Following the Equator

Our 10 Best of 2008

This is the 320th post of 2008 at Following the Equator, and we decided to commemorate our blog's first full calendar year with a top-10 list of favorite posts.

We had a lot of stories, videos, photos, interviews, tips and perspectives about educational travel. We launched some regular weekly features, including our Tip of the Week and Photo of the Week. We debuted Life on Tour, introduced EF on YouTube and EF on Facebook and promoted the EF Tours group on Flickr (above). And, along the way, we encountered a lot of inspiring travelers.

Following the Equator also was nominated for a Blogger's Choice Award and finished fifth out of 1,177 blogs for Best Travel Blog. Thank you to everyone who supported our blog in 2008 by voting, reading, sharing, commenting and subscribing. We're looking forward to an even more successful 2009.

Twain's World

Mark Twain never grows old. That's the premise of the new Time magazine that just hit newsstands.

A gorgeous portrait of Twain graces the July 14 cover of Time's Annual Making of America Issue, which illustrates how Twain not only was the man of his times ("America's Original Superstar," he's called) but also a man for all times. His wit and wisdom on politics and race, just to name two, make Twain as relevant today as in the late 1800s.

While Twain is lauded as the inventor of the American novel and the forerunner to today's political funnymen such as Jon Stewart, Time also points out what we well know about our hero: "Twain was best known as a travel writer."

Time created a remarkable map (above) that marks where Twain traveled in writing his five travel books: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), A Tramp Abroad (1880), Life on the Mississippi (1883) and, of course, Following the Equator (1897).

Ich bin ein ... Amerikaner

The United States Census Bureau includes a section on the census that asks Americans to state their ancestry. In the 2000 census, 80 percent of respondents complied, dutifully stating their origins. The results are interesting and possibly unexpected.

The most commonly claimed ancestry in the United States is … German. Forty-two million Americans (or 15 percent) indicated that their roots were either German or part-German. The runner-up ancestry was Irish, with 11 percent. Third was African-American, at 9 percent (24.9 million people), which just barely edged out English, also 9 percent (24.5 million). Rounding out the top five was Mexican, at 7 percent.

Learning African geography

Whenever I play the highly addictive Traveler IQ Challenge on Facebook or try naming as many countries as I can in five minutes or even just play with the globe with my daughter, I'm usually thwarted by my lack of African geography knowledge.

Well, I finally have found some help. The Lonely Planet Travel Blog pointed us toward an online quiz to test (and teach) African geography.

I'm getting better at deciphering between Niger and Nigeria, for instance, but I still need to work on remembering Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Equatorial Guinea.

Travel Tidbits: Can you spare $10 million?

Think the U.S. economy is problematic? It's nothing compared to the economic crisis in Zimbabwe.

Inflation is so bad—believed to be 50,000 percent annually—that Zimbabwe's central bank just began issuing notes worth 10,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars. Yes, 10 million bucks. That's the equivalent of 100 of the bills pictured.

Ten million dollars is believed to be the largest denomination of any currency in the world, but don't get too excited. At the current rate, it could be worthless in a few weeks. According to the BBC, one $10 million note (or bearer cheque, as its called) is worth less than $4 U.S. on the black market. That means the $100,000 cheque pictured is worth less than 4 U.S. pennies.

Gadling pointed us to a blog that describes Zimbabwe's rampant hyperinflation. The writer reports that the new $10,000,000 bill is the same color, layout and design as an old $20 bill (which expired in July). Fifteen months ago, that $20 bill was worth $0.025 USD; that same bill is now worth $0.00000005 USD. Hence, the $10 million note.

To illustrate what that means in daily life, here's how much it cost to buy a beer back in December.

Now, on to more Travel Tidbits …