Things are truly ramping up on my end! We leave in 20 days from today, and I have 10 days left of work for over 4 months! That's so exciting I think I might say it again.
We leave in 20 d... just kidding.
In a previous post I mentioned that I would talk about a few of the groups and organizations that have been very instrumental in the planning of our trip. I have to give a shout out to my wife at this point because 99.9% of all of the research for the trip stuff was done by her. She reads a ton and through all of this reading she discovered a lot of the sources of information that we have used to get ready. Yeah, she is pretty awesome!
There are many blogs of fellow travelers, a lot of whom have been traveling for a long time. It was pretty interesting how many people started out on a several week trip and find themselves still traveling several months or even years later! An excellent site that provided a lot of information about the general idea of long term travel is Boots N All. It is essentially an online community of independent travelers and tips and sites that they recommend!
http://www.bootsnall.com/
The flights were probably the biggest purchase we were concerned with for the trip. As I am sure you can imagine it is no small feat to book flights for a 4 month journey that is covering 5 continents and over 10 countries. A couple friends of ours recently completed a 3 stage trip abroad that lasted about 2 years told us about Air Treks. They are a company that specializes in booking around the world flights. We worked with them for a couple of months on several different itineraries and booked all of our major flights with them just before Christmas! Merry Christmas to us right!?
http://www.airtreks.com/
Due to the length of this trip our finances are obviously something we will have to monitor our money quite closely. It may be obvious but we will not be staying in 5 star resorts for four months. However, we want to know that where we are staying will be safe. We have found two sites that we have already used to book inexpensive accommodations on our trip. The first is Air BNB. Air BNB is a network of homeowners all over the world who rent rooms, or in some instances the entire house out to travelers. The second is Couch Surfing. On the same premise of Air BNB this is a network of people who rent out a couch or bed to travelers for very little money. We already booked 3 nights in Miami at a location in South Beach for $65 a night. Try finding a non-roach motel for less than $75 in this area! What a concept!
https://www.airbnb.com/
https://www.couchsurfing.org/
Lastly we hope to do something called a ‘workaway.’ A workaway can take many different shapes, and it all depends on the host. For example I have been in touch with a woman in Rome whose family owns a farm that specializes in organic farming and produces olive oil and wine. They have agreed to host us and provide room and board in exchange for help on the farm. Like I said the individual workaway depends on the host and covers everything from assistance with language or computers, to agricultural work, to work at smaller resorts. The overall setup is the same though, work in exchange for room and board. ‘The Workaway’ another awesome concept!!
http://www.workaway.info/
As much work as it is to prepare for a trip like this, sites such as these really help to make the trip a reality!!
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