Category: Travel Tools

I can now officially announce that I’ve completed the adaptation phase to this form of travelling: packing and unpacking my rucksack, sharing a room with fellow travellers, making do with the hostel’s cooking utensils, taking “off” days here and there to catch a breather, sacrificing favorite clothing to make room in my rucksack and so on …

For the moment I’ve known and lived unforgettable experiences in Uruguay, Argentina and briefly, Chile. Till now, Ushuaia has impressed me the least. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I think that it’s more a mythical place to begin or end your journey so you can say that you’ve visited the city furthest to the south on the American continent. Of course, it’s easy to say this once you’ve been there, but I suggest if you’re pressed for time that you spend more of it in Buenos Aires or in Chaltán, if you are a nature lover.

A piece of advice that my good friend Borja Serrano passed on to me and is coming in very handy. Reserve a hostel for just one night. This way if you hate the place or decide to move on the following day or have changed your travel plans while on the move, you’ll have greater flexibility.

To date, my best lesson has been to know how and when to exercise caution. I think that no matter how psyched or proud you are about roughing it on your own, it’s best to not tell the world. For example, don’t tell people you’re travelling for six months; say instead that you’re getting to know Argentina for three weeks and on another trip you’d like to visit Bolivia or Peru. My grandfather used to say “in war, even the plants have ears”. You may come across a trustworthy travelling companion seated beside you on a bus, but the person sitting behind you or in front may not be.

Xabier Albeniz

Photography is an important part of our trips. Far beyond the aesthetic value of our “work”, pictures immortalize our fun moments and discoveries forever, allowing us to process everything we’ve lived once we’re back home.

Technological advances in photography during the past decade have made available ultra-light and easy-to-use cameras, whose main function is their practicality.  I’d like to call your attention to other cameras that don’t adhere to this criteria however, operating instead on a more human and emotional level such as the experience of recording special moments in a special way with them. I’m talking about lomographic cameras.

Lomographic cameras are some of the best known analogical cameras, whose origin dates back to the early 1980s in the former Soviet Union.  These cameras were initially manufactured with a robust frame and defective lenses which produced surprising snapshots because of the focus deviation and color/light distortion they realized. This, of course, is what made them so special. Taking super-prepared photos is no longer a must; now, you expect a lomographic camera to astonish you with everyday images that stand out or to capture details which normally would go unnoticed.

At the start of the 1990s, a group of Viennese students discovered these cameras during a trip to Prague, and overnight an enormous community of lomographers was born. Their only aims are creative and spontaneous photography, as you will see in the “Ten Golden Rules”.

Nowadays, you can find reproductions of those original Soviet cameras in every color imaginable at their “Embassies” (yes, that’s what they are called) all over the world.

We have been using Tripit for a long time. In our opinion, Tripit is a good and easy tool to integrate and organize all the travel information we have to manage while planning a trip. It can be used by individuals and groups.

The most important features are:

- The possibility of organizing every detail into one master online itinerary. For example, by using the flight name you’ll be able to add all your flight details.

- The automatic inclusion of maps, directions and weather forecasts in the master itinerary.

- The possibility of adding external companies applications ready to help travelers’ needs. For example, Tripit allows you to use Expens’d, a tool to make travel expense reports.

What I like the most from Tripit is that you can easily add your plans to your iPhone using an iCal feed or .ics files. The integration between Tripit and iPhone is really useful.

To sum up, I can consider Tripit to be an important tool for those trourists that find it necessary to organize all the information.