Blue-footed booby jokes never gets old and the Galápagos locals are taking in the English interpretation to the shops. T-shirts are sold throughout the islands that say “I Love Boobies” with a picture of the birds. I felt like a ten year old making booby jokes but it’s still hilarious.

Blue-footed Boobies are most commonly found in the Galápagos. A visit to the islands guarantee’s you’ll see dozens of these birds. You’ll know when you’ve spotted these birds because their feet are blue.

The blue-footed part of their name is obvious but what’s not so obvious is how they got the booby part. Spanish explorers called these birds bobos which can mean stupid, fool, or dummies. They were called this because they had no fear of humans and thus easy to catch for dinner. They’re also apparently very clumsy birds.

Their foot pigmentation has no other purpose other than to look sexy. The females look for males with bright blue feet because it means they’re young and have higher fertility. The males look for females that have bright blue feet too because they know they’ll produce beautiful bright blue looking boobies. The female continues to evaluate the males feet even during their relationship to make sure he continues to look good. Their feet loses brightness with age and if they haven’t eaten well.

So how does a male show interest in a female? He dances.

The male Blue-footed Booby raises his bright-blue feet and begins to break it down to impress the female. Sometimes he’ll point his head in the sky in excitement as he continues to dance. If the fancy moves are acceptable to the female, they’ll breed. Sometimes the female joins in on the dance too thus a dance party begins.

I don’t know why these birds are so interesting to me. Maybe it’s that this is the first time I actually paid attention to any bird. This could be normal for so many other birds but I have no idea. That’s one of the reasons why traveling is so great because I’m learning about things that I never thought I’d learn. Or maybe it’s just that their called blue-footed boobies. I love boobies.

Interested in going to the Galapagos? I had an incredible time with Contiki learning and exploring the wonderful islands. See their Ecuador and Galapagos Island Hopper tour for more information.

The Weird and Wacky World of Blue-Footed Boobies is a post from Art of Backpacking

One of the main purposes of why I travel is to learn a bit more about the world I live in. I could easily travel around the world for travels sake and not learn anything about the world around me but that doesn’t sit right with me.

I was talking to my dad about my trip on the phone and he said to me that I’ve never really been able to give him a straight answer to the question “if you had one place in the world you think people should go to, where would it be?” So he said I guess we know the answer to that question and I think he’s right.

Couple weeks ago I was on a trip with Contiki to the Galapagos. Here’s what I learned about the islands.

There are many islands.

I thought Galapagos was one giant island but there’s actually 13 major islands, 6 smaller ones, and and more than 40 islets. Three of the most popular islands are Isabela, the biggest one and San Cristobal, the capital of Galapagos and Santa Cruz. All three have major airports.

Land of volcanic islands

Thanks to the discovery of tectonic plates, we now know how the Galapagos was formed. Galapagos is located inside the Nazca plate. The Nazca plate pushes against the South American plate. This collision has caused the rise of the Andes and the Galapagos. The bigger island Isabela is about 7 million years old and San Cristobal is only 4 million years old. As time passes, we’ll continue to see Galapagos grow and form new volcanos from below.

People live there and it’s developed.

I have never seen a picture of the villages or people of Galapagos. It’s usually of all the animals. I thought that Galapagos was uninhabitable and it only had animals running around all over the place. I was way wrong. There’s hotels, hospitals, schools, restaurants, nightclubs, and everything else a typical small town would have. In fact, there are over 25,000 people who live in the Galapagos.

Opening a business is difficult.

In order to open a business in the Galapagos, you need to be FROM the Galapagos. You have to had been born in the Galapagos. The law also applies to mainland Ecuadorians. The only way around this is if you married someone from the Galapagos but they’re very strict about this too and you’ll definitely get spied to ensure the marriage was legitimate.

I suspect they do this to protect from too many people coming to the islands.

Ecuador held prisoners there.

