What is 3 Travel Bloggers?

YouTube is the place to be these days – more and more people are using YouTube as a search engine for inspiration and ideas, especially when it comes to travel. You know how they say that a picture is worth a thousand words…well imagine how many words thousands of moving pictures represents! The advent of the GoPro and easily available drones, not to mention every half-decent camera being equipped with HD video, means that YouTube is now home to a plethora of travel videos, allowing anyone to get inspired to travel from the relative safety of their couch. However, destination videos can often be a bit of a disappointment: you know the ones – a travel video presented by an attractive model, showing nothing but postcard shots of famous vistas and never actually offering any personality or real information. The internet is full of them! Enter ‘3 Travel Bloggers’…

What is ‘3 Travel Bloggers’? 3 Travel Bloggers is an antidote to the same old bland travel videos: made by real travelers for real travelers. A dream team of 9 (I know, I know, I said 3, right!? I’ll get to that…) professional travel bloggers, experts in their fields, travelling the world alongside Avianca and IHG, to show off the real highlights of a variety of beautiful destinations, from a variety of different perspectives. It’s guaranteed to appeal to all sorts of travellers, as each blogger brings different interests, passions and personality to the (completely metaphorical) table.

You can view all 3 Travel Bloggers videos right here on the Youtube channel.  You can also follow the bloggers and their adventures on the 3 Travel Bloggers Facebook page.

 

The project started on these very (online) pages back in 2014, when our very own JL and Marcela got together with one of the world’s top travel bloggers (who also happens to be Colombian), Daniel Tirado, of Viajando sin Papel Higienico, and Toya Viudes of Colombia de una, to make a short travel video all about Medellin. The video showed off a variety of different sides to ‘the City of Eternal Spring’, many of which were even unfamiliar to me, someone who has visited Medellin many times. And, most importantly of all, the video made me want to go back and explore these new discoveries for myself. That’s the goal of 3 Travel Bloggers: to highlight not only the classic sights of a destination, but to dig deeper in a way that only real travelers can, to show off the hidden highlights that many potential visitors might never have heard of!

Since that very first video ‘3 Travel Bloggers’ has gone from strength to strength, and can now boast a whole catalogue of excellent travel videos from all over Latin America, and even across the pond in the UK! The most important development however, has been the addition of the rest of the ‘3 Travel Bloggers’ team! I should explain: travel bloggers are wandering, nomadic souls by nature, and it can be tricky to consistently pin them down to a regular filming schedule, so we needed to go out and find some more bloggers to complement the original team…plus, more bloggers means more personalities, and more personalities more variety and better videos! Therefore, the initial team of 3 had evolved into a stellar lineup of 9 Travel Bloggers!

The format remains the same: a team of 3 bloggers heads off to a beautiful destination and discovers it’s magic and hidden secrets…only now…we have a revolving rota of some of the best and brightest names in Latin American travel blogging! So who are the 9 Travel Bloggers?! Well, here’s a nice concise list…

