What we’ve learned thus far…

“Discipline leads to freedom” — Jonathan Miller

Note: This post is dedicated to anyone who feels inspired enough to plan a lengthy trip of their own and to my mom to assure her we’re doing our research and prepping furiously.

After detailing all the prep work we’ve been doing for our upcoming trip to a friend, I was inspired to write this post about our learnings.

“Wow,” James said. “So you can’t just buy a van and run off somewhere?”

No, not really. All of us love those wonderful instagram posts and buzzfeed stories that depict the ease and delight of a lengthy, life-changing excursion; this will not be one of those posts.

The fact is, you can’t simply hop in a van and run away with the love of your life. At least for us, planning for our trip has been very unromantic. Calculated, deliberate decision making has gone into our planning — full of queueing in government offices, doctor’s offices, on the phone with customer service reps and watching how-to YouTube videos on all things car-related. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about my privilege, I just thought all of you should know that:

1. You can’t travel through the states for more than 183 days per calendar year. Years of travel prior to your extended stay also count towards your allotted time. Some semi-complicated trip-remembering/math is involved. They calculate the sum as follows:

• Each day in the U.S. in the current calendar year counts as one day;
• Each day in the U.S. in the prior year counts as one-third of a day;
• Each day in the U.S. in the year before that counts as one-sixth of a day. If the sum of those three numbers totals 183 or more, the IRS may insist you file a U.S. tax return.

Jon and I travel to popular U.S. climbing areas often so this has been a bit of an issue forcing us to tentatively change our initial plans quite drastically (which we’re actually feeling pretty good about!)

2. You can get emergency OHIP (Ontario health insurance) coverage for two years while abroad. You can’t get extended traveller’s insurance without it. Your regular OHIP covers you for 6 months abroad. To apply for extended insurance, you have to spend an eternity (read: an afternoon) in an Ontario Service Centre…if you like people watching, this won’t be so bad.

3. There is conflicting information about the risks of driving in Mexico as a tourist. We’ve heard that Texans do it safely all the time but they recommend not to drive at night — you might hit a donkey. We’ve also been warned by others. We’d like to camp out in El Potrero Chico (a popular sport climbing area in Mexico) so we’re still trying to figure this out.

4. There are a couple of options re: how to power our vehicle’s cabin lights for lengthy periods of time and where to charge our electronics consistently without leaving the car running. V (our van) has a solar panel on her roof — we’ve been told it’s pretty inefficient but Jon has been looking into the option of buying a generator that stores power from both the engine and the solar panel. They actually seem like an easy option to our power predicament (other than the fact that we’d really like to power a fridge somehow). More to come on solar panel hookups in another post, but if anyone has any suggestions/has does this before, leave us a comment!

5. For anyone looking to travel internationally for long periods of time, I recommend doing a bit of research on which banks charge the least for atm transactions. After all, the more money you save, the more time you get to spend on the road. (PS: We went with a combo of Tangerine (for the States) and TD (for Latin America) — but this is not an endorsement for either)

Those are the basics. More learnings to come.
People keep asking me if we’re ready to go. The answer is “we will be.”

40 days until our departure.

— LB

Follow us
Instagram ~ Twitter ~ Facebook
www.medium.com/wander-wonder