We’re very excited to announce a new feature that allows you to sign in to TravelPod using your Facebook account.

The biggest benefit for you, is that you no longer need to remember a separate username and password for TravelPod. Simply “connect” your TravelPod account to your Facebook account and from then on when you’re logged into Facebook, you’ll be able to access your TravelPod blog as well.

To get started, just click “Connect with Facebook” link in the header.

This is only the first step in an ongoing effort to make it easier for you to share your travel experiences with your friends and family.

Look for more great Facebook features on TravelPod in 2010!

Since we first launched the new Timeline feature then we’ve been looking for subtle ways to improve its usability while still maintaining its minimal style and cool interaction with the map.

With today’s changes, when you hover over the green dots we now emphasize the relevant city and we added a country flag that will help you scan through a trip.

You’ll also notice that the map automatically centers itself as you hover over each pin. Clicking on the pin in the Timeline now takes you directly to that entry.

These are small changes that we think improve the Timeline tremendously.

We hope you like the changes as well. Let us know in the comments.

Australia’s version of Lifehacker.com has featured TravelPod in their travel section.

Lifehacker shows users how to simplify their lives using TravelPod

Just another reason to blog with us. TravelPod organizes your travel memories into one convenient package, making it an appropriate “life hack” for anybody doing a trip, no matter what size.

Thanks to Lifehacker and Gail on Tech for showcasing our site!

Ever since I invited Will to become TravelPod’s Local Expert for Tasmania, he’s jumped right into the discussions in the TravelPod forums participating not only in his own forum, the Tasmania forum, but he’s also been helping people out with general travel advice and various tips from all points all over the globe. Let’s find out what makes this guy tick, shall we?

Will is one of TravelPod's most recent addition to the Local Expert team

Why did you become a Local Expert?

I first started a blog with Travelpod back in December 2004, and since then have blogged trips through Central America, South East Asia and Europe. The site gave me everything I needed to keep a record of my travels, and once I found myself with a little extra time on my hands, I decided to give something back. And if there’s one place I know better than any other, it’s Tasmania. I was born there, spent my first 19 years there and have been living there on and off for the last 10 years. A lot of travelers to Australia leave the island off their itineraries, so I thought I’d promote it a little and try and encourage a few more people to think about visiting.

What are the best and worst things about living in Tasmania?

The best thing about living in Tasmania, or ‘Tassie’ as we call it, is without a doubt being surrounded by such amazing and pristine wilderness. Not only that, but my home city, Hobart, is one of the most picturesque cities in the world, with beaches and a mountain all within a short drive. Within two hours you can find yourself on top of a peak, in virgin rainforest, or on a secluded beach, far from anyone. There’s no better place to clear the mind. However, if there is something that’s not good about Tasmania, it’s the thing that made me get on a plane in the first place. The lack of opportunity. Furthermore, people are very set in their ways, and if you’re not settling down, raising a family, paying off a mortgage and supporting a local football or cricket team, you can feel a little alienated. Being separated from the mainland has left Tasmania with a strong ‘island culture’.

What are the top five things for travelers to do in Tasmania from your personal experiences?
Travelers could spend a month in Tasmania and still not see and do everything. So when I give a recommendation, I try to encompass all aspects of the state. For culture, a few days in the capital, Hobart, is essential. Salamanca market is Australia’s largest outdoor market and sells everything from fruit and veg through to arts and crafts and other assorted oddities. A trip up Mt Wellington is another must do for a great birds eye view of the city. For history, I recommend Port Arthur, the penal settlement ruins which serve as a harsh reminder of the dark days of Tasmania’s past. For virgin rainforest, I recommend a trip to Mt Field national park to see the largest trees in the southern hemisphere, some beautiful waterfalls and plenty of wildlife. For mountains, it’s hard to go past the world renowned Cradle Mountain, in the central highlands. And for beaches, you can’t beat Wineglass Bay in the stunning Freycinet National Park, or Lonely Planet’s top travel destination of 2008, The Bay of Fires, which is a little further to the north.

What are some of your best and worst travel experiences?
I’ve travelled to 37 countries, and the best experiences I had were spending a year in Cambodia, where I first taught English and gained a love of ancient civilisations by frequenting the amazing Angkor Wat. Other countries and regions which I have fond memories of are Cuba, Burma, and the Balkans. They all opened my eyes up to cultures and ways of life which I could never have experienced from books or TV.

Without a doubt, the worst travel experience is getting sick. I’ve had plenty of bugs, but getting typhoid in India in 2006 and being forced to cut short my trip and return home to recover was something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

What is your proudest accomplishment?
This is a tough one. Probably, I’d say having the guts to give up the day job I hated, which involved spending 8 hours a day at a desk, to change career and embark on a new journey. I’ve met a lot of people who are unhappy with what they do, and I never wanted to be that person.