• JL and Marcela – our very own founders represent ‘1’ travel blogger in a sense, as their niche is traveling as a family with their (already scarily well traveled) daughter Maria del Mar. The founders of this venture, JL and Marcela bring a real passion for family travel and culture to the table. Anyone wanting to have kids and not give up on traveling the world could do a lot worse than watch their videos!
• Dani Tirado – Daniel brings a restless and relentless energy and passion for adventure to the table: he is one of the most followed travel bloggers in the world, and his fans love to watch him seek out the adventurous aspects of absolutely any destination…and believe me, he can sniff out adventure absolutely anywhere, even in the biggest cities! If you’re something of an urban adventurer, then watch Dani’s videos.
• Arianna Arteaga Quintero – Arianna is sort of like Daniel’s partner in spontaneity and energy! The pint-sized Venezuelan blogger is a bundle of energy and lights up the screen with her enthusiasm and passion whenever she features in a ‘3 Travel Bloggers’ episode.
• Toya Viudes – this Spanish Colombia-based travel blogger has a real passion for exposing the unexpected side of a place, as evidenced by her taking the other bloggers to a tango club in Medellin! But she also connects brilliantly with people from anywhere in the world, and her contributions to 3 Travel Bloggers shine through in her interactions with people from every destination she visits.
• Arturo Bullard – definitely the ‘cool’ travel blogger, Arturo is a Peruvian photographer with a penchant for adventure, and an unforgettable look – with his trademark long hair and beard kept in check by the ever-present headband, Arturo is a companion in adventure to Daniel: expect him to seek out stunning landscapes and off-the-beaten-track spots in every video he’s in…plus, he looked badass in that pink Cadillac in Havana!
• Gaia Passarelli – the wildcard in the group, Brazilian MTV VJ Gaia, brings an undeniable presence in front of the camera that can only come from a life spent presenting on television. The only non-native Spanish speaker in the team, Gaia offers a more reflective and thoughtful take on travel to the team, and viewers from all over the vast country of Brazil to boot!
• Laura Lazzarino – Argentine blogger Laura has traveled all over the world, and approaches travel thoughtfully and reflectively – she’s keen to engage deeply with any destination she visits and brings a real depth to the videos she appears in…often with her partner, fellow Argentine blogger…
• Juan Pablo Villarino – the poetic soul of the team, Juan Pablo can always be counted on to sum up the appeal of a destination with an almost effortlessly well-crafted turn of phrase. He’s like the perfect soulful ‘yin’ to Daniel’s restless, adventurous ‘yang’.

 

 

So that’s the ‘3 Travel Bloggers’ dream team – you can get a full sense of each blogger’s unique character in the second Medellin video, a full-length trip all around Antioquia’s capital and its surrounding attractions with, wait for it…all 9 travel bloggers together! But make sure you take the time to watch several of the videos: each one has its own unique style brought to life by the individual passions of each bloggers…it’s like what the legendary DJ John Peel once said about one of my favourite bands, The Fall: “Always the same, always different!” That’s the beauty of ‘3 Travel Bloggers’ – you can always rely on the format to deliver an exciting, interesting and informative take on each destination visited, but each episode contains that unique element based on what combination of bloggers has been selected for the trip.

But, I hear you cry, why are you telling me, and English speaker, about these Spanish-language travel videos?! That’s a good question, with a good answer! These bloggers are native speakers in 99% of the destinations they visit: this truly allows them to get to the heart of a destination in a way that perhaps a non-native speaker might not. They can interact with the local people in depth, and really expose the heart of the places the visit. As well as that, the images captured by the videos transcend the language being spoken –  whether it’s the mouth-watering food in Lima, cruising in a Cadillac through the timeless Havana streets, or horseback riding through Chile’s wine region, these videos are designed to inspire, and, whether you speak Spanish or not, these images are sure to inspire! As it stand 2 of the videos now have English subtitles, and the rest will be subtitled soon enough.

Beyond these reasons (which are pretty darn good reasons in themselves) there’s one overriding reason to watch 3 Travel Bloggers – videos like these are undoubtedly the future for travel-related content: collaborative, inspiring videos, made by true travelers, with fellow travelers in mind. No polished style-over-substance, commercial-like videos; nothing but informative content, brought to you by experts in their fields. Collaboration should be the essence of travel blogging: after all, what is travel if not the chance to connect with fellow humans all around the world?! ‘3 Travel Bloggers’ is the result of collaboration between some of the world’s best travel bloggers, and that’s exciting, regardless of what language you speak! You’ll be seeing a lot more travel content like this in the near future, trust me…

 

 

So check out the ‘3 Travel Bloggers’ YouTube channel for all of the videos to date, and many more to come this year, along with Avianca’s ‘3 Travel Bloggers’ channel, where you can see bonus footage, and smaller excerpts from different adventures. And happy traveling!

Chris