Families that have been down this path
As we looked into this adventure, it was great to see the stories of other families that have been down this road before. This road being the one where you take your child(ren) out with you and go for a mind-expanding trip around (bits of) the world. If you’re reading this blog thinking ‘what a great idea for someone else to do’, then see some of these trips and think again.
Soultravelers are a family of 3 from Santa Cruz in California that have been travelling since 2006. Their daughter, who was 5 when they set out, is a budding violinist, and they’ve been videoing her all round the world. They’ve created a fantastic site documenting the trip and how they did it, which I am going through to see if there are tips that we could be using.
So where have they been? A lot of Europe (Poland, Denmark, UK, Spain, Holland, etc), Morocco, Turkey, Jordan, … the list is a long one. What a great thing to have been able to do that while bringing up and educating their daughter. And maintaining a very rich site on the way.
The most astounding thing is the $25,000 a year budget that they’ve adhered to. From reading through their site, the key factors that have allowed them to do this are travelling slowly and going in a motorhome. The former saves a lot on travel, and allows you to “live like a local” as you are more resident in a place than a tourist. The latter clearly saves on both flights and accommodation (It also helps that there are 3 of them, while there are 6 of us – should’ve paid more attention to family planning in that biology class). Regardless, they’ve done this remarkably cheaply, and I’m certain there are tips in there we could use. Our approach is to try to get a lot into the period of time that we have, and that means a lot of travel and many different places to stay.
<