I would like to nominate the mother son team of manneca and d'Herblay. With a total of more than 140 countries visited between them (unfortunately many are the same), these intrepid travelers have gotten into and out of more scrapes than one could imagine: Escape from a "guide" in the Medina in Tunsia, guiding members of a tour escaping from the guide in Shanghai through the subway system culminating in illegal entry (well, I didn't know it at the time) into a park in Shanghai, evading arrest for taking pictures in a market in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Actually, Europe is a little dull for these gifted travelers.

d'Herblay is an accomplished improv actor with a wry sense of humor. He is also a vidoegrapher with miles and miles of underwater tape. Manneca is so old, she won't need to consult the history books for answers to clues; she lived through all that European history. Both have unaided navigated public transport systems on all continents except Antarctica. Manneca speaks Spanish (of course not everyone whose native language is Spanish can understand her, but she did negotiate a cab ride to the Lima, Peru airport at 10 percent of the going rate). d'Herblay as his name implies (the real last name of the third Musketeer who became a Jesuit) is fluent in Latin and manages to make himself understood in any language. For being a really old woman, Manneca is surprisingly fit: she is training for a triathlon at this moment.

These two travelers have a bag packed at all times, ready to go anywhere under any circumstances. They have European phones (they come in handly when Manneca didn't think she needed hotel reservations for New Year's Eve in Spain, but wound up in a lovely hotel four hours from where she was phoning around). They have netbooks equipped with wifi and can upload pictures in an instant. Each is comfortable traveling with the clothes on their backs, so long as they can take their cameras and netbooks.