Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

50 Sustainable Travel Tips

I’ve written before in Transitions Abroad on easy ways to lessen your environmental impact when you travel. With all the hype about offsetting airplane carbon emissions and eco-friendly travel gear, it’s easy to ignore the ongoing issues that require a slight shift in habits.

I like this Sustainable Travel Tips feature that ran in a recent issue of National Geographic Traveler because it looks at the whole picture, including what you can do in your house before you even take off. As in print your travel documents on recycled paper (or at least on both sides). Unplug all those computers, chargers, and appliances you won’t be using while you’re gone. (And, I might add, turn off that hot water heater unless your house plants are planning on taking a shower.)

It’s easy to be wasteful in a hotel room. After all, we can justify that we’ve paid for that air conditioning running while we’re out for hours and the lights we left on in the bathroom. But really, it’s a giant waste of resources no matter who is footing the bill.

Some of the tips in the story seem like an odd stretch to get to 50, such as “limit left turns” while driving and “hike a historic cemetery.” (Huh?!) But others are easy and effective.

Carry your own water bottle. Buy local. Pack light. Take public transportation. Stay at small and simple hotels. Eat local food. Bring a reusable shopping bag.

The cool thing is, most of these moves will save you lots of money as well. Win-win for you and the planet.

Fresh Advice From a Round-the-World Traveler

Last September I visited a friend who was about to embark on a year-long trip around the world with his new bride. I took a break from the travel gear reviews on the gear blog I run and profiled what he and his wife were packing here: round-the-world gadget packing.

Hard to believe it’s been a year already, but it has and the evidence is laid out in highly readable form on their One Year on Earth blog. (There’s a link from the 9/15 post with a radio interview.)

We met for a few happy hour beers a couple weeks back and I got the scoop on what Derek learned along the way. This couple (both lawyers taking a long break) had plenty of cash stashed away and got lots of cool gear for wedding presents, but here’s some good advice if you’re planning your own vagabonding journey.

1) Ex-Officio rules.
“I should be getting a commission from ExOfficio” Derek said before he left, since half his backpack was filled with their clothing. But it all held up incredibly well. “After a year on the road,” he says now, “most of that clothing still looks as good as it did when I packed.” He’s the guy that turned me on to their quick-dry underwear and I have to agree that it’s a beautiful thing. Both used an Eagle Creek Ultimate Explorer LT backpack (pictured here) and were very happy with their choice.

2) Loved the Leatherman, but that means always checking a bag.
In the pre-terrorism days you could carry on your bag and circle the globe carrying a Swiss Army knife or a Leatherman knife. No more. You have to commit one way or another: have the knife or carry on. But if you take the knife and check your backpack, you’ll always have a corkscrew.

3) Carry a water bottle.
Europeans are even more obsessed with bottled water than Americans, so you’ll spend a small fortune in restaurants if you let the waiter’s scowl intimidate you into ordering it every time. Plus you’ll spend a lot buying water in a store when what comes out of the tap is perfectly drinkable. (In a developing country, use a purifier to avoid adding to the plastic piles littering every town and beach.)

4) Electronic items that only do one thing are a waste.
“I really didn’t need to bring a digicam,” Derek says. “By the time it gets compressed by YouTube or whatever, the footage doesn’t look any better than what you can shoot with a simple digital camera.” He also says he packed too way too much medication. Most of it could have been bought locally. Which brings us to…

5) You can buy what you need along the way.
We talked about this before they left and indeed this is what they found in practice. Take the items you really want and treasure, but if there’s something you need for a specific place—like a warm coat for Nepal—you can get it there, probably for quite a bit less than you would pay at home unless you’re in Europe.

Planning a Round-the-world Journey

I don’t know about you, but all this talk of a financial market meltdown, mortgage crisis, global recession, and plunging job market makes me pine for the days when I was backpacking around the world and my biggest decision was whether to have shrimp with rice or shrimp with noodles for lunch.

If you’re getting similar itchy feet and don’t know where to start, you could begin with this good blog post on how to plan a RTW trip. Getting a copy of The World’s Cheapest Destinations would help too of course. (If you’re not leaving before the end of the year, wait for the new edition I’m working on now.)

On this resource page you’ll find links to a bunch of round-the-world travel books that will help put a framework on your dreams, books like Vagabonding, First Time Around the World, and Work Your Way Around the World. You will learn a lot more, in a faster manner, by reading these books on the sofa than by spending countless hours in front of a computer monitor. Trust me. Hey, your library probably even has a few of them. Remember that place? It’s still there and is really useful—and free.

With the airline game changing week by week, I don’t advise buying a round-the-world ticket in advance. Work out the first couple long routes, then wing it after that with local prices and a better view of the options.

It helps to pack well so you’re not overburdened. Here is a top-10 list for some popular travel backpacks.

I recently had a few beers with a friend who just returned from a year-long trip around the world. I’m going to put his current advice in a separate post.

Iceland’s Move From Crazy Expensive to Almost Bearable

In my last post I talked about how expensive Iceland was compared to many of the world’s cheapest destinations, but if you’ve always wanted to go there, this would be a good time. The country has gone from being crazy Scandinavia expensive to just plain expensive—in line with much of Continental Europe and cheaper than London or Paris.

As I’ve said a lot on this blog, you have to keep an eye on exchange rates to see how things look now compared to the past. And in that department, Iceland is looking like a sweet deal compared to going there in 2007. Long story short, they had a property bubble very similar to the bubbles in the U.S. and U.K. and the currency became overvalued. Now it has come down to earth and then some, going from 58 kroner to the dollar to around 100 to the dollar. Here’s a chart you don’t see very often when talking about the greenback compared to anything else:

So is the country a screaming bargain now? No, it’s still a relatively wealthy and stable country that belongs to all kinds of European trade pacts, so prices now are pretty much in line with those of Western Europe outside the capitals. Still a bit of sticker shock if you’re coming from anywhere outside of New York City in the U.S., but not “choke on your coffee when you see the dinner bill” expensive like it is in say, Sweden or Denmark.

Hotels are almost reasonable now and flights on Iceland Air are among the best deals out there. A long-running promotion makes it easy for you to stop off in Iceland for a few days or a week on the way to another city in Europe. If you’ve always thought of the country as being out of your reach, take a second look and keep an eye on the historic exchange rates at fxtop.com, where I got the chart above. For the scoop on what to do, see the Iceland Tourism site.

(P.S. - The picture here is from a popular t-shirt for sale throughout Iceland. Yes, it’s a joke.)

The Power of Pricing in Your Travels

There are three main variables that influence the cost of your vacation or travels, but the biggest one is where you go. I am pondering that right now as I travel through Iceland. This is a wonderful, magical place, but be sure your back account is full upon arrival.

This Viking beer, pictured here, will set you back around $8 in a bar. It used to be over $10, but the dollar (and the euro too) has appreciated against the local currency, so things are not as ugly as a year ago.

It’s a decent beer, but nothing special. It’s not any better than the 75-cent beer in Panama or the $1 or less ones you’ll find in some 30+ countries around the world. It doesn’t hold up well compared to the awesome $1.50 beers you’ll drink in the Czech Republic.

It’s not all about the beer, of course, but if a beer in one place is six or eight times what it costs in another place, you can bet hotels, taxi rides, museum admissions, and meals will also cost far, far more as well.

More on Iceland later though, beyond the prices. Great photos to come…