When I first heard this, I thought their life must’ve been pretty damn good being in paradise for prison but it was the total opposite. Prisoners were given the meaningless task of building a rock wall for no apparent reason from 1945-1959. It was only used to keep the prisoners busy. Being directly under the equator, I burned from just a few hours outside with sunscreen on but the prisoners had very little to protect themselves from the sun so they had even worse. They worked in the brutal sun everyday. Many of the prisoners died during the hard labor. The prisoners then decided to use their bones as part of the wall and kept on stacking rocks on top of the bodies within the walls. Legend has it if you’re there at night, you can listen to the dying men crying hence the name Wall of Tears.

Species that don’t exist anywhere else in the world.

It’s hard to imagine that a place so far and so small can have so many unique animals that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. Because the islands are so remote, these animals have found paradise where they have so few predators. This has allowed for a growth and eco-system that has been around since the pre-historic times. There are animals on the Galapagos that we have no idea how they ended up there. Some say that a few of the animals simply drifted on a piece of log from mainland South America and ended up in paradise for future generations.

How did I learn all this? Well I had a really awesome guide on our Contiki tour.

Things I Didn’t Know About Galapagos is a post from Art of Backpacking

“Berlin combines the culture of New York, the traffic system of Tokyo, the nature of Seattle and the history of, well, Berlin“ – Hiroshi Motomura UCLA Law Professor

I spent a week in Berlin and stayed in a beautiful apartment in east Berlin thanks to GoWithOh. Berlin has turned into one of my favorite cities in the world. The city has us considering moving there for a few months (probably after Italy and only during the summer because it gets crazy cold there in the winter).

In our apartment we had the wonderful Pete & Dalene (Hectic Travels) and Michael Hodson (Go,See,Write). Together we turned the apartment into the ultimate working place as if we had been living in Berlin for months. We got comfortable fast. Each morning we brewed our big pot of coffee and sprung up all our MacBook’s. It didn’t take us long to make a mess basically.

For lunch, we would either eat in our apartment or go to our local kebab place. There was probably over a dozen of them within walking distance and apparently we lived close to the first original kebab place but we never did end up there. I may have ordered kebab far too often in Berlin but it’s so cheap and delicious. Currywurst was another favorite of mine with super hot sauce.

For dinner we would either cooked a meal in our apartment or we would attempt to order delivery. The one time we ordered delivery we apparently ordered from a very popular restaurant and it took three hours for our food to arrive. We were starving but luckily with whatever snacks we had in our apartment and a few glasses of wine, we made it through.

I really loved our apartment in Berlin. It felt like we had been living there for much longer than a week. I had gotten comfortable and I knew my way around so well just after a few days. We went to our local supermarket, cafe, bakery, and kebab place. The more I travel, the slower I travel. I’d prefer at this point to stay in cities for more than a week and really immerse myself in the cultural than saying for just a day or two.

Being a Local in Berlin is a post from Art of Backpacking

When I went to China I had to communicate mostly with my hands, pointing, pictures, and carrying around the business cards of my hostel so I can take a taxi back. In Latin America, I can just hop into a taxi cab and tell him or her to take me where the party is at. Two completely different experiences.

I can speak spanish because half of my family is from Argentina so I was raised bilingual. I went to Argentina several times as a child and in the last few years traveled extensively around South America. It’s an amazing continent and luckily for me, knowing spanish in South America can drastically change ones experience of this place.

What makes things so different is the fact that I can talk to the locals.

I feel confident traveling in Latin America. I’m very rarely in uncomfortable situations where I don’t know what’s going on and I can easily go wherever I need to go.

I was in Bolivia once on a train ride to Oruro. I sat in the dining car with a beer and behind me was a guy by himself. I don’t remember how it happened but we ended up talking for hours. Conversations about Bolivian culture, what to eat, what to drink, where to go, and I started talking about the US too. I had a similar experience in Thailand on my train ride but it was so difficult to have a conversation that we stuck to the basics and it was often so tiring to understand and talk to each other that there was sometimes an awkward silence.

