photos. In addition to travel information, he provides content and commentary on diverse topics that include politics, society and religion.
Graham's style of travel isn't for most people--he recently wrote about staying in an apartment in West Africa for only $20 a month. The downside was primitive sanitary facilities. However, he demonstartes that low-cost travel is indeed still possible in most parts of the world. One interesting aspect of his Website is interviews with other long term budget travellers. These include a retired Canadian woman in Honduras and a young Finnish couple in Europe. The Website is not complete, in that there are a lot of topics listed that have no associated content. But what is there is compelling including the details about how he manages to travel in some very remote areas and still keep up his Website and blog regularly.
Hobotraveler is a good source if you are researching inexpensive places to visit. You may not be able to travel as inexpensively as the author does, but it is good to know the general cost structure of other countries. He provides details on costs in many different places, and few countries have overall costs higher than those in North America.
Andy Graham funds his travels mainly through ads on his Website, so be prepared for a lot of them. This is a problem I have found with most travel sites--way too many ads. While I understand that everyone has to make a living, I find online advertising intrusive. I have a lot more respect for successful sites like http://www.khanacademy.com, an educational Website, and http://www.craigslist.org. Neither site hosts outside ads, although of course craigslist is itself an advertising site.

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