Lonely Planet Travellers' Pulse Panel - Call for Panelists

Lonely Planet are recruiting panelists for their Travellers' Pulse Panel. Basically, you get to dicuss travel with other travel fanatics (i.e. what you do already) and maybe win some prizes!

Interested? Click on the link below to register. 

Calling all travellers!

Lonely Planet invites you to join our Travellers’ Pulse Panel!

Our panel is a discussion forum where we engage travellers and listen to what you have to say about travel – where to go, how to plan, and other creative travel ideas. We’ve always got interesting topics up for you to comment on, like our current survey on what you’re looking for when you take a trip to a theme park.

Joining the panel is free and if you’re accepted to be a panelist, we’ll send you a free Lonely Planet 2010 calendar as a gift to welcome you on board!  Not only will you get to talk about travel, but we regularly run promotions exclusively for panelists where you can win prizes like Lonely Planet products and Amazon gift cards.

If you’d like to join this panel (numbers are limited) all you need to do is click the link below and take a short survey to register. We’ll look at your responses and depending on your age, travel experience and country of residence you might be one of the people we’re looking for!  The type of people we need on the panel changes from time to time, so if you aren’t suitable for our panel this time we may contact you to participate in future.

https://www.travellerspulse.com/R.aspx?a=56&Source=BLOG

Thanks again!

Regards,

The Lonely Planet Travellers’ Pulse team

What's On in London - Travel Shows

It may be Awards Season in Hollywood, but here in London the Travel Show Season is about to kick off. So if you're in the mood for hanging out with other travellers, getting inspiration for that next trip or just seeing what's out there, read on.

Adventure Travel Live 

"A one-stop shop for anyone planning an off-the-beaten-track travel adventure"

Where: Royal Horticultural Halls, Victoria, London

When: Fri Jan 29th - Sun Jan 31st

Prices: £6 in advance/£10 on the door (under 16s go free)

After an absence in 2009, Adventure Travel is back with a new home, new sponsors and a new programme. Highlights include:

• An exhibition of winning images from the Travel Photographer of the Year competition
• Over 60 free talks, with travel luminaries such as Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Nomad Travel and STA Travel.
• On Sun 31st, Simon Calder's Travel Clinic on LBC 97.3 will be coming LIVE from Adventure Travel

The emphasis is on off-the-beaten track travel with a good mix of tour operators, gear manufacturers and publishers. So can Adventure Travel put itself back on the map in 2010?

For the tired exhibitors and the foot-sore visitors, it's only 4 sleeps from Adventure Travel until the next show:

Destinations London

"Where in the world do you want to go next...?"

Where: Earls Court, London
When: Thurs Feb 4th - Sun Feb 7th
Prices: £10 in advance (£5 late-night Thurs after 5pm)/£12 on the door (under 12s go free)

The matriarch of the travel show clan, Destinations pulls them through the doors every year. The format and the show itself are comfortably predictable, but no less interesting for it.

Destinations is divided into 8 "zones" (7 geographical, plus 1 for Adventure Travel). It's worth getting a map (thoughtfully provided by The Times, who sponsor the show) and sitting down with a cup of coffee to work out where you want to go and who you'd like to see.

Here's a snapshot of what's on:

• Wanderlust's Travel Photographer of the Year exhibition
• Meet the Experts theatre. Talks range from Going Solo to Travel Writing to Career Breaks to Sustainable Travel to "In conversation with..." chats with adventurers and explorers.
• World Entertainment Stage with performances from around the world

(Helpful hint: talks are VERY popular, so get to the theatre early to avoid disappointment)

It's a big show, so allow a decent amount of time. Late night Thurs can be fun, but by Sun pm everybody is usually a bit tired...

Destinations moves to Birmingham on March 5-7th.

If that's whetted your appetite, then you'll want to come along to the 2nd Annual Travellers Tales Festival at the Royal Geographical Society in London on Feb 19th-21st. Come back soon for more details on this!

Mexican Hot Sauce...Made in Devon

There are plenty of Mexican eating joints in London, but Wahaca is in a slightly different league. For a start, it's so cool that they don't take reservations. You just turn up and wait in line (outside, on the stairs or on a bench downstairs) until a table becomes available. We visited on a cold January Friday, so opted to go for early eats (5.30pm) and avoid the queues.

Wahaca is the brainchild of Masterchef winner Thomasina Miers, who wanted to bring the tastes and flavours of Mexico to London.The restaurant styles itself as "market-style" with the ingredients all sourced as locally and ethically as possible.

The menu is notable for its Street Food section, with smaller dishes for sharing. There are also soups, salads and Platos Fuertes (bigger plates). As first-timers, we went for the Wahaca (Street Food) Selection:

• 3 Pork Pibil Tacos
• 3 Seasonal Vegetable Tacos
• 2 Huitlacoche Quesadillas
• 2 Herring Tostadas
• 2 Chicken Taquitos
• Green rice and black beans

Beer 'n' dips

Chicken Taquitos

 

Or was this the chicken taquitos?

The portions of each are small (think tapas-sized Tacos) but plenty for 2 reasonable hungry people.

If Tequila floats your boat, there are 12 different ones on the menu ("25ml servings. Try sipping not shooting"). For the tamer diner, there are also beers, cocktails and soft drinks.

If you're still hungry, or fancy something sweet, then the Churros y chocolate is the top-listed dessert: mexican doughnuts with chocolate sauce. Or there's vanilla ice-cream with homemade caramel sauce.

Strictly sweet. Strictly Delicious. Strictly Unnecessary

A word of warning: when we went to leave just after 7pm, the queue of hopeful diners exceeded 50 people. Although they looked very happy cradling their drinks (and willing people to finish up and leave), this is probably not a place to go if you're in a hurry and it's late.

That said, Wahaca could well become my new favourite Mexican restaurant!

Devon has quite the climate for chilli-growing