23-year old Madrileño Pablo Barbadillo Maestre went to the Amazon in south eastern Peru to research for his thesis on the ethnoecology of big reptiles. He disappeared a few weeks ago and yesterday his body was found covered with bites from insects and animals. They identified him from the passport they found on him.

The cause of his death is still unknown but the guess is that he could have been attacked by tribes in the Amazon; however there is no evidence of violence.

This rings home because 1) he was a young student not afraid to travel alone in the wilderness of the Amazon 2) although he is said to be found in a remote area of the jungle, he had been there previously and was familiar with his surroundings. We can assume he was well prepared for the trip.

It could have been anyone. I wonder what he did wrong? I wonder if he could have avoided it? What protection items should he have taken with him that he didn't have already? What lesson can we learn from this?

We celebrated Earth Day here at Gadling with a contest, an ode, and a ticket out of hell. Not bad.

Also this week:

• Kelsey gave us a surfing lesson.
• Grant reviewed Burton's Sleeper Hoodie v2.0, and I'm seriously intrigued. Grant also had a nice chat with Virgin CEO David Cush -- check it out here.
  
• Matthew listed 5 mistakes that newcomers to Japan make.
• In his series Plane Answers, Kent responded to the question "When did first class become the crew lounge?"
• Jeremy brought us the news that the Inca Trail is booked up through September. If you're headed to Peru make sure you've got alternative plans for trekking to Machu Picchu.
  

That's all! Have a fabulous weekend.

World travelers just can't get enough of Peru's famous Inca Trail. But has the Inca Trail had enough of them? It may come as surprise to anyone still planning summer travel to Peru, but the world-famous path to Machu Picchu is completely sold out for the 2008 summer travel season, with the next available opening in September 2008.

As veteran Peru trekkers might know, the Peruvian government began imposing restrictions in 2005 on the number of hikers who could take the path each day to no more than 500. Couple this with the insane popularity of Machu Picchu on globetrotter "must-see" lists and increasingly affordable airfare deals and you have a serious supply and demand problem on your hands. While this quota is helping to preserve the impact of human visitors on this priceless cultural artifact, it's certainly frustrating news for anyone planning their trip to Peru around a stopover at the site.

If it turns out the big, bad Peruvian government has thwarted your travel plans this summer, don't despair just yet. As this article article points out, there are a few alternative routes to the famed Inca Trail including the Salkantay Trail, which also climaxes at Machu Picchu, along with the scenic Lares Valley and the spectacular Colca Canyon.

And if you're still dead set on that Inca Trail trek? Give it another try in the off-season. You might even have that million-dollar view at the top all to yourself.

A divorced British banker died after a blow to the head on the Inca Trail and was found in a nearby river--and it's raising more than a few eyebrows across the pond. Colin Murphy, 44, disappeared on News Year's day during a Christmas holiday to Peru from the town of Aguas Calientes in the Andes, not far from the Machu Picchu.

The last hours of his life were spent with 14 other holidayers, who left their campsite on New Year's Eve to grab a drink at the nearest watering hole. The next day, Mr. Murphy was not in his tent. It's believed the last person to see him alive was fellow tourist Harvey Layton, a construction worker he had befriend on the trip.

Called "the life and soul of any gathering.", Mr. Murphy's body has since been flown back to England, and while investigators are looking into his suspicious death, they're hesitant to speculate on what happened.

I guess I can stop complaining about how awful my New Year's Eve was ...

Every time I took a step, my wet sneakers made the same sound as when I'm slurping spaghetti. I just crossed Dead Woman's Pass (which won't seem as derogatory once you hear the full backstory) at 13,700 feet and all I wanted was to sit down, get out of my soaking clothes, and take a hot shower. But I couldn't, because I was on a four day trek on the Inca trail to the lost city of Machu Picchu.

Besides the rain (the rainy season is December to February), you'll have to deal with the cold (Under Armour helps), the sun (bring lots of sunscreen, trust me), the snow (one porter died a couple years ago at Dead Woman's Pass), the endless steps (both up and down), the wake-up times (4 am on the last day to get to Machu Picchu by sun-rise), and the traffic (thousands of tourists crowd the trail during the popular season, June to August).

Oh, and there's also the $300 or so you'll spend on mandatory porters and a guide.

Even with these hassles and expenses, I guarantee you won't regret hiking the Inca trail. In fact, it's a classic favorite on any traveler's life-list. These days, though, many guides like Lonely Planet will try to convince you to take an alternative hike, citing the crowds on the trail and a rushed itinerary.

