Hostels Aren’t Just for Europe Anymore

Los Angeles, CA, June 6, 2013, 2013—“500 Hostels in the USA (& Canada & Mexico): Backpackers and Flashpackers,” (ISBN 978-0988490598, Hypertravel Books) by Hardie Karges, is available now at www.amazon.com and elsewhere online.  The most comprehensive book yet to document and catalog hostels in North America, “500 Hostels” is more than just a guide to hostels for backpackers.   For one thing, it’s aimed at any and all independent travelers, not just backpackers, since many backpackers have now upgraded to “flashpackers,” a more modern and tech-savvy version of the original concept.  For another, it also combines a directory with “how-to” information and personal vignettes of all the places where hostels are found.  And this is just the beginning.  Now easily found on the East and West coasts, hostels are making rapid gains in the country’s interior.

Hostels have been slow to catch on in North America, especially the USA, whether because of the country’s legendary individualism or hotel prices lower than Europe’s, which mitigated the need for them.  Of course, price isn’t the only factor.  “They’re fun, too,’ Karges says.  “You can meet people from all over the world, and most of them speak quite acceptable English.”  Canada is way ahead of the US on a proportionate basis, and so is Mexico.  Canada, in fact, spans the era of old-style ‘youth hostels’, while Mexico adapts its traditional plethora of homey hostales to make a smooth easy transition  to modern hostels.  In a few short years, they already have some of the best in the world, and Mexico City has a larger number of them than any other city in the hemisphere.  The Caribbean coast has even more.   

Author Karges has traveled to one hundred fifty countries over the course of forty years, much of it described in intimate detail and vivid prose in his narrative travel book, “Hypertravel: 100 Countries in 2 Years.” This is the third book of the ‘Backpackers and Flashpackers’ series, after previous versions for Eastern and Western Europe.   “A happy accident of these books is that it suggests a new paradigm for travel guides, one that I would use—just the facts, and just the best places,” says Karges.  After all, these books are at their best when used in advance, to facilitate a hostel-based trip.  If there aren’t any hostels there, then a place just may not be worth visiting. 

Hypertravel Books is a newly formed imprint in Los Angeles, CA, with the mission to promote smart travel.  Advise if you would like to see a PDF or paperback copy of the book for review purposes.  Advance copies of the manuscript for the next edition—Australia and the Pacific—are also available.

Karges can be contacted at hyper.travel@aol.com and 1-323-366-2017 Pacific Time when he’s in the US, jack1free@gmail.com and +44-7937-638968 when not.