How to travel with friends (and not want to kill them)

Jun 22, 2011 10:45:36 AM

How to travel with friends (and not want to kill them)

• Leif Pettersen
• Lonely Planet Author

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I have two permanent, oddly positioned bald spots on my head. Though my mother claims they’re from a scalp thing I had as a kid, I have it on good authority from my oracle that they’re probably where the Martians attached the electrodes.

However, spontaneous balding frequently has nothing to do with alien abduction. I’ve encountered many wretched travelers with unexplained bald spots formed during particularly challenging trips with incompatible friends. Whether they yanked that hair out during angry sleep or they were shaved by their vindictive companions is extraneous. What’s important is this hair-loss could have been easily avoided if these people had honestly communicated their travel styles and priorities during the trip planning stages.

Even your closest friend of 20 years, who saved your dog with mouth-to-mouth and donated a kidney to your sister (or vice-versa), can sometimes drive you to a stuttering rage while on the road. The divergent day-to-day circumstances of travel can expose and magnify irritations and disparities you never knew existed. And that’s if you’re compatible. If you’re not compatible, sooner or later that corkscrew you packed may be used for removing things its designers never intended.

Countless tent-pole duels to the death might have been prevented with pre-trip contemplation and dialogues. Some of the more pertinent criteria to consider in advance include:

1. Natural selection

Spontaneity during travel is great, but not so much when selecting a travel companion. Pick a friend whose company you consistently enjoy in a variety of situations. More often than not, blasting off with someone you don’t already know well is going result in trip-curdling disharmony. That includes your drinking buddy, that smokin’ hot babe you’ve dated for two weeks, and even the achingly attractive, witty, travel writer you met in the hostel’s breakfast room.

2. Setting expectations

Discuss your general vision of the trip. Vacation? Work trip? Urban exploration? Beaches? If one person is a go-go-go, see-see-see type and the other is a chill-at-sidewalk-cafes type, friction will quickly arise. And have you ever seen control freaks travel together? Messy. Carefully consider what you’d like to accomplish on your trip and communicate this with your prospective co-pilot.

3. Budgets

The last straw for many strong relationships has occurred while standing on a busy street in pouring rain, two miles from the hostel, when one person would rather walk, saving the €1.50 bus fare, and the other just wants to be dry. Ditto for the salivating foodie whose friend can only afford self-catered bread and jam dinners. Before you start planning, establish each other’s comfort preferences and available funds for things like accommodation, food and transport.

4. Divide and conquer

It’s perfectly fine to split up when you’d each prefer to do other things. Resentment grows quickly when one person is made to feel like they are catering to the other person’s itinerary too frequently. Equally, splitting up, whether it’s for three hours or three days, will soothe mounting frustrations. It’s not a sign of trouble or failure, it’s just good policy. Additionally, you’ll have copious stories to share when you reunite.

5. Night and day

A discussion about daily routines is a good idea. An incurable night owl is going to wear down a morning person in a hurry.

6. Be considerate

After you’ve found the right companion, a little on-the-road finesse is essential. Be conscience of your companion’s mood and fatigue. Balance each other’s needs. Be neat. Don’t hog the bathroom. And for the love of Buddha, don’t bogart the wine.

Have you used any clever strategies to maintain friendship harmony while traveling?

10 ways not to be a travel writer by Lonely Planet

Straight from the keyboards of the Lonely Planet team

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10 ways not to be a travel writer

Vivek WagleLonely Planet author

It’s the dream: travelling around the world and getting paid for it. Every day, thousands of aspiring travel journalists start up blogs, pitch pieces to editors and put pen to paper (at least metaphorically) in the hopes of making travel a full-time job.

Image by swimparallel, Flickr

 

The good news is that it’s achievable. While only a select few attain the high life of sipping margaritas by the pool while churning out leisurely prose on their Macbooks, travel writing for a living is a real possibility for those who have the talent and are willing to put in some really, really hard work.

However, we’ve noticed that there is a subclass of potential travel writers, photographers and video journalists who don’t really seem to have their heart in it. For some reason, they do their best to sabotage any chance of success. We believe you can learn a lot from them, so we’ve put together a list of their most common traits. Engage in these behaviours and you’re pretty much guaranteed to lock yourself out of a career in travel journalism.