The biggest different between traveling here and let’s say Asia is that at least in Asia no one expects me to know the local language. One quick look at me and they won’t even bother trying to have an intense conversation with me. Instead, they slow things down and try to be as helpful as they can be without talking much or use the limited amount of words they know in English. In Latin America however, everyone expects me to know spanish (especially if I don’t shave for a week). This must be tough for those that don’t know spanish.

It’s pretty great for me. I can go to any local restaurant and ask them what they recommend. I can joke around with the locals and get to know them. I’m great at bargaining. I can ask anyone on the street for directions. I’m more aware of my surroundings because I can understand everything happening around me. I can go easily go off the beaten path. And best of all, I’m experiencing everything as local as they can be.

As a child, I didn’t appreciate the fact that I knew spanish and sometimes even avoided it. Now I’m grateful to have been raised bilingual. Huge thank you to my family for that.

What it’s Like to Know Spanish in Latin America is a post from Art of Backpacking

Working on a million-acre cattle station—with one homestead in the middle for twenty or so people—lends perspective.

First, there is the open land, the immense vacancy of human life. Within a hundred meters in any direction, only the tweeting chatter of birds or the brush of dry grass can be heard. Sharp hills—not mountains—poke into the horizon, and the sun casts the most intricate tangles of shadow between trees. Weekday musters are insane and chaotic, but on the weekend, the lazy-flowing river behind the homestead sets a tempo as serene as anywhere I’ve ever been.

More important for me, though, my early experiences in Australia proved to me how incredibly unskilled I really am. In this arena, one must own a wide breadth of skills or he or she will perish. Our homestead was positioned a hundred kilometers or more from another human and hours from the nearest town. Mail came in by plane. For firewood, we felled a tree, and if a new roof was needed, we grabbed a ladder and a hammer.

If your car breaks down in Raleigh, North Carolina, you call AAA; if your car breaks down in the outback of Western Australia, you grab a can of Emu Export Lager and a ratchet set, pop the hood, and start fiddling.

Ben Mills is twenty-one, and he can do a hundred things I can’t. He’s a mechanic, a welder, and a builder. He drives a tractor-trailer rig, a Bobcat, a Ditch Witch, a loader, and any other piece of construction equipment with wheels. He painted the helicopter. The one that he flies for the mustering season. Ben feeds the cattle in the yard, a job that would take me twenty-plus minutes, in less than four, and he can raise a fence faster than a washed-up actor can accept an invitation from Dancing With the Stars. He came just short of a career as a professional motocross racer, and he can roll a micky—a young wild bull—from his bike. Confident as he is knowledgeable, he makes deals with the buyers coming in from Port Hedland and Broome. He uses words like indiscriminately and subvert in normal conversation. He reports the riveting stories of his life with fancy phraseology like “I grabbed four gears straightaway” to describe a speedy escape from a scene. He can put a round in the hump of a camel from three hundred meters away, and when he goes fishing, he comes home with dinner for the whole family. When something breaks, I leave it (“It still works, you just need a third hand in the mix to hold that lever in place”), while Ben takes it apart, hooks a quick sip of his beer, and puts the unit back together again.

I’m pretty sure that when the prime minister of Australia presses the red panic button, Ben’s cell phone rings.

Me? I’m proud to know Ben. I listen and watch carefully, happy to learn from him and guys like him. But it stings a little to realize how little I bring to the table on the ranch. Standing next to him, I sometimes felt pretty worthless. Back home I have a degree in business, even if eight of my neighbors do, as well. Colleagues ask me questions, and whether they take action or not, they at least nod and say, “Yeah, I see what you’re saying. That’s interesting.” I work, and my work carries at least some weight. I get occasional handshakes and e-mails after jobs well done. You may have me in darts and foosball, but I’ve got you in H-O-R-S-E and rummy, and, win or lose, I can take you the distance in tennis.

I matter a little back home.