What do you do with most of your time?
I moved to Suwon in South Korea in late August, so most of my time is spent either teaching English to adults at a private language school, reading up about Korea or getting out and visiting the country. Unfortunately, I do feel I spend a little too much time on the internet, but I justify it given I am always reading about something new or hatching some new travel plans. Whether I’m working, relaxing and reading or travelling, I’m not wasting time.

What’s a typical day like for you?
Whilst I do have a Monday to Friday job, my working hours are from 2pm until 9pm, which leaves me with my mornings free. So, there’s breakfast, followed by a short run and some exercises before a couple of hours spent on my notebook catching up on the latest news, updating my blog, or preparing lessons for my classes. Teaching English is a great job, as you spent the majority of your working hours meeting interesting people and doing very little except encouraging them to speak. Here in Korea students have studied grammar to death, so as a native speaker it’s my job simply to encourage conversation to improve vocab and fluency. Although I’ve had a six month break, I’ll be continuing my Master of Applied Linguistics in 2010, which will ensure my days remain chocka block full.

What’s your favourite part of the TravelPod forum?
Probably the general dicussion, travelpod community and Travelpod support forums. It’s a great place to throw ideas for improvement around, and unlike Facebook, these ideas are heard and very often implemented, meaning the site is continuously improving. The country specific sites are also a great place to get a little extra information from people who may have done the same thing before you.

Ask Will anything in the TravelPod forums

One of TravelPod’s frequent bloggers on TravelPod.com. He’s ready to start blogging on his own, out there in the big giant sea of the internet.

He’s told me in the past that eventually, he wants to be “the most knowledgeable travel agent in the world”. But he’s still working on his chemical engineering degree in the meantime…

Jeremy Jones looking Indiana-esque in Egypt

“Living the Dream follows my dream of traveling around the world for over one year while blogging about the process for those wanting to do the same,” Jeremy says.

“I will be traveling around 25-35 countries in Asia, South America, and Central America I’ve been planning the trip and writing in the blog since September 2008 and am in the final stages of preparations to leave in August 2010 for 14 months (hopefully) on the road.”

Jeremy’s also a fantastic photographer. A bunch of his photographs have been blown up and now hang on the TravelPod.com office walls.

“I will be using my Travelpod blog as a daily travelogue and my photography blog to also chronicle the journey. I’m also going to use other social networking sites like twitter and facebook to complete the project.”

We’re always on the lookout for spammers creating fake blogs, comments and forum posts.

There are plenty of evil-doers posing as bloggers and putting up fake content and pasting their advertisements on our site.

We’ve just launched a new system that will allow us to target individual spammers, and block them from posting anything on our site.

Once a spammer has violated our terms of service, they are easily pinpointed and blacklisted, never to be seen again.

It’s just another way we are keeping this site as informative and helpful as possible for you and the rest of the community.

We catch most spam, but we can’t catch it all on our own.

Help us make TravelPod a friendly place to blog.

Let us know if you see any spam on your blog, or anywhere else on the site.

We’ve heard you loud and clear.

Just writing a comment on your friend’s blog doesn’t mean that you’re a blogger.

You shouldn’t have to sign up for a blog account to do keep in touch with your friends on the road.

From now on, it won’t be mandatory to sign up for a new TravelPod account to comment on a blog.

Any reader can click “Add Comment” at the bottom of any blog entry and write back to the author, even if they don’t have a blog on TravelPod.

They simply enter their name, comment and decide whether they want updates.

It’s as simple as that.

We’ve gotten a lot of suggestions on this feature in the past, and we’re happy to change this to accommodate everyone.

We really love getting your feedback on TravelPod features, so please keep them coming.

Let us know what you think

Travel blogs, in general, can sometimes be hard to navigate.

We’ve always tried to think up new ways to make it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for when browsing  blogs on TravelPod. For example, we’ve created interactive maps with pins and tried different “table of contents” layouts ( just to name a few features ).

Still, there was room for improvement and with our recent redesign we took the opportunity to try something new: The Travel Blog Timeline.

TravelPod's new Trip Timeline tool

Each blog entry on TravelPod now has a timeline built-in that your guests can use to read all of your entries.

Each green dot symbolizes an entry in a travel blog and when clicked, let’s you scan each blog entry in conjunction with the map.

The pins are arranged along the timeline by date and sliding your mouse across the length of the timeline makes it easy for visitors to choose a specific entry. A brief summary of each entry hovers over your mouse as the pointer slides across the screen.

** Power tip: If you mouse over the “Trip Start” or “Trip End” labels, a button is revealed that lets you quickly jump to the next or previous entries.

New trip timeline shown on an entry page

Timeline navigation is something new that we think is pretty innovative and are currently in the process of applying for a patent on the idea. We know it’s not perfect yet and we’ll be tweaking and adjusting it to make it as useful as possible based on your feedback.

