Who We Are

Headquartered in Quito, Ecuador, V!VA Travel Guides’ diverse staff is a motley crew of writers, editors, web-enthusiasts, techies, and adventurers. Hailing from several countries and various professional backgrounds, the V!VA staff has one thing in common: the desire to create the most up-to-date, un-biased travel guides possible, to fit the needs of travelers just like themselves.

Jason Halberstadt

After falling in love with Latin America as an Instructor for Costa Rica Outward Bound in the mid-nineties, V!VA Travel Guides CEO Jason Halberstadt settled down in Quito Ecuador. As an online media consultant in the small Andean country he became a pioneer in online travel marketing, E-government and E-business, finally settling on his passion for travel and the dream of creating V!VA, a better travel guide.

Paula Newton

Paula Newton is the editor-in-chief and operational genius that keeps the V!VA Travel Guides team moving forward like a well-oiled machine. She brings expertise from 11 years in the Broadcasting and New Media industries where she has been a pioneer in interactive television. In the past ten years, her passion for travel has taken her to more than 25 countries across the globe. Her bag of travel tales includes a somewhat dubious locomotive experience attempting to travel local-style through Kerala Province, India.

Dr. Christopher "Crit" Minster

Dr. Christopher Minster is currently an instructor at the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito, and a graduate of Penn State University, The University of Montana and Ohio State. Before becoming head writer for V!VA Travel Guides, Crit worked for the U.S. Peace Corps in Guatemala as a volunteer from 1991 to 1994, and has traveled extensively throughout Latin America. He is the V!VA Travel Guides resident expert on ruins, Latino history and culture, and has surprisingly in-depth knowledge of haunted museums. If he's not at work pounding out new stories, you'll probably find Chris gallivanting around the Galápagos with his wife or beating everyone in the room at a local pub quiz in Quito.

Daniel T. Johnson

A refusal to sit still and a long succession of cheaply made shoes have carried Daniel through most of Latin America, Europe and the United States as well as parts of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. He has beat Crit at a local pub quiz in Quito and once was named the best option quarterback in Wyoming despite never having set foot in the state. Among his greatest achievements: getting published in The Seattle Times, winning over 17,000 pennies from a slot machine, and captaining two bowling teams to league championships. He also routinely suffers from visions of grandeur. Daniel is a staff writer and the website content editor for V!VA.

Nili Larish

Staff writer Nili Larish hails from the big apple, where she recently worked in the book publishing industry. Upon receiving a degree in creative writing from Binghamton University in 2005, Nili spent 7 months backpacking through South America. Along the way, she trekked through unreal landscapes, volunteered at an orphanage, picked up local dance moves, got to know South American hospitals better than she would have liked to, and generally had the time of her life. Unable to shake this wanderlust, Nili left New York and headed to Ecuador to combine her twin passions of travel and writing. In the V!VA office, Nili is often spotted unable to contain laughter while her coworkers are trying to concentrate.

Ricardo Segreda

Growing up in New York, Rick Segreda used to cut out of high school in order to hang out at the Museum of Modern Art and catch foreign-language double-features in the West Village, and has never stopped being subversively idiosyncratic. Apart from his work for V!VA, Rick writes movie reviews for Ecuador’s El Diario La Hora, lectures on film around the country, and is currently working as a writer and publicist for the Mardi Gras documentary, Flags, Feathers, and Lies, for producer Julie Belafonte. He has biked down the west coast of the United States and across New Zealand, and writes fiction in his spare time.

Tammy Portnoy

Tammy Portnoy has nothing to complain about. Originally from Houston, this University of Missouri Journalism School graduate came to work for V!VA Travel Guides to introduce her passion (travel) to her ambition (writing and editing). She has slept in the Sahara, bungee jumped in Switzerland and fed bears in Puerto Vallarta. Tammy has written numerous articles about bars, managed a lifestyle magazine in Houston and has been published in the majority of Houston’s magazines. Her turn-ons are: new airports, impetuous dancing, writing without censorship, full-flavored lager and one-pound bags of fries. Her turn-offs are: misplaced commas, confusing well and good, sedentary people and mosquitoes.

Lorena Fernández

An eclectic blend of cultures surfacing in her personality, Lorena Fernández brings V!VA Travel Guides an Ecuadorian perspective with cultural insights from her upbringing. With a journalism degree from Ball State University in Indiana and a year experience at a community newspaper in West Hollywood, Ca., Lorena returned to her home country and found a good way to channel the never-ending comparisons of Latin American culture with others.