10. Be sloppy

Whether you’re pitching a 500-word essay to the New Yorker or dashing off a quick blog entry, you’re presenting your professional face to the world. Is it the best face possible?

No one is perfect, and everyone except the stodgiest subeditor will forgive the occasional typo. But when you’re an aspiring content creator, any form of communication you produce becomes part of your portfolio. If your work is amateurish in quality, don’t expect to be paid for it.

9. Treat your pieces as personal journals

If you’ve started up a blog to keep your friends and family informed about your travels, go crazy! But all too often, we see works that are all about the creator and not at all about providing real value to the audience. They have the stink of those WhatWeDidOnOurFamilyVacation slideshows that everyone used to dread.

Use Facebook or personal blogs to reassure your mother and make your friends jealous. Use the avenue from which you hope to derive income to inform, educate, entertain or otherwise improve the lives of your audience.

8. Be flaky

Have you promised an editor that you’ll have that sample in for next week? Have you told your blogging audience, ‘Stay tuned for a big post tomorrow?’ Then please deliver. Nothing alienates people more than broken promises. Editors have tight, busy schedules and they are primarily concerned with getting great content out on time. Your audience has a ton of options vying for their attention, and if you fail to earn their trust they will go elsewhere.

7. Act like a jerk

You’d think this one would be obvious. But we’re constantly surprised by content creators who appear to lack any respect for those who are there to help them.

Here are a few simple tips:

• Don’t call your editors names or make bombastic demands from them. (Any reasonable editor will listen to calm, professionally delivered opinion, but no one wants to be yelled at.)
• Don’t belittle the people who comment on your website.
• Don’t be rude in any form of communication with anyone who might have anything to do with your getting your work published. These people are here to help you live your dream. Don’t ruin it for yourself.

6. Stay shallow and general rather than building expertise

Bill Bryson may be able to say anything he likes about whatever he likes (no matter how general), but you can’t just go out and make observations about ‘stuff’. Build your niche and establish your credibility in it – this is crucial to earning trust. Are you THE authority on hiking in northern Spain? Are you an incredible wildlife photographer? Are your videos mordantly funny? Figure out what it is you’re amazing at, and go after that. Once you’ve established your area of expertise, you can begin branching out. But start focused.

5. Demand respect without earning it

Not too long ago, having your words on a printed page provided an instant credibility boost. But nowadays, anyone can self-publish – to the web, to ebook readers and even to print-on-demand machines. What this means is that you need to provide better evidence for your claims to expertise than being a published writer. Have you won any credible awards? Can you demonstrate having a large following? Have you produced something truly meaningful? If you can answer ‘yes’ to these questions, then let people know! And if you can’t, get to work on it. We’d all love to be paid $5 per word, but before you get there you need to demonstrate your value for more realistic returns.

4. Lack voice and personality

Most travel writing is insanely boring. If you can make someone smile, cry or act, you’re well ahead of the game. Gimmicks and tricks can help, but it will come down to how authentic you are. If you don’t put enough of yourself in your work, your travel content will be as woeful as the rest of the dross that pollutes the travel-blogging universe, and even the Travel Literature section of your local bookstore. Please be interesting.

3. Act without integrity

Trading unverified links with others to bolster your search-engine juice? Made deals with the devil (eg sketchy ‘advertisers’ who put malware on people’s machines)? Lied about your accomplishments – such as where you’ve been? Making promises you can’t keep to your editors and audience?

Sorry – there’s just no room in the travel-content community for you. Get out.

2. Ignore or disrespect your audience

Your audience is by far the most important factor in your success as a travel journalist. And yet we so often come across people who have no idea whom they’re writing, photographing or making videos for. If you don’t know who is going to consume your content, you haven’t targeted it appropriately. And you’ve demonstrated that your priorities are all wrong.

If you’re pitching or creating a piece, make sure you know exactly whom it’s intended for. (Case in point: if you’ve read this far down this list, then this list is DEFINITELY intended for you.)