Good or bad, we want to hear what you think… please try to be as specific with your feedback as possible so that we can make tweaks to  perfect this new feature.

Thanks!

Let us know by leaving a comment below, or speaking up in the TravelPod forums.

The folks at LonelyPlanet.com have just released a new feature that will get your blog onto their guide pages.

You can submit your blogs to their “Blog Sherpa” program and once someone has reviewed and categorized it, your blog will be seen by people planning a trip to someplace you’ve already been.

Here’s how:

1. Login to your LonelyPlanet.com account here. You can even use your Facebook account if you don’t already have a Lonely Planet account.

2. Click on your profile photo to go to your Lonely Planet profile.

3. Click “My travel blog” on the left hand side

4. Click “New travel blog” and fill in the boxes.

5. Make sure you check the box beside Blog Sherpa that says, “Yes, please consider my blog for “Blogs We Like”"

Once someone has approved your blog, it will be displayed on one of Lonely Planet’s main pages.

Good luck, and let me know via the comments below, if your blog was chosen to be part of the program.

A nifty new feature in your Dashboard automatically adds up the distance you’ve traveled in between all of your map pins.

Your TravelPod odometer measures how far you've traveled

Click the stats link on the right hand side of your Dashboard and you’ll see it in the top right hand corner.

How many kilometers have you traveled?

In case you haven’t noticed yet, there are new buttons on all the photo and video pages.

Use the StumbleUpon and Facebook buttons to share photos and videos

We’re trying something out for a bit. If you click those buttons you can review the photo/video for StumbleUpon or post it to your Facebook wall.

Let us know how you like it

It’s a long awaited development, but we’ve finally released a detailed statistics page.

By clicking on the “stats” link on the right hand side of your Dashboard, you’ll find something that looks like this:

From here, there are 8 new ways of finding out how popular your blog is:

1. Total visits this month

Pretty self-explanatory, it’s the total number of people who have read your blog this month

2. Total visits, all time

Again, easy enough to understand. The total number of people who have read your blog since you began blogging

3. Weekly visitor trend

This graph tracks how many people have visited your blog and plots them on a graph through time. Usually you get lots of visitors when you’re actively blogging and traveling

4. Your visitors are from

This world map shows you the proportion of people that visit your blog and which country they are from. The darker the colour, the more visitors come from that country

5. Top Travel Blog Entries this week

It’s easy to tell which of your blog entries is the most popular for the latest week

6. Top Travel Blog Photos & Videos this week

Your most popular photos and videos are shown here every week, with the most popular at the top of the list

7. Top Travel Blog Entries this year

Again, the most popular blog entries from the past year can be found here

8. Top Travel Blog Photos & Videos this year

The most played videos and most clicked photos of the year are shown here, updated every week

View your own stats now

TravelPod's new look will be revealed in stages

After sifting through feedback from hundreds of TravelPod bloggers, we made TP travel blogs more attractive and easier to navigate, while still keeping with time-honoured TravelPod blogging traditions.

We think you’ll like it.

We’ve worked very hard to maintain all the existing features on TravelPod that you love. We’re sure that you will feel right at home with the new look of your travel blog.

Look for these changes towards the middle of October, 2009.

The main differences between the old and the new look:

(To get this out as soon as possible and start collecting your opinions, we’ll be introducing the new design in phases. Some of these features might not be available on the first day)

• A cleaner, professionally designed look for your blogs
• Improved navigation for your visitors
• An additional world map clearly displaying your trip in the right-hand sidebar
• An interactive timeline at the top of the screen, making it easier to navigate between entries
• A larger and more attractive travel map, with bigger map pins and speedy navigation inside the map
• Blog comments can be left by non-members, and they will have the option to receive email updates of further blog comments
• A simple “thumbs up” voting system
• “Embedability” of your interactive travel map. You’ll be able to post your map on other websites like Facebook and Myspace
• Easier access to the “Support My Travels” option. You’ll collect more donations from visitors

In order to change the site to suit your needs, the TravelPod team has also been ultra-busy behind the scenes updating our website technology. This will allow us to easily change the site, adapting to your demands faster than ever before.

We’re constantly looking for ways to help you blog better and as always, your feedback shapes TravelPod.

Let us know what you think about the new design in the comment section below

TravelPod’s intrepid travelers have almost literally been everywhere on the planet, sharing their experiences with millions of people around the world.

Here’s what a year of blogging looks like:

(Each flag represents a city our members have written from)

Our friends at Travelpod (an Expedia company) needed some unique canvas photo art for their offices- so they came to CanvasPop for the solution.

