Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

Pacific Northwest Without a Car

I’m on a mixture of assignments and family vacation right now, with one of the articles being about visiting Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver—then on to Banff in the Rockies—using only public transportation. That ended up including a few taxi cab rides and a lift from a friend (with six of us in the car), but we did it.

Usually when I go on these family jaunts I end up renting a car or paying a driver when on the move a lot, but it was nice to return to a more eco-friendly mode of travel this round. There aren’t a whole lot of places in North America where you can rely on public transportation only without incurring lots of waiting time and discomfort. The Pacific Northwest is pretty easy though.

We got all-day transport passes in Portland for $4.25 each and did the same thing in Vancouver for $9 adults, $7 kids. That amount got us all over the place in the latter, including a very long bus ride to the Anthropology Museum and up to the mountainside Capilano Suspension Bridge via sea bus and regular bus. In the city center most of the buses are electric, with trolley-style power lines. In Seattle the buses in the center are free, but except for a monorail ride to the Experience Music Project we just walked, which is easy enough.

We got from city to city by Amtrak train on the first leg. On the second leg I thought I had booked another train, but somehow ended up with a Thruway bus. The price was right though: $142 with a AAA discount for all three of us to go Portland- Seattle- Vancouver. (Seattle’s nice train station pictured here.)

We also got around Stanley Park in Vancouver by renting bikes. There are a few rental places with great equipment right outside the park. It’s not all that cheap, as in $6 to $10 an hour depending on the bike (plus helmet charge), but a great way to circle the whole park by the seawall. [UPDATE - The fine folks at Vancouver Tourism have informed me that if you visit the Tourist InfoCentre "you can buy a voucher for rental of a bike, lock and helmet for four hours for $18. You pre-pay and then just take the voucher down to Bayshore Bikes to redeem within the next two weeks, so if the weather isn’t good, you can just go another day." Sweet deal!]

Then I got into travel writer mode and we took the swanky Rocky Mountaineer train between Vancouver and Banff. But that’s not a story for this cheap travel blog…

Why Go to Honduras?

Just a quick note to point to a new article I have out called For a summer travel bargain, head to Honduras. That is the Tripso version. Here is the MSNBC version, if you prefer.

I didn’t write this as a summer travel piece since summer is not really the ideal time to be in Honduras, but that’s the way it got titled. Ideally, the best time to go in general would be between December and May, when the weather is dry and it’s not completely blazing hot. You can still visit in the summer, of course, but you’re more likely to get rained on.

This article hits the highlights of the country: the Bay Islands, Pico Bonito, and the ruins of Copan. The big benefits of going to Honduras, besides the bargain prices, are that the diving/snorkeling is unmatched by anyone in this hemisphere except Belize and the importance of the Maya ruins there are unmatched by anyone but Guatemala. You can go white water rafting in almost any Central American country, but rafting on the Cangrejal River is hard to beat, especially when a half-day trip is less than $40, transportation from your hotel included.

For a good overview on traveling in Honduras and its neighbors, see Traveler’s Tool Kit: Mexico and Central America.

Related posts:

Prices in Honduras

Faces of Copan

Waste Not Want Not in Portland

Anyone who likes to lump a whole country together under one set of stereotypes needs to spend some time in Portland, Oregon. So many of the tendencies that people equate with the U.S. and Americans go out the window in that city.

First of all, you can get by pretty well without a car. An all-day transportation pass is $4.25 and that sets you up on the buses, light rail, and streetcars. And that transportation will actually get you where you need to go, including the airport. Not since I left New York City have I seen kids taking a field trip to the zoo on public transportation. Nice. The cars that you do see are seldom gas-guzzling SUVs, but rather small cars that get good gas mileage.

Second, riding a bike to work is really easy. There are bike lanes all over the place and you can carry your bike onto the light rail trains and hang the bike from a hook. All the buses have a rack for you to put your bike on the front.

There is very little waste. Glass bottles require a deposit, there’s curbside recycling for cans and plastic, and practically everybody with a house composts. My friend’s kid goes to a school where they even grow their own veggies and herbs to use in the cafeteria.

So what are the downsides? The weather sucks bigtime, first of all. I’m talking a coat and hat in June and not much sun even now. “In the winter we hardly see the sun at all,” the locals say. There’s also not a whole lot of ethnic diversity. I probably saw a black person or two at some point during my time there, but I can’t say for sure. Definitely not in the last 24 hours, when I starting trying. In fact it seems this city takes conformity to a new level: if you’re not a tattooed, organic-eating vegetarian with piercings, you don’t quite fit in.

Still, it’s nice to be in a city where suburban sprawl is in check, where mobile food carts are welcomed instead of regulated out of existance, where most everyone buys locally brewed beer, and where you can get a doughnut with Captain Crunch on it. (Photo of my order at Voodoo Doughnut.)

Could I live here? Probably not. But I wish I could have hung around for longer.

Cheap Travel, Quality Time, and Me

A few thousand new visitors have come by to check out this blog in the past week. So because of that combined with the fact I am on vacation with my family now, pile of work be damned, here is a recap of what I have out and what I am working on. Feel free to go check these things out to get some more robust and well-researched reading material than you will commonly find in a blog format.

I have been a travel writer for around 16 years, much of it part-time while I made a more lucrative living elsewhere. Now I do this mostly full-time. My first book was The World’s Cheapest Destinations, hence the name of this blog. I am getting ready to start on edition number three. If you’re heading to cheap countries in Asia soon and want to be a research assistant (lots of glory, not much money), get in touch.

My second book was supposed to be called The Contrarian Traveler (the contrarian traveler website survives), but the suits at the book distributor decided Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune was easier for book buyers to figure out. It didn’t really work that way, but it is nevertheless a fine book that will save most people loads of money.

I recently put out Traveler’s Tool Kit: Mexico and Central America with my friend Rob Sangster. He has a great piece in the current issue of Perceptive Travel called Members of the Tribe.

Speaking of such, I am the editor of Perceptive Travel, a webzine that features the best travel stories from book authors on the move. Sometimes I turn in one of my own pieces, more often I review books or world music. I also review travel gear that won’t break the bank at the Practical Travel Gear blog.

That’s probably plenty, but I am a freelance writer too, mostly on travel, a little on business and booze, so here is a link to my portfolio site. Probably needless to say, I travel a fair bit, which is what I am doing right now. So posts will be further apart than usual until late June. Thanks for subscribing and popping by on occasion. Now get outta town!

Monday Travel News Roundup- Suckubus Edition

I am kicking back in the home of an old college friend in Portland for a few days, enjoying some fine microbrews in a U.S. city where you can get around without an automobile. Here’s a roundup of notable travel news and posts in the meantime.

Hotelchatter gives us a rundown on hidden hotel fees that suck.

American Airlines tries another sucky rule: no bags over 70 pounds on Latin American flights. You didn’t really want to fly with them for that scuba or golf vacation did you? Or to use that airline to bring gifts to your relatives?

Christopher Elliott thinks Spirit Airlines may be eliminating its customer service department (which was already pretty sucky).

Ryanair is raising its fees for just about everything, so be prepared to pack next to nothing in Europe and don’t even think about calling them to make a reservation.