Good afternoon, Sharon, and welcome to Tripatini! It's great to have you with us -- and we think you'll find our site productive as well as interesting and enjoyable.

To get the most out of Tripatini, we recommend you take a moment to join several of our many groups which you may find of particular use, such as Media Only, Louisiana and the other 49 U.S. states, The Caribbean, various individual Caribbean destinations, Eating/Drinking the World, Wine Tourism, Eco/Sustainable Tourism, History/Heritage/Archaeology, and plenty of others covering many other topics and most destinations across the globe.

FYI, on your profile you'll see a green bar marked "Text Box," which you can turn into a box containing not just text but also photos and even videos about yourself, your travels, your writing/outlets, and more. And if you have any books in print, we'd be happy to feature them on the site and sell them in our online shop.

Finally, if you would, please be so kind as to spread the word among your travel-interested friends, family, colleagues, associates, and audience. It's fast and easy to use our "INVITE" function above left on the navigation bar to enter e-mails (even your whole list at once!). If you have the opportunity to cover Tripatini in any of your outlets, that would of course be great, and if you might be interested in occasionally blogging for us, guidelines/rates are available upon request. Finally, if you have a Facebook or Twitter account, please join our fan page and follow/tweet about us (see front page info box)!

Thanks much for joining us; we wish you an outstanding start to 2010, and it goes without saying that we look forward to seeing you online.

Cheers!