TravelPod was the first site to enable its members to create online travel blogs which revolutionized the way people travel and share their adventures with the world. TravelPod.com remains, as always, a “for the travel community” service. Naturally they wanted to create some art that reflected what they are all about. TravelPod hosts thousands of pictures submitted by their community of bloggers. They took a random sampling of over 3000 images from their library and created a cool logo on canvas from them made up entirely from a mosaic of these images. From a distance it hard to tell that the “logo” is made up of nearly 3000 unique photos that act like pixels. They proudly display their logo mosaic in their lobby. Talk about a conversation piece!

Next, they hand selected some original and beautiful vacation shots that look like they belong in National Geographic and we blew them up to 36″ x 54″ for their walls. Not only do the images tell a great story, they also reflect the TravelPod brand beautifully. As an added benefit these canvas prints actually help to reduce (even eliminate) echoes in their new open concept office digs.

What do your office walls say? Do you have a unique art concept you would like to put up in your office? Here’s an idea: collect pictures from your employees or fellow workers, create a cool logo on canvas, take pictures of your products- and turn them into art! Have fun with your company’s visual brand. Art makes any office space “more fun” at a relatively low cost.

We’ve all been in that situation before. You’re sitting at a substandard internet cafe waiting for your favourite website to load (TravelPod, of course). The computer looks like it came from 1982 and you’re using some kind of sketchy dial-up connection.

There’s no way you’ll be able to upload photos, but you just want to input a brief text update to let your friends know where you’re at.

Update Express to the rescue!

By going to www.travelpod.com/update you can bypass all the fancy stuff that makes TravelPod so cool on faster computers.

You can cut right to the chase and blog away in a stripped down version of the site.

Since we redesigned the dashboard section of the site, we redesigned Update Express while we were at it. We hope you like it.

Check it out

As many of you already know, TravelPod is undergoing an intense redesign at the moment.

Phase 1 of the plan is already complete. The new design of the “dashboard” system will be in use on Monday, June 1.

All of our dedicated beta testers have given us incredible amounts of feedback, and we thank them for it for the rest of our days.

In case you can’t wait for Monday, there is a way to try out the new system right now.

1. Login to TravelPod as normal.

2. Click “Try it out right now” in the the bright green banner that looks like this:

I think you’ll find the new system has faster photo and video upload times, requires less tedious clicking and is easier to navigate in general.

Not only am I the Community Manager, but I’m also a satisfied blogger. I used it on my great US roadtrip in May, and I loved it.

Jump onboard, everyone else is enjoying the slick new layout, so should you!

As always, if there are any questions about anything at all, feel free to contact me at any time.

Playa del Carmen, Mexico – Much of the coastal Yucatan today, the area commonly referred to in promotional brochures as La Riviera Maya, is a tourist’s dream come true as much as it is a budget traveler’s worst nightmare. Glossy resorts that cater to the least adventurous of vacationer have taken over the majority of the coastline. But upon closer inspection, one notices other developments which are much more disheartening than packs of gringos lazing inside protected resort compounds by their pools. Most of the formerly stunning beaches are damaged and unattractive due to the work of overzealous and uncaring developers. Palm trees which once waved their fronds along desolate stretches of coastline have become obese, finger-pointing American vacationers, who come on daytrips via cruise ships to waddle down tourist-trap-lined walkways. High rise hotels and western-style clubs have replaced traditional bungalows and taco stands. The progress was inevitable; this is the most stunning and accessible coastline in Mexico.

beach

Things were also a bit different before last season’s Hurricanes Emily and Wilma, which essentially wiped Cancun off the map. These two harmless sounding females did billions of dollars in damage to the Riviera Maya and damaged or completely destroyed almost every structure. Before Emily and Wilma, the most obnoxious manifestations of tourism in the Yucatan were mostly confined to the debaucherous, coastal high-rise strip of Cancun. The rest of the coast had been spared the worst of tourism’s exploitation. Although debatably over-touristed themselves, the smaller beach towns to the south were a refuge from the big city atmosphere of marguerita-downing jet-setters and raging spring-breakers. But in the wake of the hurricanes’ destruction all that has changed. The formerly Cancun-bound crowd has discovered the previously moderately hidden gems of Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos and Tulum, all within an hour’s drive south of Cancun. Once limited to straw bungalows, Tulum now boasts newly built private resorts up and down its 10 kilometers of coast, as budget options are rapidly squeezed out. Playa del Carmen, once a haven for hammocking backpackers, is the new Cancun, with all the downfalls that come with it. And worse yet, Playa is the new drop-off spot for cruise ship tourism from the luxury liners of the Caribbean which call at Cozumel.

chichen itza

It only takes a short walk down Avenida 5, the several mile long pedestrian walkway which parallels Playa del Carmen’s fabulous but crowded strip of sugar white beach, to see that the Riviera Maya is about as far away as one can get from Mexico while still being there. The street is lined with a repeated abundance of the following: overpriced bars which are usually full of drunk, middle-aged gringos in their newly purchased white t-shirts with x-rated slogans about drinking tequila in Mexico, unoriginal and uneconomical restaurants featuring faux fare from around the globe, and cheesy tourist shops selling anything from oversized mariachi hats to cheap, generic pain killers and antibiotics to tasteless touristy trinkets. When Avenida is at its ‘best’ it is nearly impossible to hear any language but slurred English coming from the mouths of the hordes of overindulgent Americans streaming down the dubious chic walkway. Business along the stretch booms during happy hour, on a cloudy day, or whenever one of the gigantic American cruise ships landing at Cozumel dumps its passengers onto the mainland for a day excursion.

tulum

Despite the seeming complete lack of Mexican culture and the whitewash of tourism in the beach towns along the Riviera Maya, it is possible to find a few hidden spots if one cares to step away from well-worn routes such as Avenida 5. Just a mere two or three blocks back from the waterfront, but well hidden to the common or unadventurous tourist, lie all the local hotspots and taquerias, which are constantly full of locals scarfing down thirty cent tacos al pastor, day and night. Curiously named Taqueria Billy The Kid is the cream of the crop, dishing up three-peso tacos full of grilled greasy bistek, freshly diced grilled onions and shredded cabbage – and then double wrapped in two warm corn tacos produced in the nearby factory. No taco is complete without a liberal dousing of squeezed lime juice which arrives abundantly and non-stop in wedge-form. And finally, two homemade salsas – one mild red made from chipotle, the other green with an avocado base and jalapeño – always bring tears to my eyes for more reasons than one.

As far as self-catering goes, one must be vigilant if they are interested in saving a buck on provisions in this Mecca of overpricing. If they exist at all, finding a produce market in Playa del Carmen requires more effort than I was willing to put forth. This is in stark contrast to almost all other Mexican cities, towns and villages, where nearly every one has a centrally located mercado specializing in fresh fruits, local vegetables, seasonal flowers, and anything else that can be grown in the campo and sold. With tourism the only industry in Playa del Carmen there is much less local demand for Mexico’s famous avocados and juicy mangos. Because of this I had been told that for fresh produce along the Riviera Maya, the newly built Super Wal-Mart is the first and last stop. After days of scouring the city trying to refute this rumor I couldn’t hold out any longer for some sweet, luscious papaya. So, leaving my morals and opinions at the coat check, I begrudgingly sold my soul to the devil and entered the icy, air-conditioned Wal-Mart, doing my part to help ensure there would never be a local produce dealer in this resort town. I was shocked upon looking around to find that there was one major difference between this Super Wal-Mart and those I have visited in the United States: this outlet had substantially fewer Latino patrons than its American counterparts! The irony sizzled like a Sam’s Choice Steak. Most of the customers were gringo expats who were there to stock up on massive amounts of Corona or marguerita mix, party snacks, or whatever their rented cabana on the beach was short on. For all its evils, however, the Wal-Mart’s homemade mole did look fresh and came in at least nine varieties – far more than I had seen anywhere else in the country.

Machismo Supreme

I had been warned of most of the preceding tourist downfalls before my visit to the Riviera Maya of Mexico. My goal was to encounter and extract ‘the real Mexico’ from the gleaming tourist facade which had become characterized by resort-lined coasts and loss of culture, especially the indigenous Mayan culture. In my quest to discover the remnants of Mexican tradition on the Riviera Maya I failed to realize that I might completely surprised with what I find – in this case a Mexican machismo platter piled high with Maya pride and Maya defeat. Fortunately, my girlfriend and traveler extraordinaire Tara was aiding and guiding me during my travel in the Yucatan.

After asking a few workers and bartenders around town where a good locals-only joint could be found – a place where the beer was not subject to gringo prices – we were directed to a small, hole in the wall located several blocks off the main drag. As is almost always true in touristy towns, the farther one ventures in any direction away from the ritzy coastline or the revamped center of town, the more authentic the population and cheaper the goods and services become. This bar was a hidden treasure – seemingly miles from the loud, drunken squawks of the Gringus americanus. But noisy just the same. In fact, it was a place for the locals to vent, most of who worked in the city’s only trade – tourism. Proceeding up the stairs to the second floor balcony with Tara, who was kind and bold enough to accompany me into any precarious situation I was bent on getting us into during our ten days in the Yucatan, we shuffled past a few patrons on the staircase. They shot us looks of dazed interest. Upon reaching the top of the stairs I was sure we had made a mistake. About fifty completely packed tables spread across the floor space of the bar. Every table was filled with beer-guzzling local men, all of who were dressed in black pants and a button-up white shirt – the signature of an employee in the local service industry. Of the couple hundred patrons in the place there may have been three women total, including Tara. The ambiance was similar to a giant party of noisy, drunken groomsmen after a wedding. And everyone in the entire establishment seemed to be looking right at us.

