Tim Leffel's Cheapest Destinations

Smart Packing for the Holidays

It’s about to be that time of year again, when planes are jammed, tempers are flaring, and we’re supposed to deliver gifts while full of cheer.

Of course it’s hard to be cheerful when you’re paying $25 to $75 to check bags after already paying inflated holiday airfares. So check out this article I got quoted in a few times on SmaterTravel.com: A Holiday Travel Primer to Avoid Baggage Fees. With a little smart packing and planning ahead, you can have more money to spend on gifts for people you like instead of giving a big gift to your airline. In these days of e-commerce and big box retailers that are the same from coast to coast, it’s not all that hard.

In one of those strange “small world” affairs, one of the other people quoted in that article was David Farley,  an author who has written articles and done book reviews for Perceptive Travel. A guy I hung out with on a hotel rooftop in Manhattan at an Handcrafted PR party two weeks ago—sipping cocktails featuring El Tosoro tequila and Rhum Agricole. (New York writers may spend a fortune on rent, but at least they get invited to a lot of press parties.)

Anyway, his advice is something I try to follow as well: make sure all your clothes go together and you don’t have to pack as many outfits.

Read the whole article here. Then for reviews of gear that will help you pack well, subscribe to Practical Travel Gear.

Enter the Remarkable Photo Contest

It’s time for the third annual Remarkable Photo Contest at Perceptive Travel. If you’ve taken a fanstastic, amazing travel photo (or two), send in your entry and you may score a nice prize.

We’re giving away a compact super-zoom Casio camera that can take 1,000 photos on one charge, a pair of sunglasses from Tifosi Optics, a portable travel safe from Pacsafe, and a few goodies for honorable mentions, including signed copies of The World’s Cheapest Destinations. Winners will be chosen by a panel of professional travel

photographers.

Follow this link to see details and all the rules, but it’s pretty simple really: no entry fee, no registration required. Entries are accepted through the end of the year, winners announced in January. Of course if you sign up for the newsletter you’ll find out when the winners are posted, plus you’ll be able to get in on our monthly gear giveaway, which is only open to subscribers.

Caffeinated in Colombia

I’ve spent the last few days bopping around Colombia after taking a seat on Spirit Air’s new route to Armenia, Colombia. This is the Coffee Triangle region of the country so I’ve been jacked up on caffeine the whole time (just the black liquid pick-me-up, not the other white powdery one.)

First impressions are that the people are beautiful, so is the countryside, and I haven’t felt the slightest bit uncomfortable yet. Though people at home raised an eyebrow when I told them I was coming here, it has been all positive after arrival—as expected.

Colombia is not one of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, but outside of Cartagena anyway, it’s certainly affordable. Domestic tourism is actually most of the tourism here, so prices are geared to locals nearly everywhere. You can pay $15 for dinner, but that’s a big fat steak and trimmings at a fancy place. A meal in a simple place is a few bucks. There are lots of little rustic hotels dotted around the countryside, many of them situated on working coffee plantations. So the java is reliably good. This zipline trip with some clips in the video below was the equivalent of 20 bucks—less than I paid in Guatemala a few years ago.

Here’s a little tour for you.

Your Input Wanted

Because I seem to be the juggler who keeps saying, “Throw me another ball,” I agreed to do a book on travel writing that will come out next year. It’s not the usual rundown on query letters and deadlines though. It’s going to be more about how “breaking into travel writing” is a lot different than it used to be and a map on to navigate the new digital age.

I’m not so bold to think I have all the answers, so I’ve got 52 writers from my network helping me out with their experiences, as well as a slew of editors with advice to share.

But it would be nice to hear what you’re dying to know. If you’ve ever wanted to make some money as a travel writer or you’re just curious about some aspect of it, what questions would you like to have answered?

Leave a comment here or if that’s too public, send me an e-mail.

Thanks!

Good Travel Info From Elsewhere

I’m busy getting the 3rd annual Remarkable Photo Contest ready to launch this weekend on Perceptive Travel, so here’s some useful travel info from elsewhere to make this a week of being wiser.

8 things you should know about Gore-tex (that I didn’t until two weeks ago).

The fine print on credit cards keeps getting worse and worse, while Delta and American Airlines are still leaving passengers stranded on the tarmac for four+ hours.

Christopher Baker, who has researched the Moon Handbook Costa Rica for an amazing two decades now, talks about where things are for travelers in Costa Rica.

Arthur Frommer explains why, because of all the piled-on taxes and fees, you’re better off getting an air and hotel package combined if you’re flying to Europe. This is sometimes true in the U.S. too: I just scored an American Airlines air and hotel package to Las Vegas for only $20 more than the flight ticket by itself would have cost on the same airline—and less than the ticket by itself was on Southwest. (And no, I won’t be checking a bag and paying American that extra fee.)

Rick Steves is not sold on electronic guidebooks…at least in their current form anyway.

I was one of the 437 people participating in the annual National Geographic Sustainability Survey. Tops on the list: Norways Fjords. Worst: Spain’s Costa del Concrete. Most of the bottom-rated places got that way from unchecked development and little care for the environment, like Sharm-el-Sheik in Egypt and Los Cabos in Mexico.

Who says you have to be young and single to be a vagabond? NYT’s Frugal Traveler interviews a nomadic family (SoulTravelers3–occasional readers of this blog) who has been on the road since 2006.

And a bonus: here’s a code for free in-flight Internet via Gogo Inflight.