Tell your best travel story and win a Hostelworld.com voucher

Think you have the ultimate travel story? Hostelworld.com is celebrating its 10th anniversary and wants to hear about your best travel adventure of the last decade. Tell your inspiring, amazing, crazy or hilarious tale and you may win a €500 travel voucher.

Stories must be between 500 and 1500 words and be accompanied by a photo. The writer of the story selected as the best will receive the grand prize voucher, while nine other winners will be awarded a €50 Amazon card. Contest winners will be announced on October 7th.

Entries must be submitted by September 30th, so get writing!

Enter to win a free trip from Seattle to Reykjavik on Icelandair

Iceland. Just the name makes you shiver. But despite its frigid moniker, Iceland is surprisingly warm, especially during the long days of summer. With almost 24 hours of daylight, it’s the perfect time to explore the country’s other-worldly landscape. Watch geysers erupt, scamper over moss-covered former lava fields, stand in the shadows of plunging waterfalls, hike through rifts in the earth’s crust, gorge on smoked puffin or grilled whale, and cavort with the short, stocky Icelandic horses that seem to be everywhere you look.

Now, thanks to new non-stop service from Seattle to Reykjavik starting July 23, it’s even easy for west-coasters to travel to Iceland just in time for summer. And one lucky winner will get to go for free.

To celebrate the inauguration of its new non-stop route, Icelandair is sending one winner and a guest on board the very first flight. They’ll fly from Seattle to Reykjavik and then on to Copenhagen, where they’ll spend one night and enjoy a canal boat sightseeing tour. From there they’ll take an overnight cruise to Oslo, spending two nights in town before they fly back to Reykjavik. After three nights in Iceland, the winner will fly back direct to Seattle on July 31st.

To enter, just visit the website and fill out a form. Winners must be residents of the US or Canada and available to travel from July 23-31. Winners will be announced tomorrow, July 17th.

Oh and today’s the last day to enter, so what are you waiting for? Good luck!

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Discover Africa

Yesterday saw the launch of an amazing online image resource for anyone interested in traveling to Africa. (You can’t see it, but my right hand is waving frantically above my head right now as I’m typing with my left). DiscoverAfrica.com plays host to some of the most breathtaking photos you will ever see of this most picturesque continent.

My simple search for “Morocco” came up with over one hundred images of places, people, and sights in this country. Then, of course, my mouse gravitated to “Surfing,” where my bottom lip promptly dropped to the floor as I laid my eyes upon some of the most vivid and captivating photos of the ocean and the sport that I have seen.
There are few words on this site, which is just as it should be as it lets the images speak for themselves. I could honestly spend hours sifting through thousands of photos taken all over Africa and need to come up for air. The site itself is extremely simple, clean, and user-friendly. It’s all about admiring the images — paying homage to the continent. Seriously, every one of the site’s images puts my amateur photos to shame.

To celebrate the launch of their site, DiscoverAfrica.com is holding a cool African safari giveaway contest until April 21. Your entry in the contest can be in the form of an essay (on your blog), photo (on Flickr), or video (on YouTube), so long as you communicate your heartfelt desire to travel to Africa and go on a safari. The key to winning this contest is to generate as much buzz about Africa (and your entry) as possible. They know you’ve entered the contest by officially registering with the site and providing the link to your entry.

You’re going to have to beat my entry, though, which is forthcoming. Africa is my least traveled continent, and a destination I’ve so longed to go to. My sister thought I was a shoe-in to be on Survivor: Africa (I’m an enormous fan of the show and have applied five times!) and bought me an African cookbook five years ago, hoping I would make use of it as a castaway. Maybe one day I will finally get a callback and put it to use — or maybe I will actually win this contest and go on the trip/safari of a lifetime!

To beat me to the punch, you can enter the contest HERE. But beware: more competition = more motivation for me!