The only thing I know how to do in this kind of situation is to act like I know what I am doing, which I almost never do. Spotting the bar in the far corner of the place I led us toward it, zigzagging between tables crowded with men who flatly bellowed “Guero!” (blondie) at me but were much more interested in Tara – despite the fact that that she was obviously with me, they all chimed together in an overwhelming tornado of macho catcalls and whistles. This behavior can be interpreted as bluntly rude or flattering, depending on the ear and mood of the beholder. The bartender, either aware of my anxiousness or my light skin tone, attended to us immediately and told us what we had wanted to hear all night – that yes, beers were only a dollar. We had finally found a locals’ spot! Making our way over to the only available table, we wound through a sea of small-stature Mexican men; each and every one blowing kisses at Tara, who followed close behind me in bewilderment. Eventually, the excitement of our arrival wore off and the catcalls died down enough for me and Tara to have an uninterrupted conversation – at least for a few moments. Well into our first beer, we pondered machismo in the Mexican culture and why these middle class locals wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to whistle and ogle over any female who walked into the place. Before we could come to any consensus, the overflow of neighboring curiosity reached our table. An extremely intoxicated local of about fifty reached across from the next cramped table over and laid a heavy hand on Tara’s shoulder, slurring, “Where you from?” in broken English (“Way you fro?”). And that was the start of a very tedious conversation. As I mostly listened in on the drunken babble of the first indigenous Mayan we would run across that night, it dawned on me that, like many conquered cultures, there are two widely contrasting directions the psyche of the offspring of these civilizations can take: defeatism or pride. This night we met two Maya descendents – each one representing one side of the spectrum.

Side Note:

The history of the Maya is characterized by early, great triumphs in culture, science, architecture and astronomy, followed by prophetical apocalyptic abandonment, internal and external power struggles, war amongst neighboring indigenous civilizations, and then catastrophic decline due to the limited resources of the unproductive and unforgiving geography of the Yucatan. Eventually the Maya were dealt a final blow by the arrival of the Spanish by way of the Europeans’ guns, germs and stealing. The contemporary Maya haven’t fared much better. The full-blooded indigenous cultures of Mexico have been treated as third-tiered groups in society – after the full-blooded Spanish who have been the most favored historically, and the mestizos, or mixed ethnicities, who make up the majority of the Mexican populous. Mexico’s indigenous population today might be described as living in a parallel universe to other North American indigenous groups, such as the American Indians in the US, who were forcefully confined to reservations for centuries. This outcome has spurred two psychosocial reactions of almost equal and opposite force in the population. There are those who remain proud of their heritage and are willing to fight to keep their culture alive and recognized. Then there are the polar opposites – the representatives of the group which has accepted defeat and wallows in self-pity while yearning for a better existence. The ‘defeated’ group can hardly be blamed for their apathy and self-loathing. They have never received fair or equal treatment in society. After centuries of such treatment it must be extremely difficult to remain optimistic. The group of ‘proud,’ however, deserve admiration for continually fighting the uphill battle.

Mayan meeting number one: The Proud

The man who had begun the conversation with us was completely plastered but ultimately happy. He seemed to genuinely enjoy his existence and was very curious about ours. His demeanor articulated that he appreciated and acknowledged our culture. He treated us as equal to him but made it clear that he believed his Mayan heritage was of equal importance to ours. As intoxicated as anyone and everyone else in the place, the man held nothing back. He sat at the table next to us with his drinking buddies but might as well have been at ours, leaning over so far in his chair toward our table that he had to rest his elbows (and soon possibly his head) on ours. Our new and proud friend soon bothered to bring up the news to us that Mel Gibson was filming a movie in a close by location. It took a couple of tries before we could understand what he was trying to say. “Maiy Gheebso! Maiy Gheebso!!” he shouted until we understood. After explaining the plot of the movie in production, called Apocalypto, to us, he proudly and forcefully patted his chest. “YO SOY MAYA!” he announced and repeated several times. Nothing gave him more satisfaction and self-worth at that moment than to explain his proud heritage. Good for him. Had he not been a case into the drinking I am sure that his antics and lack of humility would have been toned down. But his pride as an indigenous Mayan would never be deflated.

Mayan meeting number 2: The Defeated

Later, during a run up to the bar for another round of ice-cold, dollar Pacificos garnished with lime wedges, Tara and I met another gentleman – this one was a few years younger than me. He made space for us at the bar by actually vacating his chair in order to persuade us to stay for a little Spanglish conversation. These interactions always begin the same: “Way you fro?” (Where are you from?). Our new friend, Arif, actually spoke a few words of English because he worked at one of the tourist shops on Avenida 5. So Tara and I spoke shattered Spanish and he answered in broken English. It wasn’t long before Arif waxed frank with us about his feelings – and we were shocked.

“I am ugly and you are beautiful,” he murmured from left field, pointing at me.

