There are probably lots of places to generate maps showing the places you have traveled. I have been using World 66 maps on my BookMooch bio to show where I have sent books and from where I have received them. I use this one just because its the one I know about. It is fun way to show people where you have traveled. I wish they would break out Hong Kong from China, though, because visiting Hong Kong is not the same as visiting China. I would love to hear about other places where you can generate travel maps.

I have visited 10 countries (including my home country, the United States):

I have visited Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Hong Kong (China), Mexico, Peru, South Korea and the United States.

I have visited 21 states and the District of Columbia:

I have visited Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New York, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

This is the Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolor paint set I use. It is about 2.5 x 5 inches and takes up very little space in my backpack.

Most importantly, I need paints. I take a tiny Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolor Sketcher’s Pocket Box with 12 colors, which is more than enough. The one pictured here is my backup set – I didn’t want to take a picture of the messy one I really use! These are not the finest quality paints, but my painting is not the finest quality either. They work great for me. Cathy Johnson has a great pdf on her website called “Make your own tiny travel watercolor kit“. One of the kits she shows is a wonderful set she made from an antique cigarette case she found on eBay – really cool! She also has a zillion other great art tips on her website.

I take a few of these Kuretake water brushes with me when I paint on the road.

In terms of watercolor paper, I usually take a small spiral pad and a bound watercolor journal. I don’t bring anything larger than 5×7 because I don’t want to carry a big pad around. My current bound watercolor journal is from Brenda Books. The one I have is pictured third from the left on the home page. I can’t find it for sale on her site currently, but I got it as part of a watercolor travel kit with a hardbound case, a watercolor set, a Sharpie and a pencil. I don’t use the case anymore however – I just took the journal out and carry that with me.

This is a watercolor I painted while flying to South Korea in 2008.

Someone asked me to post one of my watercolors. I am a beginner, so they aren’t anything fancy, but here is one I did on the airplane on the way to Korea. It is based on an illustration I found in the in-flight magazine. That picture had all these creepy faces in the flowers and the flowers were growing out of a pile of heads, so I took that stuff out.

The first big trip Stephen and I took together was to go to Australia for our honeymoon. I booked the trip through United Airlines Vacations, which seemed just as good as anything else. After an excruciatingly long flight and a day of wandering around, we couldn’t wait to get a good night’s sleep on our first night in Sydney. No more than 10 minutes after our heads hit the pillows, a jackhammer started up outside the window. To be fair, neither United nor the hotel could control whether the city needed to do emergency work, but the fellow at the hotel certainly didn’t care and we didn’t have a contact we could call at United to ask about getting moved. We were definitely on our own, which normally isn’t a problem, but it never felt like anyone was looking out for us should a problem arise.

In contrast, when we went to Peru a few years later, we booked through a local company, Explorandes. When we were leaving the Amazon to fly to Cusco, we had a full day of delays. We finally got on a flight in the afternoon, but when the landing gear wouldn’t go up, they turned around and landed back at the same airport. When it became clear that we would not be going to Cusco that day, we wondered what the heck we were going to do. Suddenly, a representative of the Inkaterra lodge where we had been staying appeared and took the stranded travelers from our group to a hotel they had already booked for us. They made sure we were fed and arranged for us to get back to the airport first thing in the morning. It turned out that Explorandes and Inkaterra had been monitoring the situation all day and knew exactly who was able to make it to Cusco and who was stuck. We never had to call for help, they were already there. Even when things went wrong, Explorandes always made us feel like VIPs.

After our trip to Peru, I decided I would try to book trips through local (to our destination) companies whenever possible. We used another local company, Costa Rica Expeditions, when we went to Costa Rica, and had a similarly stellar experience. The guides the companies provided were excellent and during times when we were on our own, we still felt like we had someone we could call if we had any problems. Both those companies were recommended by friends. We also felt like the prices were very good. If you book through an American company, for example, they just end up booking portions of your trip with local tour operators and you pay a premium to book with the middleman company. Our upcoming trip to Bhutan was actually planned when we saw a listing for Village Tours and Treks in a Tours of a Lifetime article in the May/June 2009 issue of National Geographic Traveler. This is the first time we have booked with a company we saw in a magazine, so we’ll see how it goes. So far the service has been great and very personalized. Bhutan is a little different in that the government mandates tour fees, and due to the federal oversight, tour companies there probably have a strong incentive to treat their customers very well.

For more urban trips (Hong Kong, Seoul) or U.S. trips, we usually handle all the arrangements ourselves. But for a rural destination about which we know very little, booking a trip through a local operator seems like the way to go.

A Photographic Guide to Birds of Peru

Sometimes these books can be hard to find. I found a couple on Amazon, but sometimes I have to look elsewhere. The best source for ornithology books is Buteo Books. I found books on birds of Bhutan and birds of Korea there that I had trouble locating elsewhere. They really know their stuff and they ship very quickly. Definitely worth a look if you like birds.