BNT editor Ian Mackenzie rocking his Matador tee in Plaza del Bolivar, Colombia.

You asked us for a store, and now we’ve opened one up.

Matador Apparel is a collection of original designs that reflect the lifestyles of our members and values of our community. The designs you see on our online store have been contributed by Matador designers, artists, photographers and travelers for people to wear as they explore the world. We also offer a line of custom coffee mugs, catering to our die-hard community coffee drinkers.

Ways of accessing the store:

1) There’s a new link called “Store” under Matador Goods.

2) You can bookmark – http://www.cafepress.com/matadortravel – directly

The team is currently working on new designs within the next few months, and will be expanding the selection to include bags, stationery, and other sweet gear

Bonus – Be sure to send us shots of you in your Matador apparel during your travels! We may run a photo essay on Matador Trips – Where has Matador been?

Twice named Travel Journalist of the Year, award-winning photographer Peter Guttman has traveled all seven (7) continents, exploring and photographing in over 200 (yes, 200!) countries for the likes of Conde Nast Traveler, The Los Angeles Times, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Vogue, and many more.

His photographs have also graced the covers of about a hundred Fodor’s and Frommer’s guidebooks.

To spread the word about Brazil’s natural beauty, Peter Guttman will be sharing some of his masterpieces with our Matador readers. The Brazilian photos were displayed as part of the annual meetings at the United Nations last year.

Each professionally framed 16-by 24-inch photograph is valued at $800. And the best part?

We’re giving away five (5) framed autographed photographs from Brazil. They make the perfect inspirational gift for budding photographers.

Disclaimer – This particular giveaway is limited to only US-based readers.

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

@leighfitz, @crfranke, @toneesh, @hosteldog, and @worldyking.

We’ll be contacting them directly to send them their signed photographs.

Want to win more free stuff from Matador? Follow us here @matadornetwork and keep your eyes peeled for the next contest!

Feature photo from Brazil by Paul Sullivan

Photo by Fauxen

There’s something appealing—especially to Matador readers—about the narrative of someone who has it all—the coveted job, a nice house that’s been paid for, a satisfying social life—chucking it to explore a completely different path.

Most of Matador’s editorial team has done just that, as have a number of our community members and MatadorU students, including JoAnna Haugen and Amiee Maxwell.

So we tend to like books like Lucinda Fleeson’s Waking Up in Eden, a memoir of her transition from a respected big city reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer to her time as a cottage-dwelling employee of the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kauai, Hawaii who wasn’t welcomed warmly or easily by her peers.

The best part of this book isn’t Fleeson’s own story, though — even the part where she gives herself over to a brief but passionate sexual fling with a local surfer.

Instead, it’s the parts where she takes a journalistic approach to the other subject of the book, the Eden referred to in the title. Hawaii’s plant life—its story of invasion, resistance, and near extinction—is a metaphor for Hawaii’s social and cultural history, over which Fleeson demonstrates a knowledgeable command.

She’s able to choose some of the best anecdotes about the islands’ people and plants to help make this history real to readers and, importantly, to make Hawaii matter to a country that has often allowed the geographic distance of the islands translate into a distance of identity and relationship as well.

It seems particularly appropriate that Fleeson’s book was published this year, the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s incorporation into the U.S. as the country’s 50th state. Perhaps her gentle insistence that Hawaii is worth our attention as more than a vacation destination will encourage readers to nurture a deeper interest in the islands.

And that would be the very best part of her book.

Matador Member – Ms Lala

Photos by Ms Lala

I love to laugh and converse into the night with complete strangers. I cry and dance when I listen to music. I don’t let my skin color stop me from carrying a tray of brownies and crashing a party full of locals. I’m always embarrassing myself.

To me, the most attractive thing in a man is…his mind. If you can outwit me, then you got me.

Be sure to check out Ms Lala’s Matador profile.

Favorite books: Alphabet of Manliness, The Lorax, The Poisonwood Bible, Everything Is Illuminated, Musicophelia, Anthropologist on Mars, The Razors Edge, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being.

Feature Photo by Cessna 206. Photo Above by reurinkjan.

The only time I find the desire or need for travel damning is when I am without the means to do so but with the desire to do so. It’s in moments like these that I am forced to seek solace in others who have suffered before me and done the great service of recording, with pen and paper, their experiences.

William Henry (W.H.) Hudson

A quintessential writer of travel per se who captures the romantic novelty of foreign places and Quixotic escapades of wandering in distant lands, W.H. Hudson personifies the alluring spirit of roaming abroad.

Although marginalized by some of his contemporaries during the late 1800s and early 1900s, Hudson was popular enough to have his book, The Purple Land, mentioned in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

The Purple Land is a tale of elopement – fleeing Buenos Aires and seeking a new life in the once tumultuous but now semi-docile Uruguay.

The book is without doubt my favorite oeuvre of Hudson’s even though it’s not very well known. Hudson himself has largely been neglected—a real pity as most people who read him savor the experience.

