By Julia Cosgrove  August 13th, 2010 3:08 pm  |  Comments (0)

Calling all social-media–savvy travelers! Afar is a sponsor of Blog Your Way Around the World, an online contest that gives travelers the chance to win a wildlife trip to the Galapagos, an off-the-beaten-path journey in Costa Rica, a biking excursion in Austria and the Czech Republic, and more. To enter, contestants must submit an essay of 400 words by December 31, 2010, explaining why they should win. Once you’ve posted your essay, reach out to your community for votes. The blogger with the most votes will receive eight trips for two, a gear package provided by such brands as Teva, Smith Optics, Eagle Creek Travel Gear, and a one-year subscription to Afar. Here’s an excerpt from one entry that resonates with Afar’s mission:

There is a distinct difference between a traveler and a tourist. A traveler wants to meet the local people, see and experience the way they live, eat the things they eat and attempt to speak their language. A tourist wants to pick up their safe and comfortable world and transport it with them.

By Jeremy Saum  July 12th, 2010 11:41 am  |  Comments (0)

Those of you who enjoyed Gregory Dicum’s story about Peru’s Ocucaje desert in our July/August 2010 issue might be interested to know that archaeologists just unveiled the remains of a whale from the Ocucaje that might have been even bigger than the megalodon shark that Gregory wrote about. Here’s a post from artdaily.org: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=39004

By Nicole Solis  October 20th, 2009 10:42 am  |  Comments (4)

Tuna roja, a recent fruit of the day on Ultra Fine Food.

These days, travel blogs seem almost as common as traveling. My favorite travel blogs are about big trips, in which someone challenges him- or herself with travel, and sometimes challenges the whole concept of travel.

Over the past few months, I’ve discovered quite a few big-trip blogs that provide some fun armchair (or desk chair, maybe) travel. Here are a few that seem particularly Afar-ish. What travel blogs do you like to read? Let us know in the comments.

• Ultra Fine Flair/Ultra Fine Food. After spending six months living in Buenos Aires, Gillian and her boyfriend are now traveling through Peru and chronicling their adventures on Ultra Fine Flair. Subscribe to the RSS feed of her her Ultra Fine Food to get the semi-regular Fruit of the Day posts, all about the wonderful produce she’s discovering in South America.
• Year of No Flying. Anirvan Chatterjee is embarking on a year-long climate change trip, avoiding air travel and talking to people all over the world about climate change and the environment. He just arrived in Japan by container ship (check out his post about the voyage and the surprisingly comfortable, though cramped, accommodations) and is now immersing himself in Japan’s farming crisis.
• Need2Walk. Two twenty-something Swedes, Rami and Alexandra, recently embarked on an ambitious six-year trek from Fuengirola, Spain, to the Cook Islands–on foot. Though they haven’t gotten terribly far on their trip (or on the blog), this could really be a great trip to watch.

Photo by kittylaroux.