Back in November 2009, the folks at Tripbase had a clever idea. They picked several of their favorite travel bloggers and challenged them to write about their three best travel secrets. Those initial bloggers each had to “tag” three more travel bloggers to do likewise, and so on.

Travel Tips eBook

What was originally intended as a fun way to share the knowledge, experience, and expertise of a group of savvy world travelers quickly became an avalanche of insider tips so valuable that the folks at Tripbase decided to publish the information in a series of seven eBooks that are now available for free download on their site.

They compiled the 500+ travel secrets into seven different books, spearheaded by “Tripbase Best Kept Travel Secrets; 88 Essential Travel Secrets from the Top Travel Bloggers on the Internet Today,” which features valuable tips from industry giants like Peter Greenberg, Johnny Jet, Rolf Potts, and me, of course. The remaining tips were broken into six other books dealing with specific topics: beaches, Italy, U.S., family travel, worldwide travel, and food. Not only are all seven Best Kept Travel Secrets eBooks now available for free download, to celebrate the launch of the series the folks at Tripbase have partnered with Charity: Water, committing to donate $1 per download up to $5,000, half a dollar to $10,000, and 25 cents to $15,000.

I've contributeddownloadsDownload Free eBooksled by TripbaseAccess to water is, in my opinion, the most pressing issue facing the world today. Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us. Charity: Water is one of the best non-profit organizations working to provide clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. They use 100% of public donations to directly fund sustainable water solutions in areas of greatest need. Just $20 can give one person clean water for 20 years, so each dollar donated for downloading these free eBooks is providing someone with clean water for an entire year.

I’ve already got my set, now it’s your turn to download all seven or any one of the Best Kept Travel Secrets eBooks, without charge or obligation of any kind.

Blissful, blissful sleep. At 9 p.m. last night I pulled the hand-loomed blanked up to my chin and sank into the two thin pillows doubled beneath my head. There was no television to distract me. My cell phone has no international service, so it wouldn’t be beeping every time I received an email. A few gringos conversed on the balcony outside of my hotel room door and street noises floated through the room’s only window, but I was so exhausted that I was asleep in moments and did not wake until morning. I have been existing on three or four hours of sleep per night for more than a month as I prepared for my four-month backpacking trip through Mexico, Central and South America and this 12 hours of uninterrupted unconsciousness was a balm to my sleep deprived condition.

Interior courtyard at Hotel Lerma, Mazatlan

Hotel Lerma is a typical family-owned Mexican hotel. The building is old and patched but charming, built in a rectangle around a large open-air courtyard. The entrance gate is locked at 10 p.m., providing additional safety for parked cars and guests, however since the owners live on site, there is always someone available to open the big wooden doors for guests who stay out late. My room is modest but clean, with terra cotta tile floors, heavy wooden furniture, and crazy colors – marine blue for the concrete walls and bright turquoise for the doors and windows. The bathroom is tiny but adequate: the toilet flushes, the sink has running water, and the shower, which sprays directly onto the floor in one corner of the room and drains through the tile floor, has hot water (although the water smells like a cross between shrimp and iron). Read the rest of this entry »

Ockham’s Razor is a scientific principle that is often paraphrased as “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” Today this principle is often taken as a rule of thumb that advises economy or simplicity, especially in scientific theories. This summer, masons and mechanics, farmers and welders, scientists and a pastor dedicated themselves to the theory of Ockham’s Razor as they brainstormed methods to create low-tech solutions to big problems that persist across the globe.

Converging at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the three-week long International Development Design Summit, these 61 inventors from 20 countries divided into ten teams that worked round-the-clock to develop and build prototypes of low-tech device designed to make life a little easier for the poor peoples of the world. Prototypes ranged from an inexpensive incubator for low-birth-weight babies to a rope system that could help craftswomen in the Himalayas get their products to market, but in my opinion, the two most interesting inventions to emerge from this year’s summit are a low-cost charcoal crusher and a scheme to produce electrical power with incidental effort as people go about their everyday tasks.

I was personally made aware of the need for a charcoal crusher when I visited Tanzania last year. My safari driver stopped one day to buy charcoal for his family’s cooking needs. The whole affair seemed cloaked in secrecy; the bags were nowhere to be seen upon arriving at the store and my diver disappeared into a back room to negotiate for the purchase. Finally, a tall young man emerged from around the rear of the store, toting an enormous sack, which was Read the rest of this entry »

When I moved to Florida a number of people warned me against drinking the tap water. Their mantra was, “Drink only bottled water!” One friend pointed out that because Florida is one of the country’s largest agricultural states, the aquifer was almost certainly contaminated with runoff pesticides.

I have mixed feelings about bottled water. First, I recoil at the idea of buying water that is bottled by Coca-Cola (Dasani) and Pepsi (Aquafina). I have a hard time believing the two companies that manufacture the majority of the world’s unhealthy, carbonated, sugar-and-sweetener laden soft drinks are providing bottled water because they are concerned about the quality of our tap water (or our health). An examination of Dasani’s label will reveal that Coke adds trace amounts of minerals, including magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt), potassium chloride, and common salt to their bottled water. Pepsi’s brand contains no additives, but the water used to produce Aquafina is drawn from municipal sources, despite the fact that the label on the bottle features a series of high mountain peaks that suggest crystal clear mountain streams as the source.

Indeed, 40 percent of bottled water begins life as regular tap water. Aquafina is produced from municipal water in Wichita, Kansas. Coke’s Dasani is taken from the taps of Queens, New York; Jacksonville, Florida; and elsewhere. Everest bottled water originates from Read the rest of this entry »