“What?” I protested, mostly out of surprise but partly out of convention. Perhaps he was merely trying to complement me and not put himself down. But he continued.

“You have nice, light skin. Mine is dark and ugly. You have blue eyes. Mine are brown….”

“Hold on!” I tried to intervene in the self-deprecation. “I think dark skin is beautiful.”

But he shook his head and persisted.

“You have blonde hair. Mine is black. You have a small nose and I have a big, wide face. You are tall. I am short. I am ugly” And the last line he spoke nearly killed me. “I am Maya.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Just a few minutes ago another Mayan man spoke precisely the same words, but he had used them in shameless self-promotion rather than disheartening self-defamation. This was a man with a torn ego and the explanation he gave for his low self-esteem was his skin color, his race and his culture – the same reasons our other Mayan friend felt a sense of pride. Tara and I attempted to boost his deflated spirit with some kind words and a few more Pacificos but he refused to be resurrected from self-image purgatory. The extra rounds of cerveza made him even more forceful with his derogatory comments toward himself. Worse yet, he was alternating touching my arms and lightly stroking my legs as he complimented my non-Mayan features. This inebriated tactic only proved to make me feel less comfortable, Tara a bit hysterical, if jealous, and both of us ready to leave the bar. “I wish I was you guys.” He kept saying. The blatant difference in these two men’s self-perceptions had me baffled beyond the dizzying factor produced by a few too many icy beers. But I resolved to sit and sip rather than ponder the anomaly.

What I craved more than anything in the overly-touristed Yucatan was a touch of local color – an experience different than the majority of other visitors would have. A brush with the locals. And some quality tacos al pastor. The psychosocial issues that manifested in these two locals were more profound and, effectively, more than anything I had bargained for during a simple beach vacation- a glimpse into history, culture and the human psyche. I discovered how the same knowledge and reality can shape two men so differently that one becomes a proud warrior and the other a defeated one. I also found that the brash face of tourism can easily be brushed aside if one is willing to take the time to look deeper and further than the next vacationer. And finally, I learned that Mel Gibson is always looking out for number one: Mel Gibson.

Coming to a theatre near you this December, Mel Gibson presents his take on the decline of the Kingdom of the Maya before the time of the first Spanish settlement in Mexico. The movie, called Apocalypto, will take you to another time and place…

Tagline: When the end comes, not everyone is ready to go

Plot Outline: As the Maya kingdom faces its decline, the rulers insist the key to prosperity is to build more temples and offer human sacrifices. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a young man chosen for sacrifice, flees the kingdom to avoid his fate.

source : http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tysonv/americas05/1146534360/tpod.html

This is Sparta!

Adoro testes do tipo quiz ou trívia! É a única oportunidade de colocar em uso o conhecimento inútil acumulado e me divertir ao mesmo tempo. É a tarefa que aguardo ansiosamente em toda edição do reality O Aprendiz, mas desta vez fiquei um tanto quanto decepcionada.

Das vezes anteriores as questões abordavam mais os temas atuais e de política e negócios. Na prova de ontem, a maioria das questões era de geografia. Tá, compreendo que o objetivo era avaliar como os competidores respondiam à pressão utilizando agilidade mental e rapidez de raciocínio e não um conhecimento que, cá entre nós, na maior parte das vezes quando o tema é geografia, é pura decoreba.

O esquema de resposta também mudou das edições anteriores para cá: antes respondia quem sabia, desta vez apenas quem estava com um bastão podia responder. Assim, quem sabia a resposta não podia responder porque não era autorizado e quem estava com o bastão deveria ser ágil para responder logo ou passar a vez rapidamente, porque ainda tinha o agravante do tempo correndo, no mesmo sistema que Sílvio Santos usa no “Qual é a música?” Ha-ha-hai!

Quer testar os seus conhecimentos também?

Primeira fase: Rápido e rasteiro – Capitais
Respostas espontâneas

a. França
b. EUA
c. Bélgica
d. Peru
e. Australia
f. Iraque
g. Equador
h. Líbano
i. Síria
j. Canadá
k. Turquia
l. Ucrânia
m. Finlandia
n. Romenia

Fase 1 – Inventores e criadores
Respostas espontâneas

a. Lusíadas [Os]
b. Lei da gravidade
c. Peça Hamlet
d. Canção Yellow Submarine
e. Código Morse
f. Moby Dick
g. Canção Love me tender
h. Jogo Tetris
i. Carro a motor
j. Quadro Abaporu
k. Poema O Navio Negreiro
l. Filme Noivo neurótico, noiva nervosa

Segunda fase: Roleta Russa
Múltipla escolha, todos acertaram de primeira. D eceta forma, isso pode confirmar que o aproveitamento baixo na fase anterior foi por nervosismo mesmo.

