Martin and I left our home in Minneapolis on July 2. Eight months later, we are still alive. 🙂 

51 cities. 12 States. 10 Countries. 

We left with a car filled with stuff, and now we are carrying about 35 pounds each.

I think back to our first week on the road and smile. I had two rubbermaid containers of just kitchen stuff. Now, I have two bowls, two spoons, and a couple zip lock bags. (I did have two forks and a knife, but they didn’t make it through the airport from Panama to Colombia…) 

I thought now would be a good time to do a little reflecting on where we are in our travels and what we have learned from living on the road these past eight months.

How do we budget our money?

Everyone wonders how anyone can travel for long term without working. We wonder it too! Yet, somehow it works. 

Before we left, Martin and I saved every penny for 18 months in order to take at least a year off from working.

Our budgeting has evolved over the past 8 months. Initially, we had a budget for food, for transportation, for lodging, etc. Now, we just have a daily budget of $150. Some days we spend only $30 and other days we spend $300. Every day we write down how much we spend. We use Mint.com to track our expenses and to see a monthly daily average. 

How do we stay under budget?

Sometimes we don’t. 🙂 But usually, we do. 

We try to eat at restaurants only once a day, which means having a kitchen available at our “home” is really important. Lately, we’ve been eating out for lunch since it is cheaper than dinner, and we are usually out exploring anyway.

 

Lodging is a significant expense. During our first few months of travel, we rarely paid for a place to stay since it was easy to Couch Surf or stay with friends. 

It seems like we are always looking for our next place to stay. The best places are those where we can decide at the last minute to stay longer or not. 

Some places charge slightly less if you commit to a week, but I don’t like to do that without actually seeing the place first. Sometimes we like staying in a hostel to meet other travelers; sometimes we like using Airbnb to meet some locals; sometimes we like renting an entire apartment to ourselves. I like the variety.

Generally, lodging costs around $15-45/night. 

We have used Couchsurfing, WorkAway, Caretaker Gazette, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Airbnb, Hostelworld, Trip Advisor, and Hotels.com to find accommodation. Often we look at all of these places before finding one place we want to stay at our new destination. It can take hours, and it is never fun.  

We prefer to travel via busses and trains over taxis, which helps to keep the cost down. Busses are super cheap and plentiful throughout Central America. South America is much larger, and we have had to shop around more to find cheap airfare. After much searching, Martin and I found a flight from Medellin to Lima for about $450 for two people! Most of the airfare we saw was around $650 per person! Obviously, $450 is way more than our $150 daily budget, which is why it is so important to have many $30 days to offset those big spending days.

Entertainment is another expense, but we are pretty cheap dates. Museums and historical sites are usually free or just a few dollars. We will splurge on bigger adventures occasionally, like snorkeling in Belize or Hiking Acatenango in Guatemala. 

We just pick and choose what we want and make sure we still have fun without blowing our budget.

How do we decide where to go next?

How do you decide what to eat for dinner? Partly it is what we want to do and partly it is what is readily available. We don’t have an unlimited budget, so we do have to be strategic about where we go and how we get there. 

We talk to other travelers to get ideas. We read guide books. Usually there are a plethora of guide books at hostels. Martin checked one out from the library and downloaded it to his phone. 

The more we’ve traveled, the pickier we’ve become about where we want to go. Martin and I love being near water and in warm weather, so those places get more preference. We also love cities – especially those with a rich or interesting history. This means that we are skipping Bolivia and spending more time in Peru. 

We will often sketch out a broad route of where we want to go and it will change along the way. For example, we had a 3-4 week route planned through Nicaragua, stopping in Leon, Granada, Ometepe, Corn Islands, and San Juan del Sur. But then, we decided to try to meet up with my cousin in Cartagena and ended up only going to Granada for 4 days. 

So, we have a broad plan always in mind, but we try not to comitt to too many things to allow for a change of heart.

How do we decide what to do every day?

The main difference between traveling and going on vacation is that we don’t completely disconnect from our daily life. We check our bank accounts every day. We filed our taxes on the steps of a mall in Cartegena. We do laundry – every four days. We have destinations to research, maps to find, busses to figure out, Spanish to learn. 

As much as I want to, I don’t have time to just lay on the beach all day and read my book. 

That being said, I do have complete control over how I spend my time. 

I like to go for a run in the morning. I like to make oatmeal for breakfast. I like to spend a few hours in the middle of the day exploring wherever we are. I like to have a leisurely lunch. I like to take an afternoon nap. I like to write, research, study Spanish, work on website design. I like to cook meals using local ingredients. I like to meet new people. I like to go to bed early. 

It’s pretty amazing how much time we spend looking for accommodation, transportation, potential destinations, information about our current destination. Think about when you move to a new neighborhood. You need to learn where to get groceries, where are the best restaurants, what is fun to do there, etc. We do that about every week. In Spanish. 

I love the challenge of learning how to navigate a new place. It is also exhausting. Both Martin and I prefer when we can stay in a destination for at least a week. 

Jill and Martin’s Travel Advice

While we have only been on the road for 8 months, we have learned a few things that have been critically helpful in enjoying our time:

1. Always ask for the WIFI password. (Qué es el clave/código de WIFI?)
2. Use the bathroom whenever you see one. Even if you need to pay for it.
3. Carry a snack and water with you at all times. No one likes to be with someone who is HANGRY!
4. Ask for a map. Hostels and tourist information centers are great for this. 
5. Visit the tourist information centers. They give you all sorts of great information, and it doesn’t come with a sales pitch at the end. My favorite questions: Is this area safe? Where is the best place to go running? What should we do here? What food should we try? 
6. Read all the bulletin boards. It not only gives us ideas of what to do, but it also teaches use where the key landmarks are in the city. 
7. Change your plans when an opportunity appears. Always be flexible to the moment. 
8. Be scrupulous with your restaurant and hostel choices. Ask to look at the menu before sitting down. Always look at the bathroom in the hostel before saying yes.

Minneapolis, MN > Henning, MN > Elbow Lake, MN > Comstock, MN > Superior National Forest, MN > Two Harbors, MN > Marquette, MI > Saulte Sainte Marie, Canada > North Bay, Canada > Ottawa, Canada > Montreal, Canada > New Brunswick, ME > Manchester, NH > New York City, NY > Greenville, NC > Norfolk, VA > Damascus, VA > Appalachian Trail, TN > Asheville, NC > Charleston, SC > Savannah, GA > Little Talbot Island State Park, FL > St. Augustine, FL > Bokeelia, FL > Miami, FL > Key West, FL > Bokeelia, FL > Destin, FL > New Orleans, LA > Bokeelia, FL > Orlando, FL > Tampa, FL > Bokeelia, FL

Playa Del Carmen, Mexico > Tulum, Mexico > Bacalar, Mexico > Chetumal, Mexico > Caye Caulker, Belize > San Ignacio, Belize > Flores, Guatemala > Lanquin, Guatemala > Coban, Guatemala > San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico > El Madresal, Mexico > Quetzaltenago, Guatemala > San Marcos, Guatemala > Antigua, Guatemala > El Tunco, El Salvador > Granada, Nicaragua > San Jose, Costa Rica > Panama City, Panama

Panama City, Panama > Cartagena, Colombia > Bogota, Colombia > Medellin, Colombia

Every day we encounter a whirlwind of new things – words, smells, street names (so hard to remember!!). Sometimes I crave some more stability…but that usually lasts only a week and then I’m ready to move to the next place! 

Our next destination: Lima, Peru (starting Thursday, March 26, 2015)