But Australia brought me back down to Earth. Life at Warrawagine was humbling. I truly believe that the cattle operation would have run smoother if Ivana and I hadn’t shown up for those two months. I struggle to recall anything positive coming from our hands while employed in Australia, save a couple of extra-shiny toilets, some mended fences, and Ivana’s luscious apple pie—a dessert that can give even the grouchiest twit a half chub. Other than that, we just broke shit and stood idly by, feeling useless as we waited for instructions. I remember one day, while traveling in the rumbling buggy behind a mob of cattle as dust swirled into our eyes, I turned to Ivana and remarked, “Literally, if we were not here right now, if we just disappeared—poof!—I don’t think anyone would say anything until they saw our empty placemats at the dinner table.”

Imagine that. Imagine showing up with fifty levels of enthusiasm yet being so perfectly useless that when your superior looks at you, his first immediate thought is, “What easy job can I give you so that you won’t be in our way?”

Bare Significance is a post from Art of Backpacking

You know it’s spring in DC when the cherry blossoms bloom. I was becoming impatient to see them because they bloomed late this year and it’s been a long winter for me. Since they only last about two weeks at peak bloom, I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss it at its best. With over 3,500 cherry blossoms lined up along the Tidal Basin they make for beautiful pictures with the national monuments in the background.

It’s my first spring in DC and it’s beautiful here.

Cherry Blossoms of Washington DC is a post from Art of Backpacking

Bologna is the capital city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy and it’s by far my favorite city in Italy. In 2011, it ranked first in the highest quality of life compared to all other Italian cities and still one of the wealthiest cities in the country. Could this be the city that I’ll eventually move to once I become an Italian citizen? Also read Erin de Santiago’s first impression of Bologna.

The Food

The Emilia-Romagna region is famous for its food even for Italy. It says a lot when even in the Italians in Italy outside of Emilia-Romagna tells you the food is good there. This is home to the best Bolognese sauce and which is most often served with tagliatelle pasta, not spaghetti that we’re use to at home. The markets in Bologna is a food lovers paradise. Almost everything in locally grown in the region. The markets are spread through the entire city so there’s a good chance that no matter where you in the city, you’re in walking distance to at least one. You’ll also find the BEST cured pork meats like prosciutto, mortadella and salami all of which are local to the region. Another popular dish is tortellini served in broth. To the locals in Bologna, tortellini must always be served in broth.

Small City, Big City

I love the city life but I start to get annoyed when there’s too many people on the streets. Bologna is still a city but it doesn’t feel like havoc. It’s easy to get away from the crowds and the city is relatively small. Even for a small city, it has everything I could possibly want. There’s a great nightlife scene, bars are easy to come by, and there’s always something going on. On our last day in Bologna, they were building a huge concert stage in the center of the city for a popular musician that had passed away the year prior. I wish we were staying longer because our hotel was literarily across the streets from it and would have been cool to go. Bologna is a university town. University of Bologna is the oldest university in the world located right in the center of the city. Johns Hopkins University is also located in Bologna which brings in lot of english speaking students.

No Huge Tourist Crowds

Everywhere else I’ve been to so far in Italy has been packed with tourists. I’m a tourist myself so I have nothing against them but in huge numbers it starts to take away the feeling of being somewhere far and peaceful. There were very few tourists in the city. Mostly students and people just going about their day.

It’s Cheaper

I’ve been looking at prices for an apartment throughout Italy and I was really surprised to find that living in Bologna was actually pretty inexpensive for the quality of life you get in the city. 500 euros can get you a decent apartment downtown. I had expected most of Northern Italy to be expensive but I was wrong. This is by far cheaper than Rome too.

Easy to Enter and Leave

Bologna is conveniently located in a place that makes it so easy to get to anywhere else in Italy and in Europe. By train, it’s the center city where all trains intersect from North-South and East-West. It takes only an hour to get to Milan, 30 minutes to Florence, 2 1/2 hours to Rome, and 2 hours to Venice. By plane they have Guglielmo Marconi (Bologna) International Airport which is just a few minutes from downtown. There are many big name airlines and budget airlines that fly to Bologna making it easy to get to anywhere in the world and especially within Europe.

