Humbo Review: Making a Countries Visited Map

I’ve spent the past six years living out of a backpack and camera bag, traveling full-time. This is the first time I’ve tried making a personal travel map.

Truth is, I’ve never really kept track of exactly how many countries I’ve visited. Counting them up and crossing them off always felt a bit like keeping score, which isn’t quite my style—I’m more about the stories and experiences than the numbers.

Recently, I discovered Humbo and its interactive countries visited map feature. It’s a cool tool that visually captures and shares not just the places I’ve been, but also the adventures I’ve experienced along the way.

I thought I’d give it a try. Below, I’ll share my honest take on setting up my travel map with Humbo, plus a few insights and things I found along the way.

Making a Visited Countries Map

To start, I visited Humbo's map feature page and created an account. I usually don't like making new accounts on apps but this was pretty straightforward as they only asked for my name and email.

Straight away, I was prompted to start making my own travel map of the world. There were already some places recommended nearby which got me into rating different destinations straight away. I'm currently in Georgia, so places like Tbilisi came up.

Next, I began searching for "places" I'd been to. For me it was pretty easy because I keep track of all my travels on this blog's Destinations page. So, I started with "Tasmania" by searching the places feature at the top.

Immediately I knew I liked the interface. It's simple and really easy to use, which is important for me because I really don't want to waste any time with a clunky app. Luckily, this one wasn't.

This then took me to a "Places" page for Tasmania. Here, I could rate the destination or save it to a new list. There was also some other information like map location and current weather. I can see this being useful, but for now I was here to make a countries visited map, so I hit "Rate".

The rating page has 5 questions, asking to rate between 1-5 on:

• How were the people?
• How were the food and drinks?
• How were the public spaces?
• How was the value for money?
• How safe did it feel?

I quickly input my reviews and hit done. There was an option to write an actual review as well. But, I had a lot of countries to tick off my map so I just got on with it.

I then went back to my "Visited Places" map, where I could see that "Australia" was added to my travel lists. I began playing around with the interactive countries map and could see Australia was now highlighted in purple.

So far, pretty easy, painless, and straightforward. For my purpose of counting how many countries I've visited and marking them on a map, I wanted to do this quickly so I didn't leave any long reviews. However, I can see how this would be a great feature for people wanting to find new places and points of interest to visit and learn from the community.

Next, I repeated the process, "Rating" some of my favorite places in countries around the world. For me, it would take a long time to input every place. So, I stuck to a handful of places in each country to satisfy my goal of seeing a list of countries I'd been to in an interactive map.

To test out the review feature, I added a review for Cairns. It was straightforward and I could see the potential of travelers really liking this.

Searching Countries To add to the Map

To begin with, I was adding Places in each country. However, I realized that Humbo also had the ability to search for specific countries. These landing pages were full of useful information and even had suggestions for places to visit in the country.

I can see how this could be a good travel discovery tool. But for now, I kept adding countries of the world to my list of visited places.

Unfortunately, some places that I wanted to add weren't in the Humbo list. For example, when I searched "Minca", one of my favorite destinations in Colombia, it didn't exist. I also couldn't find a way to add a new place.

I believe this is a fairly new country map app, so I'm sure these more "off-the-beaten-path" destinations will be added soon. There's also an option to add a new place, so I like that users can contribute. This will be good because to really make the most of the bucket list feature, you'll want more locations.

Regardless, this didn't impact my goal of creating my map since I was focused on countries.

Finishing My Countries Visited Map

In all, it took about 30 minutes for me to rate a few cities and places from each country that I had visited. In the end, I was left with a fun global map that I could explore. I found out that I had visited 51 countries and six continents– pretty cool!

I also realized just how much of Africa, South America, and Central Asia that I still had left to explore, which got me excited about my future travel plans and upcoming adventures.

Review: Is Humbo a Good App for Making a Map of Countries Traveled

After experimenting with the Humbo app and making my own list of places visited I believe it is a fun and intuitive tool to visualize my travels. While I didn't play around too much with extensive reviews or community features, I believe that Humbo is doing some innovative things.

What I liked about Humbo

• The map maker features an easy-to-use interface & clean layout with a much nicer experience than Google Maps
• An extensive list of places that go way beyond only the worlds' capital cities and popular countries
• The interactive world map is fun to play with an innovative way to visualize my travels
• The Places landing pages are good for learning more about a destination
• The country landing pages are helpful for discovering new places, and quickly rating new places visited
• The travel ranking system is a unique concept and I can see this being a good way to discover new locations around the world
• The list feature is another great tool to discover the next travel destination for future travels. I found examples like "The best places to visit in April" which automatically added below my map
• The rating feature doesn't force you to write a detailed review which makes it a more seamless experience

What could be improved

• Humbo's maps don't have an option to quickly add all the new countries from a checklist, this meant that making my countries visited map took longer than more simple tools.
• The overall visited maps are quite basic, but good enough for basic needs of displaying the regions traveled to
• Lesser-known locations are still not available on Humbo but the Humbo team actually added Minca in Colombia just a few hours after I emailed them about it.
• You have to make an account to sign up
• No way to add travel journal notes to keep personal memories

Conclusion

In conclusion, my experience with Humbo has opened up a new way for me to visualize and share my travel history. Despite my usual laid-back approach to tracking where I've been, Humbo's interactive map feature is a fun tool to mark the countries I've visited. It's a straightforward and efficient tool that lets you see your travel footprint without the hassle of keeping a detailed travel log.

What's particularly great about Humbo is how it caters to both casual users who want a quick way to keep track of their travels and more dedicated travelers looking to dive deeper into reviewing and exploring places. Its user-friendly interface and the ability to visually track travel progress are big pluses.

However, while the app serves well for mainstream destinations, it could improve by including more off-the-beaten-path locations, which would certainly enhance its utility for adventurers seeking to capture all their travels.

Will I keep using Humbo? Sure, I can see myself using this to mark off countries as I travel to them as my own digital scratch map and fun travel tracker. However, since I put a lot of work into this travel blog, I'll keep most of the specific places documented on here.