The one book of his that may be remembered is Green Mansions, a tale of an Englishman in Venezuela who falls in love with a woman from an endangered tribe of natives. I’ve always felt it was misclassified as ‘fantasy’. The terms ‘romantic’ or ‘transcendental’ would have better reflected the spirit of the late 1800s and Hudson himself.

Harold William “Bill” (H.W.) Tilman

Being a staunch realist however, there is only so much romantic writing I can enjoy without wanting to delve once more into harsh reality.

Perhaps H.W. Tilman might be considered more of an adventure writer than a travel writer, however his Shackleton-esque accounts of sailing and climbing would be impossible without travel.

A slightly eccentric Englishman, Tilman spent a fair amount of his life sailing around the world aboard his own ship, making landfall at unclimbed mountains, climbing to the summits, and filling in the lacunas of mid-20th century maps when at all possible before returning home.

The compendium, The Eight Sailing/Mountain-Exploration books, has a very self-explanatory title and is the perfect introduction to tales of adventure and misadventure in Patagonia, Greenland, and Antarctica.

Tilman knew and worked with Eric Shipton doing reconnaissance in the Himalaya. Shipton was well-known in the world of climbing and was the original candidate for the famous 1953 Everest Expedition in which Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay summitted the peak.

Heinrich Harrer

Not unlike Shipton and Tilman, Austrian climber-turned-writer Heinrich Harrer was no stranger to the Himalaya, other high peaks, and the precarious in general.

Although best known for his Seven Years in Tibet, Harrer was by no stretch of the imagination a ‘one-hit wonder’.

White Spider is a classic in the world of climbing dealing with the infamous Eiger’s north face.

For those not interested in climbing, he wrote Return to Tibet, his condemnation of Chinese-occupied Tibet stemming from a 1983 return to what he called ‘his second country’, and a photography collection entitled Lost Lhasa.

In addition to his climbing fame, Harrer explored the Amazon with the former king of Belgium, Leopold III. While adventurous and exciting, his works are more than thrill and peril, and Harrer himself would have surely been the first to admit the importance of culture and the conflict of juxtaposed culture.

Chinua Achebe

Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe was another who knew that lesson well. His masterpiece Things Fall Apart is most certainly a required read for anyone traveling to a former European colony, especially in Africa, and definitely Nigeria.

Although a ferocious critic of Joseph Conrad—citing Conrad’s racism towards Africans—Achebe could also be included in that group of authors who dealt with the imperialism of Europe’s past. But from an astonishingly refreshing point of view, Achebe writes from the side of the subjugated.

Strictly speaking as an author, Achebe doesn’t fit the profile of a travel writer, but the lessons he teaches about cultures collocating and even competing is something paramount for anyone who travels abroad.

With the litany of tales, opinions, and books available, this small list of authors is just the tip of an iceberg.

That travelers are capable of maintaining their sanity while trying to choose the perfect location for the next sojourn is utterly amazing. Even more amazing is the fact that armchair travelers don’t become insane from jealously and envy.

Maybe the prospect of a forthcoming trip provides some meaning to normal life.

Specifications

It’s loaded with a 2.1GHz dual core processor, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and tops it all off with a dedicated graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 3200).

Gateway didn’t skimp out on the screen either – at a base price of $499.99, it sports a 15.6” LED LCD with a resolution of 1366×768, which is superior to the 1280×800 resolution other laptops in its price range and specifications class offer.

Performance

The laptop is a strong performer. General multitasking such as surfing the web, listening to music, and typing up an article didn’t produce a single hiccup. Though I was unable to test its gaming capabilities, its dedicated graphics card supports older generation games.

Battery life isn’t too shabby either. I was able to get about 2 ½ hours of battery life with the screen on full brightness and Windows running in “balanced” mode. Getting even more battery life by messing with power settings and lowering screen brightness is possible.

It has a sturdy and full keyboard (number pad included) that doesn’t sacrifice any of the other major keys. Also, for those who aren’t big fans of Windows Vista, there is no reason to worry. If you buy the laptop now, you’ll get a voucher for a free upgrade to Windows 7.

Bottom Line

Anyone in the market for a laptop should give this one a look. It’s without a doubt one of the best laptops you can get for the money, and you’ll be getting a computer that is solidly built and can cope with just about anything you throw at it.

Feature Photo by ohadweb.Photo Above by TheTruthAbout.

A bad situation is made worse when you’re in a foreign country, unsure of who to contact.

This is the situation CancelThatCard.com was designed for. The website has a simple design that allows frustrated travelers to quickly locate the right phone number to call in a credit card emergency.

On the front page, just choose whether the missing card is credit or debit. For credit cards, select the region where you’re currently located. The website will pull up a page with phone numbers listed by country for every major credit card or bank that you need to get in touch with. For debit, select the bank, and the phone numbers are listed by region.

CancelThatCard.com is a great web address to memorize for those situations you hope you’re never in.

