As we wrap up our fourth month of travel, here’s a look back at some of our initial expectations vs. what has actually transpired.
Packing/Traveling light…
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| We’ll fit EVERYTHING in these two bags…yeah right. |
Before we left we decided we’d pack and travel as light as possible. We’d only take the stuff we’d absolutely need in order to be agile, semi-backpackers with three kids in tow. And so we did just that and started off with just a backpack each. My wife and I would carry the large ones and the kids small ones just for some personal belongings.
Fast forward to today: we lug around the two large red backpacks, cramming each one with about 50lbs., a large suitcase, a medium size suitcase, a regular backpack, a medium duffel bag, and the three small backpacks the kids still carry. WTF?!?
Straight forward, perfectly structured homeschooling…
Our homeschooling would be almost entirely paperless and online! In our initial research, we discovered a wealth of online resources. We paid and signed up for some “premium” online content available 24/7! We would educate our kids entirely via our tablets/phones/laptops. We’re living in the 21st Century after all. Who needs paper!?! Remember the medium sized suitcase I mentioned earlier? Well, now it’s filled with about 3 heavy textbooks, a truckload of workbooks, art supplies, binders, hundreds of pages of printouts, etc. We have a full blown traveling classroom weighing in at about 35lbs. worth of supplies.
Duration of Stops…
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| There’s no better teacher than experience |
Our initial strategy called for short and sweet 7-10 day stops. We planned on arriving at someplace, seeing everything and moving on. The underlying idea was maximize how much we saw and did during our trip. Sound familiar? Most family vacations are planned this way. For example, we spent eight nights in San Ignacio, Belize before moving on to Corozal, Belize for another 7 nights before moving on to Chetumal, Mexico for another week. In contrast, our last few stops have been over a month in Guatemala City, another 28 days in Granada, Nicaragua and we’ve schedule a full month and a half in Costa Rica.
What caused these complete 180 degree changes? Subscribe to find out! Part two detailing the reasons is coming soon! Looking into long-term family travel? You don’t want to miss part 2, we wish we would have known this before starting out…would have saved us time and money!
