One Week Into Traveling the World: What We're Learning Already
A week ago, everything we needed for the next year was stuffed into two backpacks to take a risk on making world travel a full time lifestyle. We’ve celebrated our anniversary in Antigua, climbed a volcano, gotten sick, made new friends, worked from cafés, trained in unfamiliar gyms, watched incredible sunsets, and started figuring out what full-time travel actually feels like.
Hudson and Rocio
10/1/20264 min read
A week ago, everything we needed for the next year was stuffed into two backpacks.
Since then, we’ve celebrated our anniversary in Antigua, climbed a volcano, gotten sick, made new friends, worked from cafés, trained in unfamiliar gyms, watched incredible sunsets, and started figuring out what full-time travel actually feels like.
And somehow, it still hasn’t fully hit me that we left home to travel the world for a year. Right now, it still feels a little like we’re on vacation. We’ve only been to two places, we’ve moved somewhat quickly, and we’re already realizing there’s absolutely no way to see or experience everything.
Maybe that’s one of the first lessons...
For all the planning we did to make this happen, we’re going to have to get comfortable with leaving things unexplored.
The Moments That Make It Real
There have already been a few moments where I’ve thought, This is why we did this.
One was on Acatenango.
We had spent hours climbing, struggling with the altitude, getting rained on, getting cold, and questioning why the hell we had signed up for this.
Then the next morning, we were standing above the clouds surrounded by volcanoes as the sun came up. Everything was covered in perfect golden light.
It was one of those moments where you stop caring how hard it was to get there.
The other happens almost every evening now.
We’re at Lake Atitlán, sitting by the water with an awesome meal and a beer, watching the sun disappear behind the mountains.
Those moments feel like the version of this life I imagined.
But most of full-time travel isn’t a mountaintop sunrise...
It’s figuring out where to buy eggs.
Apparently, Two Bags Are Plenty
Before leaving, one of my biggest concerns was packing. How do you fit everything you might need for an entire year into two bags?
Now that we’re actually doing it, the surprising answer is: pretty easily. I may have actually overpacked. There’s nothing I can think of that I wish I had brought. Everything we have feels useful, but I’m also realizing how little we actually need.
I wear variations of the same things constantly: a hiking outfit, a beach outfit, a few walking-around outfits, and a few gym outfits. Everything mixes together.
Packing and unpacking hasn’t been nearly as annoying as I expected either. Every time we move, we get a little better at it. The bags have basically become our home.
The funniest part is that I can barely remember most of the clothes and stuff that used to fill our dresser and closet.
For years, all of that felt normal.
Now I have a couple of bags and somehow don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
Money Is Cheaper Here…and Somehow Disappears Faster
Guatemala has also been our first experience managing money somewhere that uses a completely different currency.
Things are cheaper than they would be in the United States, but cash seems to disappear unbelievably fast.
We’ll go to an ATM, get a stack of quetzals, and suddenly wonder where it all went.
Part of the problem is that I still haven’t developed an intuitive sense for what things cost. A dinner might be 380 or 400 quetzals at a nice restaurant on the water. Numerically, that sounds like a lot. Then you convert it to dollars and realize it’s somewhere around $50 for the two of us with drinks and food.
So things are affordable, but you’re also constantly spending.
Coffee. Food. Transportation. Water. Gym passes. Laundry. Activities.
It adds up fast.
That’s something we’re going to have to learn as we go: not just what things cost, but what our version of sustainable long-term travel actually costs.
Normal Life Looks Different Here
Some of my favorite observations have been about completely ordinary things.
We haven’t really encountered the type of grocery store we’re used to back home.
Instead, we’ve been buying supplies from little corner tiendas. Eggs might just be sitting out in the open. You grab what you need, pay, and continue on.
We’ve cooked a little at our Airbnb on Lake Atitlán, and figuring out where to get ingredients is part of the experience.
Laundry, meanwhile, has been ridiculously easy.
In both places we’ve stayed, we can drop off a bag of dirty clothes for very little money and get everything back washed, dried, and folded.
So far, no desperate sink laundry. Small victory.
Then there are the lessons you only learn through experience...
Like realizing many bathrooms don’t have toilet paper - or learning the hard way that you’re not supposed to flush it.
Those aren’t exactly the moments you put in the travel montage.
One Week Down
If I could sit down with the version of myself who was still in the Marines, dreaming about doing this someday, I’d probably tell him to prepare—but not to overplan.
Put away as much money as possible.
Invest.
Get yourself into the best physical shape you can.
Take care of the medical stuff you’ve been putting off.
Start getting rid of your possessions way earlier than you think you need to.
But don’t try to plan every detail of the trip.
Because you can’t.
We’re only a week into this and we’re already realizing a year isn’t remotely enough time to see everything we want to see.
And that’s okay.
I miss our family and friends. Video calls help, and part of the reason we’re making these videos and writing these blogs is so they can follow along with us.
But right now?
This life feels absolutely amazing. Every place we visit teaches us something that makes the next destination even more exciting.
I still don’t think it has fully registered that we’re not going home in a few days.
Maybe eventually it will.
But we’re only one week in.
See you in the next one!
-Hudson, out!
