During any week of the year members of our Yellow Dog team are fishing in a country other than the United States. Cell phones have made it easier to communicate on a regular basis, but what does the traveling angler do when they want to stay in touch.
Because we are always looking for ways to enhance the experience of traveling anglers, many of us here at Yellow Dog use WhatsApp. You should too. Of the 195 countries in the world, only 25 of them do not have WhatsApp as the market-leading messaging service.
What is WhatsApp? It is a free messaging service for smartphones. It allows you to talk, video call, text, and share photos as long as WiFi is available. Shaun Lawson, Yellow Dog’s Mexico Program Director says this of WhatsApp: “Without it I wouldn’t be able to communicate while traveling. EVERYONE in Latin America and the rest of the world use it.”
Getting connected is easy—simply download the WhatsApp app and invite your contacts to join you. Once they are added, the easy to navigate icons let you choose how to stay in touch. Helpful hint: add contacts to WhatsApp before you travel because once you arrive at your destination you may want to communicate immediately.
WhatsApp means you can keep your phone number when traveling without having to buy a separate phone. Buying a second phone with a set number of minutes may work for the short term, but, it is wasteful and means people back home need the new, short-term number. WhatsApp allows you to keep your number.
Text and email are surpassing voice calling. As messaging--texts and emails-- bypass talking in person as a primary means of communication, WhatsApp makes this a breeze. Plus, there is a record of details. Many of our customers enjoying being able to scroll back through messages for important trip details.
International voice and video calls are free if you’re connected to a WiFi network. If you need to check-in at home or want to see your kid's faces or just can’t miss a conference call, WhatsApp allows you to do that for free.
The WhatsApp contact component is easy to navigate. For people already listed in your phone’s contacts, they will automatically be available to your phones WhatsApp. If they are not, via a simple text generated by WhatsApp you can invite anyone with a phone number to join you on WhatsApp and begin communicating with them.
We travel for many reasons, one of which is to get away from the need to be connected. But there are times when it is nice to check in—be it for the score of a youth soccer game or to find out from one of our program directors where are the best conch fritters in the Bahamas.
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