About

About Me

Not surprisingly you probably want to know a bit of who’s behind this website , so here is a self interview with questions I would expect to hear from you.

Tell me, who are you and where do you live now?
My name is Federico Arrizabalaga Sandoval, a 30 something year old guy who was born in Chicago, raised in Spain and has lived in Belgium and Australia as well. I recently traveled for a year, am currently in Mexico but don’t know where I’ll when you read this.

When did you first start to travel, and how?
Looking back in time I would say that the travel bug creaped in during my latter college years: the need to surf new waves became too appealing as it happens to any surf aficionado and I found myself dragging friends and brother to Portugal, southwest France and northern Spain. It is then that I began to feel the excitement that travelling gave me and thus contemplated going further and for more time.

Do you know that there is something called “work” and that it’s usually the only legal way to make money, which is what finances travel?
Really? And how do you spell such word?? Joking aside when I was 23 I decided I wanted to make a bigger move, so I got a scholarship and moved to Michigan in the US (check out where Houghton is- it snowed 9 of the ten months I was there). I later got a job in south Florida (ha!) where I started backpacking (and surfing) as much as I could while somehow keeping the full time job. Trust me, it can be done.

You mean you have actually studied?
Indeed! I’m a Civil Engineer and have a Masters degree in International Management, the latter studied in Australia which allowed some travel in that part of the world.

How many countries have you visited?
Check out this cool little map from www.travbuddy.com I use. I’ve been to over 70 countries so far: Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia And Herzegovina, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Gambia, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Laos, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Venezuela and Vietnam

 

Of these, which are your favourite and why?
Costa Rica (beautiful nature, lovely people and great surf) and Thailand (charming people and culture, superb food and a plethora of activities to do) have traditionally been at the top of the list, but I was recently in Taiwan and it blew me away: the people are in my opinion the nicest in the world (sorry Ticos, you are still very cool) and there is just so much to explore and do too.
However, you know what? I consider that naming a country as a “favourite” is not a good indicator as to how much you enjoy travelling there. What I actually think is important is the travel experience that stays with you years after being there, and with this in mind sleeping in the desert(Tunisia), the views in Machu Pichu (Peru), Uyuni’s Salt flat (Bolivia) or relaxing in Corfu (Greece) are just a few of the many recurring memories I have.

Any place you would not go back to?
I once said that about Bulgaria because of a bad experience, but guess what, times change, life brings you new ones, and I can now tell you that I like it very much and will certainly go back.

Do you travel alone?
I have started several trips alone, but as always I end up meeting fellow travellers and making friends along the way. I have also done trips with friends, and ever since I got married a few years ago I have done most of my travelling with my wife Liza, who had never backpacked before and now enjoys the experiences she is living which she never thought she would. Most of them anyhow…

Finally, do you have any hobbies besides travelling?
Absolutely. I love ocean sports such as surfing, bodyboarding or windsurfing, and just recently discovered I can snowboard too. I like to read, and sharing my passion for travel through my writing and photography though this website.

 

 

About MaiTravelSite

I created MaiTravelSite in May 2009 as a simple website where I could keep most of my travel tools readily available (travel search engines I use, etc) and had a smaller section inside where I would keep track of the 10 month trip I began 5 days after it was first published. It took me almost the entire trip to realize that the essence of the website was the blog, and changed it into such in December of 2009. By doing this I began to have readers and followers other than family members and friends and continued the transformation until becomming what it is today. If interested in learning some of the technical tools MaiTravelSite uses these are them:

Host: I have used Powweb for all my websites since day 1. It’s cheap (3.88 USD/month), user friendly, reliable, and has superb customer service with 24/7 online chat support to get you sorted right away.

WordPress Theme: MaiTravelSite has been running on free themes until I recently upgraded to DaVinci, a professional premium theme by Solostream, and what a great decision it has been! Daily traffic almost doubled within 1 week, although I cannot guarantee this will be your case. It is very flexibble, customizable (for a fee if complex), has a super clean code Google’s spiders love to crawl, and best of all the support forum is reviewed daily by Solostream staff to help you out with any questions you might have.

SEO: There are a few plugins out there that help you optimize each page or post your write for search engines, thus increasing traffic and visibility. I use ClickBump SEO because it requires a smaller bandwidth to function, offers on-page optimization, on page LSI suggestions and best of all, is the cheapest of the three. I cannot say that my blog’s traffic has sky-rocketed because of it, but I do know that the posts I now write are optimized as are older posts I improved, now appearing early in the search engine results pages (2 of them are even on page 1 for the selected keywords!).