South America

Travel through South America by country:

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela

Travel through South America by popular city:

Bogota, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro

Travel through South America by popular things to do:

Adventures in the Amazon, Falkland Islands, Iguazu Falls, Tierra del Fuego

Gadling Podcast: Joshua Berman

by Erik Olsen on

The whole guidebook writing thing has long intrigued me with its double-sided nature. On the one hand, being in a foreign locale, and having your job consist of reporting on the food, lodging and fun in that place seems like a dream job. On the other hand, spending an entire day peeking under mattresses and checking the cleanliness of bathrooms, well, I don’t care WHERE you are, that can kind of get old.

Well in today’s podcast, we talk about the job of writing guidebooks and a whole lot more. Out guest for today’s podcast is guidebook writer Joshua Berman, the author of several guidebooks in Central America as well as a brand-new book called Living Abroad in Nicaragua, released by Avalon Publishing this month. I’ve blogged about the Living Abroad series before, and I have to say it is a very handy guide for those who are considering making a move to any of the various countries for which there are books. But Joshua is also the writer, or co-writer, as the case may be, in two other guidebooks from Moon Guides (also under Avalon Publishing) Moon Guides Nicaragua and Moon Guides Belize. he also runs the wonderful Web site stonegrooves.net which chronicles his recent travels with his wife as a volunteer worker in places like India and Pakistan.

So turn up the speakers or put this thing on your ipod and take a listen.

Listen to Gadling podcast

Fall Issue of Planet Magazine Out Now

by Adrienne Wilson on

Every time Planet mag hits the shelves I feel as if I have this reader loyalty type thing to spread the word and paint the town with the news. If you’re not a subscriber I suggest you sign-up today. With just four issues a year it’s easy to let one slip by and well, you don’t want that do you? So how about I stop sounding preachy and things on the glossy and just tell you what’s inside this issue?

There’s the usual Satellite, Diary, Divinity, and Greenspace pages, but also inside, especially for fall and the 5th anniversary issue are pieces on Élodie Bouchez, Roberto Rossellini, Baptiste Ibar, Kirby Dick, and Katharine Hamnett among many others. As far as I’m concerned Planet magazine nails it when it comes to global culture!

And that’s my two cents for now.

World TV

by Erik Olsen on

Video is exploding on the Web, but unless you’re really interested in Chinese lip-synche rappers, fake teen diaries or monkeys touching themselves, it’s hard to find anything of much depth. Well, here’s a possible solution. If you haven’t seen it before Jump TV, is a rather interesting online subscription service will allows media fanatics to have channels from around the globe beamed directly to your computer.

From Thai TV Global to some British programming to Nepal 1 in India and TRT Int’l in Turkey, you can watch a snapshot of global programming as it unfolds. Apparently there is a cost for each channel, especially groupings of channnels like the “Romanian Package”, but perhaps that’s a small price to pay for global enlightenment.

Arnold Loves Butts

by Erik Olsen on

Given the coming election in California and the likely re-election of Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, I have to revisit a hilarious story from the LA Times (via Worldhum) about how the Governator got help from a tabloid publisher to suppress the release of a 1983 Playboy video starring the then-future governor in which he visits Brazil’s Carnival and engages in some on camera grab-ass (among other lewd and lascivious gestures).

The tabloid publisher, American Media, paid Thomas Wells $2,000 for a copy of the video and crafted an agreement whereby Wells would not discuss the existence of the tape. The tabloid’s interest in Schwarzenegger’s success was due to their ownership of two muscle magazines, Flex and Muscle & Fitness, for which they wanted Arnold to be their public face (and for which they made him executive editor of the two magazines and paid him a percentage of advertising revenue (which, if I remember correctly, was an extraordinary sum).

The best quote by far in the video: “You know something,” Schwarzenegger says “after watching the [dancers] shake it, I can absolutely understand why Brazil is totally devoted to my favorite body part: the ass.” Who said Arnold doesn’t have class?

This is the Life Contest

by Erik Olsen on

We mentioned a while back a pretty cool contest by the makers of Chivas Regal Scotch Whisky wherein they offered several lucky souls $100,000 and the opportunity to travel the world. The winners would globetrot and then send back their notes, photos and such on the various places they felt were the best in the world. The idea was to find “the best that life has to offer”. One assumes each leg of the journey involved quaffing Chivas…not that there’s anything wrong with that.

According to the listing at the time, said adventurers “must be curious, intelligent, with strong writing skills and a sense of the world around them”. If that doesn’t describe a gadling reader, I don’t know what does.

Well, the winners appear to be two people named Bill and Dana, and they offer their thoughts on these best places at the site here. So what are their findings? Well, here’s a sample to make you extra-special jealous: