To this day, travel guru Arthur Frommer is still best known for his first book, “Europe on $5 a Day.”  But I learned his travel brilliance firsthand while working as contributing editor to his magazine, Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel.  I’d walk into his New York office with a list of story ideas and he’d shoot me down, giving me far superior angles.  “Enough of the big-name outfitters,” he once stated, “I want you to tell me of the local guy in Machu Picchu, who knows his backyard better than anyone.” 

Affordability was his signature, but I also loved how Arthur sent people to areas of the world we wouldn’t normally visit that time of the year.  One of my favorites was a story on islands you can venture to in the Caribbean during the summer that are rarely affected by hurricanes.  For budget-conscious travelers, this is the best time of year to hit the southern Caribbean, especially the ABC islands, Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao.  The last major hurricane to slap this region was in 1877.  Visit the ABCs or Trinidad, Tobago, and Margarita Island, just off the Venezuelan coast and you have less than a 2 percent chance of encountering a major storm states the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  Another southern island, Barbados, has no time to fret about bad weather.  They celebrate their annual Crop Over festival throughout the month of August, with live calypso music every night. 

 If you’re looking for mid-summer adventures in the Caribbean, see the story I ended up writing for Arthur just before he sold the magazine to Newsweek.