This is The Savvy Traveler and I'm Diana Nyad.
Back in the '70s, when I traveled to the remote rainforests of Borneo or the Antarctic waters of
Patagonia, people were awestruck. Then last year I was asked to write a guest column called "My
Favorite Place" for a national travel magazine. They asked me to suggest eight possible places and
they would choose. Borneo and Patagonia were on my list -- and the bike ride from Hanoi to Ho Chi
Minh City in Vietnam, and the hike across the Northern Australia Outback. The magazine told me all
my choices had been written about ad nauseam in this particular column, and they were hoping I had
been someplace more out of the way. More out of the way? I was swimming with 100 ton whales
in Patagonia. It was the thrill of my life, and now it was too common a trip to grab people's attention?
People who at one time would have never dreamed of traveling farther than New York or New Orleans
in their lifetimes are now going to India and Africa, and New Zealand and the Amazon. Fares are
cheaper, planes cover more routes, word of mouth spreads when travelers return home, the Internet
and the media show us how accessible the world is.
To start off the New Year, we're going to ask four travel experts just where travel is headed
this year, next year, 20 years out.
