Some great travel resources for the RTW crowd

There are great resources for the RTW traveler all over the web, but some of them are much easier to find than others, so I’d like to point out some cool stuff that would otherwise be easy to miss. BootsnAll is running a weekly series of Expert Travel Articles, and most of them offer great advice that is especially helpful to those trying to figure things out on their own, and of course that means they often apply to RTW folks.

Here are some articles that may be of interest to you:

Overnight buses and how they work – If you are going to South America in particular, you may be aware that flights between cities can be very expensive, but long and reasonably luxurious bus rides can connect most places cheaply. At first, the thought of a 20-hour bus ride sounds easy, since all you have to do is climb on board and then read and sleep until you arrive. But it isn’t always that simple. Check this article out for tips and good advice on how to approach these things.

Visa information for South America – Speaking of South America, you might not automatically assume that going from one country to another can be very expensive and sometimes even complicated. But it can be. This article goes over all the fees for all the major countries, and even offers some handy advice on how to legally get around a few of them.

Learning Spanish in Central America – Moving north just a bit, this is another RTW situation that all travelers should at least be aware of before they leave. Namely, that unlike places like Vietnam or Finland or even most of Africa, English isn’t widely spoken in Central America outside of Belize and the largest cities. But good news comes in the fact that there is no cheaper, faster, or easier place to learn Spanish, and you can do it while exploring the region. For about the same price as a cheap hotel (or even less) you can spend half a day in a Spanish school and live with a local family, so with total immersion you can become half fluent in only a week or two. This article explains how they usually work.

Camping in Europe guide – Yeah, Europe is often the most expensive place to travel for RTW people, so any money-saving advice really helps. This article explains the basics of how camping works in Europe, which is quite different from how it works in North America. Specifically, there are way more camping areas in or near big cities, and many of them also rent small cabins or tents, so you don’t need to bring a sleeping bag and camping stove with you in order to take advantage of them. They are often connected to city centers by cheap public transport, so you can go museum-hopping all day and then sleep for almost nothing in a nearby forest, while getting wasted with fellow cheapskate travelers.