St. Martin’s hired a New York City publicist, Mark Fortier, to organize the media campaign, which will culminate in a March 12 discussion on sustainable travel at New York University.

Shah said he hoped the success of this marketing trip would convince St. Martin’s to fund more publicity efforts in the future, plans that Iturralde said are currently under discussion.

Almost Famous

Although Fortier said the radio and television interviews—in Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego—were the “core” of the tour’s publicity efforts, Shah said he enjoyed the book signings most of all.

“We actually got out there to spread the gospel,” Shah said of answering questions about travel possibilities and his and Brumagim’s own experiences.

Brumagim said she was “pleasantly surprised” at attendance at the book signings, which attracted between 25 and 40 people apiece.

Fortier selected the two juniors last May—out of about 30 Let’s Go researchers who were interested in the trip—for their combined travel and media experience, he said.

Call-in listeners asked Brumagim, who had been a researcher for the 2002 Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia book, for advice on upcoming trips to the Galapagos Islands and Machu Picchu.

They were particularly interested, Brumagim said, in hearing about her own adventures, which included crawling into a pitch-black cave while bats flew around her head.

The two also advised would-be travellers on alternatives to popular hot spots Bali and Indonesia, which have seen downturns in tourism since recent terrorist attacks. Instead, Shah said, they recommended scuba-diving in Thailand for those interested in going to Asia.

Although some of the more specific travel questions—like how to get discounts on European travel passes—temporarily baffled the Let’s Go researchers, they said they were able to refer to Let’s Go guidebooks they had on hand.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at

theodore@fas.harvard.edu.