We’ve made it through 6 weeks! It feels like we’ve been traveling forever and hardly at all at the same time. Thankfully we’ve had most of the last week to take a break from traveling, catch our breath, plan a lot of our Africa trip (which we had none of) and simply get bored from doing nothing. But we didn’t quite make it that far because it was nice to binge Netflix and take advantage of our Airbnb gym. With that, it gave me time to answer a few questions we’ve had!
We’ve found it extremely helpful to each be in charge of certain things and they just happened organically. Tom is always about looking up hikes, things to do, etc. so he’s been finding our hikes and backpacks and selects a handful and I/we pick from those. He’s also in charge of inputing our reservations, tickets, etc. into a schedule app. I’ve been enjoying looking for lodging and trying to find the best place within our budget. When Tom plans the lodging we stay in tents, cars and safari vehicles, which I’m totally ok with from time to time! But let’s be honest, it’s nice to have a nice, comfortable place to come “home” to after adventuring. I’ve also been in charge of inputing everything into our budget app to make sure we stay on track.
Trip Planning Help aka Apps:
We’ve found a number of apps extremely helpful in planning this trip and, of course.. WiFi. I’m not sure how my uncle did a world trip when he was in his 20’s without the internet.. that’s for another blog!
Hostelworld: this app helps us find lodging, specifically hostel rooms pretty much anywhere in the world. We’ve been lucky to mostly get our own private room, sometimes with our own bathroom or shared bathroom. The app is great because it shows the ratings, tells you what type of person wrote it – gender, age range, country – you can filter for amenities – we mostly look for wifi, our own room (it’s usually just a tad more than getting 2 bunk beds in a shared room and since we’re not doing cheap-o post collage trip we can afford it) and I find it helpful to get breakfast included. It’s usually bread, jam, fruit, juice and coffee which helps the budget and just getting the day going. Most hostels are also extremely helpful in planning bus tickets, where to look for hiking information, etc. and chatting with other travelers.
AirBnb: thankfully this is also all over the world. When we’re staying somewhere more than 3 nights I usually look into an Airbnb since we can get more space and sometimes it ends up being cheaper than a hostel. It’s also a bonus when I can get one with a pool or a gym to help us keep moving on off days. If it can find a good one (up for the challenge!) we’ll find a little home-away-from-home to cook and chill out.
TrailWallet: I use this app for our budget (more on that later). You have to input everything manually but that’s no problem. You can set the date, amount, type (accommodation, food, etc.) and overall “trip budget”. It breaks it down by daily amount, overall percentage spent, and daily average. It’s been extremely helpful for our daily budget. We haven’t necessarily not done something because of it, but it’s really nice seeing we’re currently under our daily budget.
TripIt: this is what we use to keep track of everything! It inputs everything – reservation numbers, times, dates for places we’re staying, planes, etc. – via email and Tom makes sure it’s all correct. You can also modify, change, and manually add notes. It’s great because you click on something – your Hostelworld reservation – and it pulls up the address, reservation number, time you’re checking in and everything else. You can also share it with your family so they can view your schedule and know where you’re supposed to be and where you’re going. So far, it’s been invaluable, and far easier than keeping track of everything manually. We usually cross check it with the TrailWallet app to make sure we have everything accounted for and correct.
Maps.Me: this is a sweet app Tom found that has maps of everyplace and is used offline. It’s one of the apps we used when backpacking the Huemul Circuit (along with AllTrails) but another bonus, for $25 a year you can get access to City Walking Tours of cities all over the world! We used one today to make our way through Sao Paulo, used it in Valparaiso, Chile and cross referenced it for Buenos Aires. It pulls up tid-bits of info of each stop and is a very easy and fun way to explore a city (essentially for free). When doing this kind of non-stop traveling, it gets exhausting trying to figure out where to go and what to see, so this takes a lot of the guess work out of it. So far, we haven’t been disappointed and is totally worth $25 for the year!
VPN into the US: this has been such a helpful tool. Tom VPNed in when we switched phone carriers to GoogleFi because you had to be in the US to set it up and well, we weren’t. It’s also helpful when we get the chance to watch Hulu or Netflix because you get different options in different countries.
Mobile Coverage: We both started with T-Mobile because they have free data coverage in 200+ countries. Tom made the switch to GoogleFi because you get high speed data coverage everywhere which is really nice when looking something up or trying to get an Uber. My phone didn’t work so I’m back to T-Mobile, which does have a lot of coverage, but just not as fast.
Uber: Like AirBnb Uber is almost everywhere! It’s a lot safer and very convenient to use when cities have it. Although it’s not as accepted in some cities and airports like Buenos Aires – someone has to sit upfront with the driver so it doesn’t look like they’re driving people around. But that hasn’t been an issue.
Priority Pass: This is an access pass to airport lounges all over the world that we got with our credit card – Chase Sapphire Reserve. I never went into lounges before but now I get weirdly excited about them. It helps a ton since we’re flying often (12 flights down) and gives us a comfy, safe place to hang out before flights and during layovers. They typically provide free food and drinks which also helps on our budget! I was even able to sleep in one of the Sleeping Rooms on our first overnight layover, from then on I was sold.
Budget:
One of the reasons we decided to do this trip now was because we both had enough money saved to do this and live a little more luxurious than post-collage backpackers but not quite crazy extravagant. And more importantly, still have money when we come home. We ultimately broke our budget down into 3 different pools.
Daily Budget: we decided on $150/ day for accommodation, food, general shopping, entrance fees (originally we weren’t going to count these, especially for national parks, but we’ve been able so absorb them, so no problem!), laundry, location transportation, etc. I’m happy to report that we are about $20/day under budget! But I’m sure that will quickly be gone once we hit Europe. One of the app features breaks your spending down by type so you can see where you spend most of your money. I’ve been spending amount $40-$50 of our daily budget on accommodation, which I could lower, but it’s hard to resist the good ratings!
Transportation Budget: this includes flights, buses, cars, or anything that takes us from A to B, city to city or across a border. With the TrailWallet app, it helped to break it out into a separate budget pool to keep track of our daily spending separately from our several-time-a-month spending. The app shows you the overall percentage spent and breaks down by overall monthly budget so it’s helpful to keep track that way and make sure we’re hitting roughly the correct monthly money pool.
YoLo Budget: after we started our trip and got into things, we decided to add a YoLo budget. We knew our overall budget would very likely fluctuate (realistically increase), and we decided to somewhat control/ cap it. Ultimately this trip is a once in a lifetime opportunity and we likely won’t be returning to a lot of these places. Another reason we decided to do this trip is because we’re physically capable of doing things now, so we don’t want to miss out. This category includes things like the horseback ride in Torres del Paine, paying for a guide for Perito Moreno Glacier, and a high possibility of a shark tank swim in Cape Town to see Great White Sharks. Obviously, these things are impossible to include in a daily budget, so we found another way to allow ourselves these opportunities but not go too crazy… hopefully.