The best traveling companions aren’t always the ones with whom you left home. Some of my most memorable travel buddies are people I’ve met along the way: Erwin of the indigo hair in the Paris Laundromat; Paula of the free pizza on the train to Rome; Christos and Jason of the ouzo on the Greek ATVs. The list goes on.

A few weeks ago, I spent two days with a group that inspired me in ways none of my previous friends of travel happenstance can claim, and, perhaps not surprisingly, I met them in New Zealand, the friendliest and most inspiring place I’ve ever visited.

Their names are Niko, Baldy, Auntie Sugar, Reina, Corrinne, Claire, and Brent; their mountain is Ruapehu; their river is Whanganui.

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Posted in Groups & Companions, International Travel, Parks & Outdoors
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This weekend, as wildfires raged across the southern half of California and Governor Schwarzenegger channeled The Terminator to warn all arsonists that he will “hunt them down,” I fled to the east and atop the jack-o-lantern laden Sierra Nevada mountains for my annual “girls weekend” at Lake Tahoe.

Now put your frozen-bra and pillow-fight illusions aside. This fall tradition began about five years ago, when we didn’t even know it was going to be a tradition, just a generous invitation to a friend’s family cabin in the woods with views of the lake, mountains, pink-valentine sunsets, and a woo-hooo witchy-woman moon glowing through the giant glass windows.

Photo: One of the Angora Lakes before this year’s fire.

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Posted in Groups & Companions, Lake Tahoe, Parks & Outdoors
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This time of year I’ve got the white stuff on the brain. No, no. Not the Hollywood starlet kind of white stuff—I mean snow, of course. And so I begin to convince (some might say coerce) my friends to take a big ski trip with me.

But in every group there are always a few non-skiers. These poor souls get dragged to the mountain year after year by ski bums who care more about the inches of fresh powder than the amenities. This ski season, to tempt my favorite non-skiing compatriots, I looked up the best on-the-mountain bars. These watering holes are destinations unto their own, affording unmatched alpine views and elixirs to keep you toasty, and all are accessible without skis.

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member captain oddsocks.

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Posted in Bars & Nightlife, Groups & Companions, Parks & Outdoors, Ski, Sport & Adventure, Watering Holes
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China is a fantastic country. China is also an enormous country, and enormous countries equal enormous guidebooks. Seriously, the Lonely Planet China---which I carried around with me for two weeks last summer---comes in at a whopping 1012 pages and weighs close to two pounds. And since I was only visiting Beijing and Shanghai on that trip, meaning I only really looked at two sections of the book with any frequency, I'm estimating that I carried around about 700 pages and a pound and a half more paper than I actually needed.

But there's good news for travelers with weak upper body strength: Lonely Planet has just come up with a solution to slim down its more portly tomes with a concept it calls the Pick & Mix.

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Posted in Groups & Companions, Guides & Planning
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Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding travel these days, I hold steadfastly to my wanderlust, insisting that one little summer of record flight delays and security scares isn’t enough to sway me. After all, there are plenty of reasons to keep traveling, from the emotional to the pragmatic. But I’m not going to get all warm and fuzzy here. The travel experiences that really stick with me—the ones I remember long after I’ve forgotten where I had that amazing steak tartare or found that tiny art gallery—are the ones that made me laugh (or just want to run away) the most at the time.

Photo by IgoUgo member Shady Ady

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It’s hard to say those three little words. You may have been friends for years, or perhaps you’ve only just met. You might be constant companions, eating meals together, going to parties together, and spending rainy Sunday afternoons side by side. You may have even met each other’s families or shared a holiday together. But it’s those three little words that truly put your friendship to the test: “Let’s travel together.”

Watch one episode of The Amazing Race, and you’ll see how interpersonal dynamics can affect a trip. Of course, most of my trips don’t involve racing other travelers to shovel two pounds of caviar into my mouth or corral a herd of unruly cattle, but I’ve weathered my fair share of travel drama.

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Since today is Equal Pay Day, I thought it’d be a great chance to write about women’s travel, which has gone way beyond weekend-at-the-spa, shopping-extravaganza, sit-around-and-have-tea kind of travel (not that there’s anything wrong with any of those things). But more and more, we women are spending our hard-earned pay on some “me time” without the “he.” Do a Google search on “women’s adventure travel” and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

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Never mind being a bodyguard to Britney Spears or part of the burgeoning Jolie-Pitt clan, if you want a little attention when you’re out and about, try traveling with the Travelocity Roaming Gnome.

On my flight back to San Francisco yesterday, I had a very special companion in my hand luggage--an 18-inch garden gnome in a pointy red hat, who couldn’t have attracted more glances, stares, and chuckles if he’d tried. Normally, in the face of such blatant public scrutiny, I would have run straight to the restroom to check my teeth for spinach or my shoes for errant spools of toilet paper, wondering why everyone from kids in strollers to 89-year-old grandmothers had executed a double take as I passed. But with the Roaming Gnome tucked under my arm I quickly became accustomed to the attention. The little fellow’s a legend after all. He’s used to being recognized.

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Posted in Air Travel, Celebrity Scoop, Groups & Companions, San Francisco, Security & Safety
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I’ve got one. You’ve probably got one. Pretty much every high schooler in the entire country has one, even if they’d rather their parents didn’t see the various party photos they regularly upload to it (I’m sure the feeling’s mutual.)

I’m talking about the MySpace profile, that reigning bastion of social networking that connects strangers with other strangers and then turns them into friends. With more than 100 million users, MySpace is currently the fifth most popular website in the world--third most popular in the U.S.--and a profile page on the site has long been a must-have accessory for any well-connected denizen of the Internet.

And now guess who else has got their own little space on MySpace? Why, Travelocity’s Roaming Gnome, of course.

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Posted in Groups & Companions, Guides & Planning, International Travel, News
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In a world where Al Sharpton might very well be a blood relative of Strom Thurmond, genealogical research never ceases to surprise. In reaction to the news of this familial possibility, Sharpton did exactly what I would’ve done, which is to travel to the South Carolina birth town where it all began and “learn who you are.”

I’ve learned that traveling to visit family can unearth many surprises, and very often sheds light on what makes you tick. From pierced ears to homemade health elixirs, my travels have revealed all sorts of delightful family rituals and traits.

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Posted in Family & Kids, Groups & Companions
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The Amazing Race: All-Stars premieres this Sunday. It's the eleventh season of this, my favorite, reality show, and they're featuring competitors from past races. Deep down, I've always wanted the chance to battle for a million dollars while discovering exotic places that I might never see otherwise. What's holding me back? Part of it is that I can't find that perfect partner. (The other part is that I get cranky when I'm hungry and nobody needs to see that!)

Actually, even when a million dollars isn't on the line, selecting a co-traveler is tough.

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