Televisão
Qual evento histórico foi assistido pela TV por mais de 1 bilhão de pessoas em 1969?
a. Tomada da embaixada americana no Vietnã
b. Assssinato do presidente John Kennedy
c. Final da Copa disputada por Brasil e Itália
d. Chegada do Homem à Lua
e. Abertura do festival de Woodstock

Variedades
Onde Britney spears iniciou sua carreira artística?
a. Programa Ídolos [americano]
b. Clube do Mickey
c. Barney e seus amigos
d. Spice Girls
e. Dawnson’s Creek

Atualidades
Qual dessas instituições pediu concordata quando a crise econômica de 2008 varreu as bolsas nos EUA e no mundo?
a. Lehman Brothers
b. Merrill Lynch
c. Citigroup
d. JP Morgan
e. AIG

História
Qual deses países fazia parte do Eixo, aliança liderada pela Alemanha nazista durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial?
a. Holanda
b. Áustria
c. Japão
d. Turquia
e. União Soviética

Terceira fase:: Onde está?
O desafio era apontar com bandeirinhas alguns pontos geográficos num enorme mapa-múndi no chão do palco. Nós já brincamos disso antes, tinha um site que pedia a mesma coisa e ainda media a distância entre o que apontávamos e a localização exata do trem: Travelpod – Traveller IQ Game.

a. Copa do mundo de 2006
b. Desfiladeiro das Termópilas
c. Caminho de Santiago
d. Parlamento Knesset
e. Praça Vermelha
f. País de nascimento de Che Guevara
g. Monumento Stonehenge
h. Muamar Kadafi
i. Rede de TV Venevision

Fase 4: Chegar ao local da última fase
Cada equipe deveria decifrar uma charada que levaria a uma segunda charada. A resposta levaria ao local da última prova.

Pista 1:
Encontrar uma “noiva” muito especial numa rua batizada em homenagem a um doutor soteropolitano, fundador de um instituto em São Paulo, ligado à medicina legal.

Pista 2:
Agora mesmo vocês devem se dirigir para 23 33 40 46 39 22

A última fase foi um jogo da memória com 24 peças [4 linhas por 6 colunas].

Respostas
Fase 1 – Capitais
a. Paris
b. Washington – Ana Paula respondeu Nova Iorque, provavelmente influenciada pelo próprio Roberto Justus, que num episódio recente disse que NY é a capital do mundo
c. Bruxelas – leitor de Agatha Christie sabe essa
d. Lima
e. Canberra – eu também sempre chuto Sidney
f. Bagdá
g. Quito
h. Beirute
i. Damasco
j. Ottawa – nessa eu sempre chuto Montreal
k. Ankara – fã de Indiana Jones sabe essa
l. Kiev
m. Helsinque
n. Bucareste

Fase 1 – Inventores e criadores
a. Camões
b. Newton
c. Shakespeare
d. Beatles
e. Samuel Morse
f. Hermann Melville
g. Elvis Presley
h. Alexey Pazhitnov
i. Henry Ford
j. Tarsila do Amaral
k. Castro Alves
l. Woody Allen

Segunda fase: Roleta Russa
Televisão
d. Chegada do Homem à Lua

Variedades
b. Clube do Mickey

Atualidades
a. Lehman Brothers

História
c. Japão

Onde está?
a. Alemanha – chutaram Japão
b. Grécia – nem precisa ser nerd: quem assistiu 300 sabe. E quem leu a grahic novel também.
c. Espanha – ninguém leu O Alquimista do Paulo Coelho? É isso o que dá ser intelectualóide, confundem Santiago de Compostela com Santiago capital do Chile
d. Israel
e. Rússia
f. Argentina – Os diários da motocilceta, tio. Gael Garcia Bernal!
g. Inglaterra – Merlin, Rei Arthur…
h. Líbia
i. Venezuela – oi, Venevision?

Fase 4
Pista 1: Desta vez ninguém deu uma de Henrique e todos sabiam o significado de soteroplitano; o nome da rua é Oscar Freire e a noiva especial era uma modelo vestida como Uma Thurman no filme Kill Bill, de Quentin Tarantino.

Pista 2: Segundo a produção do programa, estas seriam as coordenadas do MASP [latitude e longitude]. Eu joguei no Google Earth e não deu: Masp – 23 33 41.12S 46 39 20.81W

É legal perceber que, com exceção de algumas questões geográficas, as outras envolviam muito mais conhecimento de atualidades e cultura do que aprendizado acadêmico.

Todos os episódios do programa no Canal Brusp, Youtube
Episódios e extras no hotsite da Rede Record [vídeos hospedados no Youtube]

Crédito da imagem: Jovem Nerd

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Mike – a bus2alps.com guide generated so far 87 bookings with bus2alps.com. In total he made so far EUR 978.42.- in comissions. This comissions he get paid out via PayPal. Now how can Mike be a successful bus2alps.com promotor, here are some tipps:
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