As many of you know, TheExpeditioner.com contributor Luke Armstrong lives and works in Guatemala, and many of the people his organization works with have been directly affected by the recent storm. In response, Luke forwarded the following call for help.

The eruption of Volcano Pacaya and the arrival of Tropical Storm Agatha struck a devastating blow in Guatemala. To date, 94 people are confirmed dead, more missing, 30,000 homeless and 111,000 affected.

The GOD’S CHILD Project, a widely-known international development organization, is on the front lines of rescue efforts in the most devastated areas of Guatemala. With over 100 volunteers and staff members, The GOD’S CHILD Project is providing medical care, food, clothing and shelter for those affected. The GOD’S CHILD Project is also mobilizing rescue efforts in areas cut off by landslides caused by Tropical Storm Agatha.

Destroyed bridges, washed out highways, collapsed buildings and the closing of the national airport has created a cocktail of disaster conditions and logistical difficulties in mobilizing much needed assistance. (more…)

Even though a walk around any of the famous sites in New York City show that tourist season is already in full swing, we’re offering up anyway some free ideas of things to do in a town where free is normally very hard to come by.

By Matt Stabile

1) Street Fairs

It’s guaranteed that whenever you’re in New York, there’s going to be a free street fair happening somewhere in one of the five boroughs, much to the consternation of the locals whose parking spots are taken over by vendors. There are neighborhood fairs, fairs for Bastille Day, Italian feast fairs — pretty much any excuse to get outside.

Time Out has this comprehensive list updated every week.

2) Live Music At South Street Seaport

New Yorkers avoid the outdoor mall/tourist trap that is South Street Seaport like the plague. But come summer, the pier hosts some of the best indie rock shows of the season, all for free. This year’s shows include performances from Bear in Heaven, Free Energy and YACHT, with others to be announced.

(Tip: Avoid the tourist-priced drinks at the show and buy a 32-ounce, portable Styrofoam cup from Jeremy’s Ale House nearby for a fraction of the price.)

The full list can be found at the River To River Festival’s page.

3) Shakespeare In The Park

Okay, this one’s not exactly a revelation. Shakespeare in the Park has been attracting crowds for over half a century, and a look at the number of people that line up every day is proof it’s as popular as ever. You could line up like everyone else at the theater in the morning, hoping to snag a couple of tickets as they’re given away at 1 p.m.

But, for those in the know, those days of line waiting are a distant memory. Now you can simply get in line virtually, signing up here on the day of the show. If you’re picked, you’ll get an e-mail telling you about your free pair of tickets. Not picked, just try again the next day. (more…)

I’ve come down with football fever and it might be from all the pre-World Cup coverage that is going on. Countries and companies across the world are promoting their teams everywhere from YouTube tonormal tube. There have been whole segments on the radio dedicated to soccer balls and fancy shoes.

An article in The Wall Street Journal predicts South Africa will host over 300,000 visitors for the games. My guess is things are going to get tight. Luckily, the article also points out spots to escape the frenzy, like the vineyards in Vergelegen.

Perhaps one would prefer to stay in Woodstock, Cape Town, one of the only communities in the city that avoided Apartheid, as recommended in an article in The New York Times.

Once an impoverished community — a “place you would come to get drugs” as a local Ms. Dudley explains — it is now thriving with art and delicacies. It boasts organic products at its Saturday Neighborhoods Market, and travelers can gander at the displays of prints at the South African Print Gallery.

Need some love? Ms. Dudley’s got a shop that slips a little Love Potion into the sandwiches (curiously a “garlicky dressing”.)

The World Cup. I couldn’t fathom the energy and excitement, nor the exhaustion that could ensue. Taking a break over a bottle of Syrah and a Love Sandwich might not be a bad idea.

It’s lunchtime, it’s Friday, and I know what you’re craving to eat: fish balls. Unfortunately, these tasty treats are a rare find stateside, but head to certain parts of Asia and you can find them everywhere.

Fish balls in the Philippines, for example, are usually made from cuttlefish or pollock, and are sold all over the country by street vendors who offer several varieties of sauce to dip your skewered snack in, as seen above.

1) Spicy (vinegar, water, diced onions, and garlic),

2) Sweet (corn starch, banana ketchup, sugar and salt), or

3) Sweet and Sour (sweet sauce with hot chilis added).

It was a friend’s birthday weekend. We booked time off work, postponed the completion of our papers, and road-tripped to Quebec’s biggest city, Montreal. Amazingly, I had never been.

By the end of the trip, all I wanted was to prolong our stay for just a few more days (perhaps years), but we had obligations to get back to.

