Adventure Capitalist

I’ve been on the road for the better part of two months at the moment, and I have learned a lot about both myself and how to deal with long-term travel. Overall I don’t have any regrets and I have enjoyed my time.

But as with anything, I’ve made a few mistakes, most of them minor, but some of them rather annoying..

Buying one-way tickets
One-way airline tickets are most of the time a waste of money, they cost as much if not often more than return tickets, but with none of the flexibility. Even if you’re only going one-way, it is often a good idea to get a return ticket anyway, and just not use the return flight. Getting a return ticket, provided it is as cheap or cheaper than a one-way ticket at least gets you the flexibility of returning at a given date, should your plans change.

Planning too far in advance
I bought my plane tickets as far back as in October for a trip that started early this year. It turns out that it wasn’t the itinerary I took in the end. If you’re staying long (say more than 4-5 weeks), you don’t have to stress about the rest of your itinerary, usually if you get tickets 3 weeks or so in advance, the price won’t be much different from what it would have been 3 months in advance.

Getting tickets for onwards destinations too early
This is really related to the previous point: I got tickets originally to go to Panama at the turn of Jan-Feb. Turned out I wanted to stay in Argentina longer and skip Panama altogether this time around. That’s about £1000/$1600 on airline tickets I didn’t use. Money I’ll never see again.

Not bringing an unlocked mobile phone
Getting by without a local phone has been good in a way, I haven’t had to stress about missed calls etc for a while, because I haven’t cared. But in terms of building a social life, it has been slightly crippling: getting a local pay-as-you-go number and putting the SIM into an unlocked phone is recommended. I’ll definitely do that the next time I go traveling for longer.

Packing too many books
I love reading. Having books on the road is great, but they also weigh a hell of a lot. I could have fit a lot more useful stuff into my packing without the books, and in this day and age, getting a Kindle or equivalent e-reader would have been worth it. Next time I’ll now, get a Kindle and skip the heavy paper books.

Not bringing enough contacts/medicines
I’m nearsighted and an asthmatic (mild, but still). I only brought contacts and medicines to get me through until the end of this month. That means that my trip has an enforced end-date, whereas I could possibly have gone elsewhere before coming back under other circumstances. Contacts are probably easy to get locally, prescription medicines a bit harder. Next time: bring medicines that will cover twice the length of the trip, just in case I want to stay longer.

Not  bringing enough(!) clothes
I realise most people will probably do the opposite to me, pack too much. I’m a big believer in light packing though, but in truth, I packed a bit too light this time. I’ve gotten by, cleaning clothes a couple of times a week, but I could definitely have put in 2-3 more t-shirts and one more regular shirt so I wouldn’t have worn all the same clothes in all my pictures.

Lacking discipline to work on the road
I’ve done a little bit of work on the road, and this trip was originally planned to reboot and recharge my batteries, so work was never that important. But I feel if I had been more disciplined about scheduling say “10-15 everyday is work time”, I would have gotten more things done than I have. Not a big deal given the purpose of the trip, but I certainly would have preferred getting more done.

In summary, I don’t think any of my mistakes have been fatal, spending money on airline tickets I never used has been the most annoying mistake by far - it’s money I could have used to stay an extra month instead of going home, big, big waste. But hey, you live and you learn. Next time I’ll know a lot of things better.