Last year, after a farewell Mexican dinner, my friend Barbara Green gave hugs goodbye to her friends in New York, got on a plane for Quito, Ecuador, and took off with plans for a months-long vacation.
Barbara, I should point out, is not loaded. At home, she supported herself first on a modest income in magazine publishing and later by working for a nonprofit in the Bronx -- while living in and enjoying the most expensive city in the country.
Travel before you retire
Meanwhile, she was able to save enough to travel for close to a year and return with some change in the bank. She even had enough so that when she hit Argentina she could afford to change her original plans and stay on for a few extra months -- relocating every few days, eating out for nearly all meals and splurging on hiking tours to the Amazon, great local wines and tango lessons.
How did she do this? First of all, she lived on a strict budget in New York, spending an amazingly low $2,000 per month and socking the rest away in savings. She often brought her lunches to work, lived in a small, shared apartment and opted for the subway over taxis. But she had enough left over for weekly meals out with friends, cute clothes (I can attest to this) and occasional travel.
On the road, Barbara lives on far less, averaging $600 per month for meals, lodging, sightseeing and bus travel. (It's not uncommon for her to spend more than a day on a rickety bus used by locals to transport livestock.)
What exactly is backpacking?
"Factoring in my flight, insurance and gifts, I actually spend less on a regular basis while traveling than I do in New York," Barbara said.
For those of us without trust funds, hitting the road for months on end can seem unimaginable. Too many of us associate the word "backpacking" with eating beans three meals a day and scrubbing our underwear nightly in youth-hostel sinks. But increasingly, people from the United States are seeing past these misconceptions and catching up with the rest of the world, which has been backpacking for generations.
Try it: Choose your own travel adventure
According to the U.S. Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, the number of U.S. residents traveling overseas jumped by 63% between 1995 and 2007 -- from 19.1 million to 31.2 million -- with travelers increasingly heading to Asia and Latin America rather than Western Europe. Many Americans who could afford a week in Cancún are now opting for longer stretches of cheaper, rough-and-tumble travel.
Industry experts say there are several reasons. One is a general improvement in infrastructure in developing countries, which has taken some of the rough out of roughing it. Also, the Internet has made planning a lot
easier and a lot more effective. Finally, American culture now seems to put a lot more emphasis on meaningful life experiences -- the sort you might not encounter until you get off the beaten path.
"The sense of backpacking is very different today than it was 30 years ago," said Brice Gosnell, the San Francisco publisher of Lonely Planet guidebooks, which many travelers regard as the bibles of budget travel.
Our parents found adventure exploring Europe's ancient cities with little more than a toothbrush and a pair of socks to wear with their sandals, he pointed out. But now these same cities are dotted with Gap and Starbucks stores. "You have to dig deeper to find that authentic experience," Gosnell said.
Americans have always had a complicated relationship with international travel. During most of our history, just getting anywhere other than Canada and Mexico required weeks or months on ocean liners -- an investment of time and money few could afford. As airplanes made trips across the pond faster -- and, eventually, cheaper -- America discovered a spirit of adventure long familiar in places like Europe and Australia, where high school graduates often travel abroad for a "gap year" before entering a university.
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"People are stretching themselves," Gosnell explained. Americans often start with a trip to Europe, "but once they get to Europe they want to stretch themselves a little bit further, and they go to Southeast Asia, even though it scares them a little. Then in looking for something rougher they go to Colombia. We're all trying to get that authentic experience, but the reality is also that we're Americans, and part of that American experience is competitiveness. It's that keeping up with the Joneses."
There is no arguing that international air travel is cheaper than ever. I've recently seen such bargains as a $425 for round-trip airfare to Costa Rica and three nights in a hotel (on Lastminute.com, fees and tax included) and $572 round trip from New York to Dehli, India (Cheapoair.com, tax and fees not included).
Can you put a price on travel?
In 1971, student fares from the U.S. to Western Europe averaged about $200 round trip -- a price so low the Greek Orthodox Church in Athens adopted a prayer to protect itself from the onslaught of American tourists, according to a Time magazine article from that year. But that ticket would cost $1,065 in today's dollars. Despite rising taxes and fuel charges, international air travel is still remarkably affordable compared with decades past.
Ease of planning is also a factor. On increasingly popular online forums such as Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree, travelers share tips on destinations around the globe, piquing others' interest in far-flung locations and dispelling concerns about safety and social isolation while on the road.
"Today, people have a lot of opportunity to learn how to find safe and affordable travel by talking to their peers online," said Scott Hyden, the president of STA Travel, a company that brokers discount travel to people under age 26. The company launched its own travel forum in early 2007.
"A lot of times they can find that traveling to China is cheaper than Mexico," Hyden said.
And then, of course, there is the economic factor on the ground. Not only do far-off developing nations offer different cultures, untouched landscapes and a lifetime of stories to tell the kids -- they're also cheap.
Making her way through Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina, Barbara said she typically spent $5 on hostels,"60 cents per kilo to have my laundry washed, dried, ironed and folded, 30 cents for amazing fruit salad with homemade yogurt, or 75 cents for chorizo with rice and salad," she wrote in an e-mail. "Of course, I got sick more times than I'd like to remember. But adopting the local lifestyle is cheap and a better way to appreciate the places you're visiting. I've seen another side of life."
Published Sept. 1, 2008
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