This year started big for the travel industry: new exotic destinations to be seen, the New York Times Travel Show and an unbelievable boost in travel apps. To top it all off, last Wednesday, January 30th, the social media network for travelers, Gogobot, launched its first “GO-and-TELL” at Culturefix in New York City.
As a proud Pro 2013 and future Gogobot blogger, I had the pleasure to attend and meet other travel fanatics like myself. The inaugural campaign GO-and-TELL featured Billy Zeb Smith, which presented the audience with a teaser of his documentary: Where The Road Ends. A passionate humanitarian, avid explorer and documentarian aiming to preserve indigenous cultures, he discussed his efforts to preserve the Darién region in Panama, and some of the challenges that have to be addressed.
Photos courtesy of www.WheretheRoadEndsFilm.com
More about the Darién region and what makes it unique:
The Darién is home to three unique tribes of indigenous people: the Emberá, the Kuna, and the Wounaan. With the absence of roads, things like television and the Internet haven’t had the capability to impact their communities, allowing them to sustain the same types of lifestyles they have for millennia. This lack of impact hasn’t just benefited the local people: with the largest population of jaguars outside of the Amazon, along with an unrecorded amount of reptiles, fish, amphibians, bugs, over a thousand species of birds, and a constantly growing encyclopedia of plants and trees, the Darién is as vital an ecological zone as any on the planet, and the last of its kind in all of North America. The fact that it acts as a corridor between the North and South American continents only magnifies its importance. For more info and to place donations, visit http://www.wheretheroadendsfilm.com/
With Jennifer Layne Cardon, Gogobot NYC’s Community Manager
Documentarian Billy Zeb Smith discussing his Where The Road Ends film and its challenges
Photo courtesy of Cait Oppermann from Red Tread Studio
So, if you feel you have a travel story to tell, sign up for a free account on Gogobot and tell your story through travel reviews and guides. And why not join the Gogobot community for next month’s GO-and-TELL event, for a fun night of drinks, a complimentary meal, and some travel inspiration.