1. Never try

Of all the mistakes aspiring travel writers make, none is more catastrophic than failing to enter the game.

It’s not an easy life. It requires a lot of talent, determination, perseverance and resilience. But the world is full of people who turn their travels into a living – through blogging, professional writing, video journalism and beyond. There are more resources than ever available to those who wish to travel for a living. If it’s what you want to do, then go for it.

What do you think?

HELP ARGENTINA TE INVITA

Celebra con nosotros el Bicentenario.

Aposta al cambio. Involucrate con el Sector Social Argentino.

Desde HelpArgentina lanzamos la Campania 200 con el

objetivo de que en este 2010, anioo del Bicentenario,

los argentinos reflexionen sobre la realidad social actual y

sobre el futuro del pais.

Queremos concientizar a la comunidad argentina sobre la

necesidad de involucrarse de forma activa, apoyando a

organizaciones y proyectos de la sociedad civil argentina,

buscando tener un impacto directo en alguno de los criticos

asuntos sociales que azotan al pais.

Esta campaña se propone multiplicar los fondos movilizados

a traves de nuestra Fundacion al sector social argentino a

lo largo del 2009. Queremos que seas parte de nuestro desafio

de lograr movilizar U$S1.5 millones durante el 2010.

Con el apoyo de organizaciones de la diaspora, grupos

de argentinos nucleados en empresas multinacionales y

americanas, y grupos de alumni argentinos de universidades

destacadas,

HelpArgentina invita a todos aquellos interesados a sumarse

a esta iniciativa. Se protagonista del cambio.

Involucrate. Trabajemos juntos para modificar la realidad.

Dona a nuestras organizaciones y proyectos.

Contamos con una Red de Organizaciones Miembro compuesta

por mas de 60 integrantes que, junto con HelpArgentina, han

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Te agradecemos tu apoyo difundiendo esta iniciativa.

Cecilia Gutman
Area de Donantes y Desarrollo Institucional
comunidad@helpargentina.org
HelpArgentina
AR (54-11) 5032- 6424 / 5238-1220/ 5238-1219
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InsightArgentina – The Volunteer Program of Help Argentina

Volunteer

‘Our program seeks to promote the development and growth of a community that is committed to the Argentine Social Sector’

We understand that deciding on where to volunteer, and who with, can be an exciting, if slightly daunting task. On this page we have given you a brief overview of who we are and what we do, whilst outlining some key information about us.

About InsightArgentina

•    InsightArgentina (IA) is the volunteer program of HelpArgentina, a non-profit organization based in Buenos Aires.

•    IA offers highly customized volunteer placements to international volunteers (both individuals and groups) in more than 65 local NGO’S throughout Argentina.

•    IA has volunteer opportunities across Argentina.
Destinations include: Buenos Aires, Salta, Mendoza and Patagonia.

•    IA provides volunteer placements in a variety of fields that include: Education and Youth Outreach,the Environment, Sport and Recreation, Health and Nutrition, to name just a few…….!

Why choose to volunteer with Insight Argentina?

•    We are a dedicated, friendly team that will assist you throughout your volunteer experience. We will provide you with a personalized service, from pre-departure guidance and placement, to invaluable support while you volunteer in Argentina. We seek to provide sensible advice and assistance on all aspects of your trip.

•    We have more than 5 years of experience in the Argentine social sector. All of the organizations that receive our volunteers must meet HelpArgentina’s criteria for best practices and accountability.

•    We have received and placed over 500 volunteers in projects throughout Argentina.

•    By participating in our program, part of your placement fee goes straight to the host organization as a donation. Since 2005, more than US$40,000 has been donated by our volunteers to their host organizations.

•    We will provide you with guidance and assistance on the other elements of your trip (such as
accommodation and Spanish lessons) by putting you in contact with our recognized and trusted partners.

•    We want you to feel at home in Argentina, so we organize select opportunities for you to meet other volunteers and to engage in Argentine life and culture.

‘The assistance and support we had before, during and after the trip was excellent……I was truly impressed with Insight Argentina!’ Heather Lyu, United States

We look forward to welcoming you to Argentina!