So, when I read this article in The Toronto Star, I was curious: apparently, Montreal has a secret hidden behind its glass.

Being a city full of artists and a certain je ne sais pas, I was not shocked to read that glasswork is a big deal there. As the article points out, there are schools dedicated to the medium (Espace Verre). Right now glass appreciation year is happening, and the city is holding a celebration called “Montréal, Ville de Verre” — City of Glass — with over 100 events.

However, as Carol Perehudoff points out, glass as art is not the only window to Montreal’s soul. Apparently, in two different churches, stained-glass windows have been uncovered. The mystery is why they were covered up, or bricked over, in the first place? Sleuths, bust out the magnifying glasses.

Anyways, Ville de Verre has activities running all year long, and now that it’s summer it should be added to the itinerary. Winters are mighty cold.

Dear Matt,

It has come to my attention that you may have a bit of doubt regarding Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Upon my request, the Ministry of Magic believes, along with Hogwarts, that to mutually benefit one another, muggles and non-muggles should live together. It is with that in mind, on June 18th, the doors will open and for the first time ever, muggles will be allowed to mingle the streets of Hogsmeade and the corridors of Hogwarts. Prepare yourself to witness what you may think has never existed: an alternate reality, and the unbelievable. Our magical world may at first come as a shock to those unaware. However, I personally invite you to join me in the opening ceremonies. Together, we shall cast away the invisibility charm, and step foot into a world, our world, never before seen by muggle eyes at the grand opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.

If you would be so kind as to take a walk with me. We realize the inability of humans to teleport, so we have designed what you call an “entrance gate” near the exit platform of the Hogwart’s Express. The cobbled streets of Hogsmeade will open in front of your eyes. We shall pass the very same shops included in the Harry Potter series, Ollivander’s Wand Shop, Zonko’s novelties (which I feel you may enjoy the most), Derevish and Banges school supplies, and my favorite, Honeyduke’s Homemade Sweets.

Perhaps it is a more magical experience you require. Rather than inundating Hogwart’s admission department with muggle requests, we have created several experiences that put you right into the action, without ever enrolling in Defense Against the Dark Arts. At Flight of the Hippogriff, you will go on a training run through the pumpkin patch and past Hagrid’s hut. Please excuse me, as I am still not used to addressing muggles quite yet. A Hippogriff is an animal of our world that has the head of an eagle and body of a horse. We will instruct you on the proper way to approach the Hippogriff for your safety. (more…)

I have always been hyper-organized, borderline dogmatic, and would get frustrated anytime things did not go according to plan. Even growing up, some people were proud to say they make full, three-second stops at stop signs. Actually, just today I was hollered at by a lady across the street as I glided through a four-way stop on my bicycle. I guess my standards of structure have changed.

It wasn’t until I was 22, stepping off the plane in Taiwan’s International Airport, that I began to realize how “structured” a life I had been living. Sitting in the cab on the way to Hsin Chu — an hour west of Taipei — zooming in between and around vans, cars, motorcycles and scooters was a heart-stopping, yet mind-blowing moment: chaos can work.

This was the realization highlighted in David Armstrong’s article in the San Francisco Chronicle. He ventured to Mumbai and caught a glimpse of the beauty in, what he refers to as, “orchestrated chaos”. (more…)

I’d like to announce some exciting news here at TheExpeditioner.com. After some serious head scratching, doomed Skype conferences, and intoxicated e-mails, we here at TheExpeditioner.com have decided to do what any good online publication does: revert to print (sort-of). Coming this fall we will be publishing our very own book. This book will be full of pages, and these pages will be full of travel writing, and we are looking for great travel writers like yourself to contribute.

Our goal is simple and purposely broad: to produce a creative, off-beat, edgy group of travel stories that stands out from the run-of-the-mill travel anthology (no offense to run-of-the-mill travel anthology publishers). We are welcoming submissions in all formats (long articles, short articles, poems, haikus), and we will accept pieces that have been published elsewhere (as long as you retain the rights).

Deadline for submissions will be June 15, 2010, and can be e-mailed in Word or Google Docs format to: Matt.Stabile [a] TheExpeditioner.com.

Also, feel free to re-tweet, facebook share, telegraph your neighbors, shout from your window, or plain ‘ol tell your friends about this.

This week the NYT headed off-the-beaten-path in Vietnam in search of a little respite from the hustle and bustle that is the rest of the country, and where they found it may be a little surprising: Con Dao — the infamous island chain known more for their prisons than for their visitors.

