The Pulitzer Prize-winning funnyman has apparently figured out where it is, because he’s been blogging from Costa Rica about his travels. He’s seen lots of monkeys, and he went zip-lining, “which is a sport where the object is to look like the world’s biggest dork,” he writes. “I was very good at it.” Judge for yourself.

Related on World Hum:
* Onion Video: Andorra is ‘Not in Africa’

No, not these. The real deal. According to USA Today’s Ben Mutzabaugh, a man on a flight from Costa Rica to Madrid was stung on his shoulder and finger by a scorpion. Mutzabaugh cites news reports stating that the man was treated for severe nausea by a doctor on the plane, and that a fellow passenger killed the scorpion. As Mutzabaugh points out, this isn’t a first. A number of travelers have been stung by scorpions mid-flight, including a passenger aboard a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Burlington, Vermont in January.

Related on World Hum:
* Three Travel Tips: Stay Healthy When You Fly
* ‘Snakes on a Plane’ = Movie. Bees on a Plane = Serious, Real-Life Problem.

Related on TravelChannel.com:
* Bizarre Foods World Travel Guide: Vietnam

Photo by alex.ch via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

In our ongoing quest to chronicle the comings and goings in the travel lexicon we bring you “geotourism,” a term describing travel that, in the AP’s words, “focuses on a destination’s unique culture and history and aims to have visitors help enrich those qualities.” Coined several years ago by the National Geographic Society’s Jonathan B. Tourtellot, the term hasn’t yet caught on among most travelers. But according to the AP, “it’s on the lips of travel professionals who describe it as a step beyond the better-known environmentally friendly ecotourism. While geotourism encourages treading lightly on nature, it’s also about authenticity and making a place better by visiting and spending money.”

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This week travelers trek the length of the globe, from Canada to California to Mexico to Costa Rica to Australia. There’s also the inevitable Paris Hilton vs. Hilton Paris match up. Here’s the Zeitgeist.

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
In Napa, Wilderness Above the Wineries
* That’s Napa, pictured above.

Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Paris Hilton accommodations vs. Hilton Paris
* Christopher Reynolds pits the two head-to-head.

Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Mexico to (Miss) U.S.A.: Boooooo
* Readers have mixed feelings about the now-infamous boos.

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
JetBlue Tries to Bounce Back From Storm of Trouble

Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Air Traffic Control System Command Center

Most Read Feature
World Hum (this week)
An Island in Costa Rica

Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
National Geographic’s Atmosphere
* Current podcast: Mount Everest Expedition

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Sure, in some countries a generous tip for great service is appropriate. But not everywhere. “In Japan, for instance, tipping is viewed as insulting,” writes Rosemary McClure in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. “In other countries, it’s considered disrespectful to hand a tip to a waiter.” How to avoid being the ugly American shelling out too much money in tips overseas? 

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And the nations with the world’s largest economies finished down the 178-nation list. Way down. Germany ranked 81st, Japan 95th and the United States 150th. The New Economics Foundation, which bills itself as a “think-and-do tank,” says its inaugural Happy Planet Index “moves beyond crude ratings of nations according to national income, measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP).” The new index, they say, produces “a more accurate picture of the progress of nations based on the amount of the Earth’s resources they use, and the length and happiness of people’s lives.” A BBC News story quotes Richard Layard, director of the Well-Being Programme at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance, as saying that the index “was an interesting way to tackle the issue of modern life’s environmental impact.” Layard continues: “Over the last 50 years, living standards in the West have improved enormously but we have become no happier.” So which countries besides the island nation of Vanuatu are happiest? Colombia and Costa Rica round out the top three. Burundi, Swaziland and Zimbabwe finished at the bottom.

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Yahoo! adventure guru Richard Bangs covers the history of adventure travel in just 874 words today in a New York Times piece. I’ll summarize in 86 words: First adventure travelers were merchants on expedition. Many accidental discoveries. Ericson, North America. Columbus, the Caribbean. Modern adventure travel began 35 years ago. Treks in the Nepalese Himalayas. Maoist revolutionaries emerge. Adventurers go to Bhutan. In the ‘70s, Afghanistan, Algeria and New Guinea. In the ‘80s, the Nile, Mount Ararat and Bali. Religious-based terrorism drives out adventurers. In the ‘90s, the Alps. Euro rises. Everyone goes to Thailand. Tsunami hits. Libya, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Panama become popular. For now. When in doubt, there’s always Costa Rica.

The final installment of Sean Flynn’s three-part investigation of the international sex trade is out in the October 2005 issue of GQ. This piece covers Americans who travel to Costa Rica, drawn by the nation’s proximity to the U.S. and the legal prostitution. All three of Flynn’s stories are unavailable online, though the October issue is currently on the newsstand—just look for the one with Cameron Diaz’s boob on the cover.

In the travel film “The Beach,” Leonardo DiCaprio plays a young backpacker in Thailand who ditches Bangkok’s Khao San Road in search of an idyllic island. That, of course, turns out to be a big mistake. But it looks as though DiCaprio himself is still itching for the island good life. According to reports, he has purchased a private island off Belize for $1.75 million.

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Time magazine’s Michael Elliott has crystallized our thoughts perfectly. In an eloquent essay in the Dec. 16 issue, he laments the chilling effects the latest terrorist attacks in Kenya and Bali could have on global backpackers. “Few modern social developments are more significant and less appreciated than the rise of backpacker travel,” he writes. “The tens of thousands of young Australians, Germans, Britons, Americans and others who wander the globe, flitting from Goa to Costa Rica, from Thailand to Tasmania, are building what may be the only example of a truly global community.”

But the bombs targeting tourists threaten all that. Elliott himself discovered Europe 30 years ago by hitchhiking around each summer. “I learned more from those trips than from years in school, and I’d begun to look forward to the day when my daughters would light out on their own ventures—to go see their relatives in Australia or hike in Tibet or do things in Bali that they wouldn’t want to tell Dad about,” he writes. “So add one more reason to hate what the terrorists have done: they’ve stolen our dreams.”