It’s the city of many nicknames

• La grassa – The fat one, for its variety of cuisine.
• La dotta – The learned one, for high class education and oldest university in the world.
• La rossa – The red one, because the city is covered in red roofs. It’s because the cities political situation and ideas.
• Basket City, because their obsession with basketball. I was surprised too!

I still have a lot to discover in Italy but so far, Bologna has captured my heart. Will I eventually end up in Bologna? We’ll see!

Bologna – My Favorite City in Italy is a post from Art of Backpacking

I just came back from several flights to and from Ecuador with long layovers. I got incredibly bored of all the same airline magazines and the articles in them are usually horrible. So I took out my iPhone and started reading National Geographic Traveler I had downloaded earlier from the awesome Zinio app.

Zinio is great. They have thousands of top magazines from around the world.  You can browse and purchase subscriptions or single issues instantly from your computer or mobile device to read wherever and whenever you like. You can read your magazines on your iPad, iPhone, Android mobile phones and tablets, laptop or desktop. With over 5,000 digital magazines on its digital newsstand, there’s a magazine for everyone whether it’s travel, lifestyle, outdoor, or sports.

Zinio offered me a free subscription and I had a really hard time choosing which one to subscribe to in the travel section. There’s so many great magazines on there. I ultimately choose National Geographic Traveler but I have my eyes on subscribing to Smithsonian Magazine next.

They’re offering a 25% off deal to AFAR magazine right now too!

Want a win a free subscription? We’re giving away nine free subscriptions!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Win a Digital Magazine at The World’s Largest Newsstand is a post from Art of Backpacking

See pictures of my ride too.

If you’re interested in meeting these beautiful dogs in Kemi, go see Lapponia Safaris.

Video: Dog-sledding with Husky’s in Finland is a post from Art of Backpacking

Peer pressure makes you do amazing things. Never would I have thought I would be on a bike that serves beer. I’ve seen them around in other cities but it never came across my mind to ride on them. It was Jennifer’s (Jdomb’s Travels) birthday and we were invited to go beer biking with her and some friends in Berlin. Turns out beer biking is actually a lot of fun.

We were with Pete of Hecktic Travels, Peter Parkorr of Travel Unmasked, Emma of Emma’s Travel Tales, Michael of Go, See, Write, Stephanie of Twenty-Something Travel, and of course the birthday girl Jennifer with her husband Tim (Jdomb’s Travels).

The activity was provided by Beer Bike Berlin.

Each side of the bike can hold 6 people totaling 12 people that can peddle. A few can fit in the back making it have enough room for 16 people. If you fill up all the seats, it makes it easier to peddle because there’s more power. The driver sitting up front is steering us and showing us around Berlin. He takes us to many of Berlin’s famous attractions for the next two hours.

The best part is of course the beer. The keg is up front in the barrel. As you peddle, you continue to serve yourself and get drunk. Unfortunately for the driver, he needs to stay sober. In my drunk state of mind, I told everyone we should drink faster so the bike weighs less which doesn’t really make sense since it’s just going into our system anyway.

If I’m going to drink, I need music. The bike is equipped with speakers and loaded with random fun 80′s and 90′s music. If you got an iPod, they can plug that in as well. We weren’t prepared so we just let them play whatever which was awesome because it was all classic fun tunes.

We laughed hysterically almost the entire time. We knew we looked ridiculous but that was the best part. Everyone watching us from the side was taking pictures of us, cars driving by had to take a second look, we cheered people on, and we had an amazing time. Yes, we were freezing but after peddling for awhile and drinking, it got warmer.

It’s €299 .00 per group and if you split that with 12 people, it comes out to only close to €25 a person. It’s €4.5 per litre of beer too. More info here.

Want to learn more? Jdomb Travels also has a review up of Beer Bike Berlin.

Beer Biking in Berlin is a post from Art of Backpacking