Until recently, the isolated 16-island archipelago of Con Dao (its largest island, Con Son, is commonly called Con Dao Island), 110 miles off the mainland’s southeastern coast, was a place most Vietnamese wanted to forget. For 113 years, this island was home to one of the country’s harshest prison systems, established by French colonists in 1862 and later ruled by South Vietnamese and American forces until Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975, at which point the prisons were closed.

Not surprisingly, with this history, few visitors visit the islands to this day. In fact, only about 20,000 visitors stopped by last year, and of those only 2,600 were foreigners. (They compare that number to the millions that head to the popular beach destinations Nha Trang and Danang every year.)

And what should you expect to find? Try some of Vietnam’s best coral reefs, empty beaches, varied wildlife, and a huge expanse of protected land (83% to be exact, including the country’s only marine reserve). In short, go to escape, go to avoid tourist, and just go.

In some very sad news this morning, Budget Travel is reporting that Matt Gross of The New York Times is leaving his post as the Frugal Travel, one of the, if not the most, popular — and frequently most e-mailed — recurring articles in the paper.

No word yet if Matt’s going to be filing dispatches as a freelancer for the paper, but he is moving forward with a new project: a new travel show. According to his Kickstarter page (where you can donate to get the project off the ground), the show will be named Strangers in Strange Lands. Matt’s in the process of raising money to shoot a “sizzle reel,” with hopes to land a full-time gig on a cable outlet. The premise, you ask?

Each episode of Strangers in Strange Lands will introduce us to two people who are living vastly different but equally extraordinary lives in one locale — like the Orthodox rabbi ministering to Jews in Cancun and, in nearby Mérida, the famous novelist’s granddaughter luxuriating in a palace . . . Beyond the exotic locales, it’s the interaction between host and subject that makes Strangers in Strange Lands unique. As each episode progresses, we will see the bonds of friendship take shape, a process that leads us deeper and deeper into these strange lands.

As mentioned, if interested in helping to get the project off the ground, head over to Kickstarter to make a donation and help make sure Matt gets the $825 (at the time of publication) left to meet the goal of $2,500. Sad to see you go. Potential Frugal Travelers, break out the resumes!

What do you call a person who is obsessed with Spain? A Spainophile? A Spainaholic? A Spainophyte? (A google search of spainophyte resulted in a result that asked whether I meant “sporophyte,” “The spore-producing phase in the life cycle of a plant that exhibits alternation of generations.”)

Either way, for those who love Spain and are thinking of going again, check out Budget Travel’s
“Readers’ best Spain photos,” a slideshow of the best user-submitted shots of Spain. Above is titled, “Gaudí’s Casa Batlló, in Barcelona, at night,” a sumptuous shot of the city’s best-known structure.

If you’ve visited BootsnAll during the last week or so, you’ve probably noticed their site went through a pretty dramatic re-design. Why, I wonder? Recent break-up, perhaps, with GoNomad? The web-equivalent of getting a new haircut and going out and buying a new wardrobe? Maybe it was just time for a 2.0 update, with larger graphics, more social networking, and an emphasis on stories. All good changes.

The most notable change is that it looks like they went ahead and got a new logo, ditching the somewhat wordy, brown-and-black old logo for a snappier, more colorful design.

The old.

And the new.

Something about the new logo makes me think: Sporting Goods Store, for some reason, but I think it looks great and is a huge improvement. What about the “Est. 1998,” does this make anyone else feel a little old? Normally “Est.” dates are some far-back, unimaginably old date, not a year that I could both drive and legally serve in the Army. (more…)

A trip through the shadows of the City of Light

By Anthony Cuthbertson

The surface of Paris resembles that of an iceberg peaking its tip above the surface of the water. Beneath, there lies one of the most extensive and complex underground networks in the world. Alongside almost 300 metro stations and their interlinking tunnels weave a web of sewers, abandoned quarries, catacombs, canals and utility lines. The denser the population has become above ground, the deeper they have burrowed to sustain it. Without this vast infrastructure the city would cease to function, utterly paralyzed.

Since moving to Paris I had come close to exhausting every tourist trail and “gem” that the guidebooks had to offer. So one weekend I decided to heed the advice of some locals that I had met, who suggested that I took a look at the other side of Paris. They advised that I take a “troglodyte tour” of their city, to explore the often overlooked underbelly of Paris.

But where to start? Almost 150 miles of underground train track knit between at least 185 miles of catacomb tunnels and over 1300 miles of sewers, all right under the center of the city. That infernal underground maze, as Gaston Leroux calls it in Phantom of the Opera, stretches down as deep as 112 feet in places, ten stories below the surface. It is the result of 800 years of digging. The buildings, bridges and monuments that now sit on the surface are built from the limestone and gypsum that was excavated from the quarries and tunnels below. (more…)