But it's not just any old trail. Taking an alternative route will mean missing out on seeing the 10+ amazing ruins scattered throughout the 33-kilometer trail. And you can avoid most of the crowds by going outside of June to August, like I did. If you can afford it, hiring a private tour will help you feel less claustrophobic, since you can just zip right past other groups-or slow down and enjoy the ruins. Having said that, the standard 3-night / 4-day itinerary really gives you plenty of time to soak it all in.

Peruvians ended two days of protests against new laws allowing more development near historic sites. Rail service to the Inca ruins at Machu Picchu reopened and the nearest regional airport at Cuzco also reopened. The airport had been closed since Thursday when protestors stormed the facility and piled rocks and trees onto roads, according to AP.

Local leaders protested two laws, originally approved late last year, that permit the construction of new hotels and restaurants near historic sites. Last week, lawmakers ratified the disputed laws, and then modified them three days later to let regional governments decide whether to apply them.

I can't believe they want to develop the area more. I hope developers are not planning to replace the old train with some sort of highly efficient high-speed train. Hmmm. what would the Incas do?

Most travelers to Africa and South America have heard of Yellow Fever, even if only because there are countries within that have mandatory vaccinization requirements. People that live in these "Yellow Fever Zones" (an estimated 508 million in Africa alone) know this disease as a killer. This is also what is happening in Brazil.

ProMED mail, from the International Society of Infectious Disease, recently reported a third case and second fatality from YF since the new year. The latest case involved a 24-year-old man from the region of Goianesa. In 2008, there are 26 suspected cases, three confirmed, and 17 pending results of labwork. Six of the suspected cases have been excluded. Brazil also reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) that monkeys were dying of YF, in December 2007.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta has also released an outbreak notice and stresses the importance of the vaccine for travelers heading to yellow fever areas.

As of 2006, it seemed your fellow passengers on flights were quite polite. After all, a whole 62 percent only reclined their seats halfway out of consideration for the person behind them. But maybe 2007 was a bit nastier? (for instance, we learned that Delta started playing in-flight etiquette films)

At least for me, last year wasn't a good year. On a flight to Beijing, one old guy actually made my girlfriend cry when he admonished her for mistakenly reading a magazine in the seat-back pocket in front of us (it turned out to be his magazine). He just had to quip, "if you've flown more, you would know better."

That same snideness reared its ugly head a couple weeks ago when I was in Peru. Some guy (again, old) blew a fuse when he saw the size of my backpack, which was one of those standard 60-liter backpacking bag. And guess what he said? "If you've flown more, you would know better." (He said I should've checked in my bag because it took too much overhead bin space)

Were both cases because we were college students? Or are these two guys just really lonely and have nothing better to do than criticize everyone around them? By the way, the first guy on the flight to Beijing had to put up with my glares for the next 14 hours.

So I'm in the midst of planning a backpacking trip through Peru. As I was flipping through some reading material, I couldn't help but be bombarded by endless mentions of Machu Picchu. Yet there's a little known alternative to one of the seven modern wonders of the world.

It's Choquequirao, another lost Inca city, modeled after Machu Picchu in fact. And it's only 100 miles away. I'm still considering whether I can make it to both in a week. To hike the Inca trail to Machu Picchu takes 3-4 days. To hike to Choquequirao (after that 100 mile cab ride from Cusco) takes a little less.

Apparently Choquequirao gets only 1% of the tourists that Machu Picchu has to endure. It's just as big, but more sprawled out so things don't look as photogenic. If you're looking for a true lost city experience, though, I think Choquequirao might just be your best bet.

This might be a controversial position, but I'm not a fan of Kayak anymore. It's gotten rave reviews for being an all-you-can-eat airfare conglomerate that doesn't even charge you a buck (it works to aggregate data from other for-profit aggregators like Orbitz). People have also been saying it's great for multi-city searches and car rentals comparisons.

To all that, I say bah humbug! I just tried to book last-minute tickets to Peru using the site and the fares it gave me were completely outdated. I wasted at least an hour trying to track down a ticket that I could actually buy; each time I got excited about a fare, it would tell me the system was outdated and the ticket was no longer available.

At first it showed me some ridiculous 3-stop connections to Lima for $1,000, which is quite a steal this late in the game. But those were gone. Then it showed me some 2-stop connections for $1,200 through Spirit Airlines. But when it connected me to the airline's site, it abruptly changed the prices to $1,500. In its defense, Kayak did get most of the erroneous data from Orbitz, which on its own suffered the same problems.

Maybe I'm just grumpy I have to pay $1,500 for the tickets.