Matador Member – Neha

Photos by Neha

I write because it keeps me sane. I travel because it gives me something to write about – a circle that conspires to keep me busy and broke.

Be sure to check out Neha’s Matador profile.

Favorite books: The Handmaid’s Tale, My Name is Red, City of Djinns, The Piano Tuner, Maximum City, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Atonement, The English Patient …

One of the sleekest portable speakers out on the market, the iMainGo2 not only provides high quality “room-flooding” sound when hooked to your MP3 player, its hard casing helps protect it too.

Other nifty features include:

* Premium titanium high output stereo speakers
* Tuned porting for amazing bass reproduction
* Ultra-efficient digital music amplifier
* Battery life up to 30 hours
* Includes 4 AAA Energizer alkaline batteries and a removable strap

In addition to iPods, it also supports other media players such as Zunes and iPhones, and can be used as an external sound system for cellphones, laptops, electric guitars, and a host of other portable devices.

Readily available for purchase at Eastern Mountain Sports, Target, Amazon.com, and of course, its official website.

And the best part? We’re giving away four (4) copies of the iMainGo2 Speaker!

Disclaimer – This particular giveaway is limited to only US-based readers.

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

@20_30_40, @heyijun, @worldyking, and @leyatem.

We’ll be contacting them directly to send them their iMainGo2 Portable speakers.

Want to win more free stuff from Matador? Follow us here @matadornetwork and keep your eyes peeled for the next contest!

Feature Photo by S Baker. Photo Above by respres

For travelers chronicling their journeys through words and pictures, amassing tons of data without a storage safety net to rely on is risky. There are several ways to keep your data safely tucked away in an online cubbyhole.

As you’re reviewing various options, here are some factors to consider:

Space – How much do you need?

Cost – Storing data shouldn’t mean shredding cash.

While there are sites designed specifically for hosting photos or videos, this piece covers what do you do with the rest of your data.

Photo by adria richard

E-mail

If your needs are basic, the simplest solution is to e-mail files to yourself. Most free e-mail accounts come with plenty of free storage if you just want to keep copies of critical documents.

A scan of your passport, birth certificate and other personal information can easily be organized in a folder and accessed whenever you need it.

Use it if your needs are minimal and you’re good at keeping your passwords secure (which is pretty important in any event).

Lose it if you need to store hundreds of files in a flexible, organized way.

Free File Storage

Several companies promote free file storage. Some may be around for decades, but do you really want to trust that?

File sharing sites like Megaupload and RapidShare offer great features but have speed and other restrictions for their free users. You should also be wary of any software a site asks you to install.

Fortunately, two giants in the data industry are diving into the storage business.

For a free service, Microsoft Skydrive has some great qualities. 25Gb of free storage, albeit with some limitations. While the file system is intuitive, you have to select files to upload one at a time.

No uploading of entire folders which is a deal breaker for most purposes. Another limitation is a max 50Mb file size, so uploading that HD movie of you sledding down the Spanish Steps on a piece of plywood ain’t gonna work.

The long-rumored Google storage service, Gdrive, is supposedly coming soon and may be worth the wait. As in most areas that Google has jumped into, expect them to be very competitive and probably push beyond the limits of Microsoft’s service.

Use it if you have several large files and don’t mind uploading them a few at a time

Lose it if you have huge files, like movie clips, or want to save hundreds of files at once

Full Back-ups and Syncing

If you want to be ready for catastrophic failure and keep your online storage sync’d with your computer, you need a back-up service. Most of these will automatically back-up all of your data whenever you’re connected, updating any files that are new or changed.

Some allow easy access to your files from any internet connected computer or your mobile device, some are useful only for a full restore if your computer dies or disappears.

For a full drive, the first sync could take days even with a fast connection, but you can pick and choose fewer files and folders to include.

While many of these companies offer “free” services, the free limit of 2Gb or less makes that unattractive. With a subscription, however, you have a great way to keep all your data safe in case of disaster.

Here are some of the more popular options:

• Mozy: Unlimited storage, automatic syncs. $54.45 per year
• Carbonite: It worked for Jabba the Hutt, why not you? Unlimited storage, automatic syncs, file access from any online computer; $54.95 per year
• Livedrive: In addition to data sync, it includes ftp support and individual file access, accessible from any connected mobile device. Approx. $65 per year for 100Gb
• Dropbox: Syncs your computer and allows easy access to individual files as well as easy file sharing with friends. Pricier at $120 per year for 50Gb

Use it if you want to have an online copy of everything to protect yourself

Lose it if you think spending a few bucks is too much for peace of mind or your spotty internet connection makes you weep at the thought of syncing your entire 160Gb drive

Your Web Host

If you already have a website with your own hosting account and are enough of a tech geek to set up private ftp access, it can be very cost effective to use an existing web host. One advantage here is that you’ll have your files nearby if you want to move one to your website for public download.

Use it If you’re already paying for a web host with plenty of room to spare

Lose it If programming anything beyond a microwave oven challenges you. You’ll be working without tech support in most cases.