Site posts first-person tales of volunteer tourism

Traveling to do good, also known as "voluntourism" is a big trend in travel. It sounds great, but how do you know the quality of the experience you might have in a given volunteer setting?

Travelocity.com, www.travelocity.com, has now made it easier. A new section on the site, called Voluntourism Stories, deals with first-person stories of those who have volunteered on vacation. Go to www.travelocity.com/travelforgood. The eco-aware volunteering program is sponsored by Earthwatch Institute, GlobeAware and Cross Cultural Solutions. Read personal stories of working in a shelter for children in Cuzco, Peru, doing architectural restoration in Provence and teaching primary school in Africa.

The next time you think about taking a tour group vacation, think about your alma mater. Most colleges or universities host alumni tours to places all over the globe, usually led by professors, former government officials or authors from the institution who give lectures or act as erudite guides along the way.

The new wrinkle is that now many alumni offices are permitting non-alums to sign up, although you may need to pay a nominal fee to join the alumni association. This means you don't have to stick with your own university, and can call or write the alumni office of any institution and ask for a copy of its alumni travel brochure for the year. Most of these tours have unusual added experiences that you won't find in other packaged tours. It may be a visit with the city mayor, a private concert in a castle or other elite experiences arranged by the university.

Just a mild warning: These trips may not be inexpensive. Harvard, for example, offers 75 travel programs on seven continents. For information on its travel programs, go to http://post.harvard.edu/alumni/html/ts_rovos_0408_main.htm. One of the offerings this year is an elegant trip through Southern Africa with Rovos Rail. The train, which features "Edwardian railway comfort," crosses the terrain of Southern Africa, beginning in Cape Town. During the two-week journey it stops so passengers can discover diamond museums, wineries, deserts, gorges, waterfalls and wildlife.

Travelers are also flown by charter flight to Livingstone, Zambia and Victoria Falls. The trip is 16 days and costs $10,450 per person, double.

Not all alumni trips are this expensive or elaborate. Go to the main site of any university, click on Alumni, then on Travel and the tours will be reviewed. At most alumni sites, you can sign up online to get a brochure.

In print

"On The Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail," by Charles Cobb Jr., is published by Algonquin Books at $18.95. It is a fascinating and exhaustive tour of locations critical to the civil rights movement, including places people marched, sat in at lunch counters, prayed in churches and gathered to plan strategy.

The author leads us through Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, and introduces us to the people who risked their lives and made a difference. Cobb takes us along on the Freedom Rides of 1961 and includes personal accounts of people and events that eventually resulted in Brown v. Board of Education.