Life on the Road Part I: Living in Hostels

When you read our blog or look at our pictures, it seems like all we do is sight-see. It looks like we never cease having fun and every moment is perpetual neverending vacation-induced bliss. The truth is that we love our life on the road and we've obviously had and continue to have incredible experiences, but when you travel for so long there's a "real life" aspect that is largely behind the scenes of our blog, our pictures, and our emails to friends and family. After almost 10 months our life has become a routine that's quite different from our life back home, but it's still a routine.

We decided it would be fun and interesting to show you some of the less glamorous, though sometimes equally entertaining aspects of the way we live our life out here as long-term travelers over a couple of posts. We'll start with the issue of meeting our most basic need that we confront each day: where to sleep.

What's a Hostel?

The majority of the time we sleep in hostels. Hostels are not fancy hotels; they are designed with budget-travel in mind. They typically stand apart from hotels in that the vast majority of spaces are shared; many rooms are dormitory style with between 4 and 12 beds (bathrooms are usually communal as well), they have common living areas often with TV rooms, game tables, or bars, and most good ones will have a communal kitchen where guests can prepare their own food. They're a far cry from Caesar's Palace or even the Super 8. We spend most of our nights in hostels, although we have on occasion stayed at slightly nicer "hospedajes" (really cheap hotels) when we have traveled in very inexpensive countries.

The Good

While traveling in hostels is not for everyone, they possess an incredible number of advantages over typical hotels. The first and most obvious is the price. A dorm-bed on our trip has ranged from $4US - $17US per person, per night. Often for only a dollar or two more we splurge for a private room with a shared bathroom. Even a Motel 6 in the USA costs at least $40, and many vacationers easily spend hundreds of dollars a night just on their hotel. Some long-term travelers choose to camp a lot, but for those who like a warm bed with a mattress hostels are a great option.

In addition, common areas like living rooms, TV and game areas offer the opportunity to meet other travelers and make friends, essential when on the road for months at a time. If you are lucky, your hostel may have perks like hammocks, pools, gardens, or even pets. Many hostels have book exchanges where you can trade books you've finished for new ones (Kendra goes through about 4 books an hour, Rich is on his 4th book of the trip). Communal kitchens allow you to cook your own meals which not only saves you an incredible amount of money, but allows you to eat healthy. Traveler's leave leftovers in “free” baskets for others to use and we carry quite a bit of food with us from place to place. We eat the vast majority of our meals at our hostels, not out as we would on a typical vacation, and we have come to realize that a well-equipped kitchen is one of our major pre-requisites when choosing a hostel.

Finally, given that hostels are geared towards independent-minded travelers, they usually offer tons of valuable information. They provide info and directions for activities in their area, can help you book tours and onwards bus tickets and many will direct you to other good hostels in nearby popular cities and towns.

The Bad and The Ugly

While hostels have their pro's there are definitely bad and downright ugly characteristics as well. Cleanliness can be a major issue when you share space with dozens of strangers. We've seen some spotless hostels but also others that should be condemned even if they were situated in the furthest circles of Hell. A good example was our hostel in Tulum, Mexico that didn't have running water, toilet paper, or employees who cared to fix the problem. The hostel made up for these deficiencies, however, with a plethora of broken bikes and cockroaches.

After months on the road it's often tiring to not have your own personal space. Sharing bedrooms and a kitchen gets old after a while and isn't fun when you're frankly just not in the mood for it. Sometimes you just want your own couch, your own bed, and your own pots and pans. We counter this by getting private rooms when we can, mostly so we can throw our stuff everywhere, but in some places (like here in Patagonia), it's simply not affordable for us.

The social scenes at hostels are usually an advantage and we've met lots of good friends, but you also have to share space with people that just flat out annoy you. Some people bug you with their political views or their views about how every other traveler should "eat at 'XXX' restaurant" or "not miss 'YYY' town." The unsolicited advice gets old after a while, as does the same old "where ya from, where ya goin, how long ya been traveling" conversation. You also have the adults who haven't seemed to grow up enough to do their dishes or pick up their dirty laundry.

Other common problems we have in hostels are indifferent to flat out rude staff members, ill-equipped or dirty kitchens, false advertising and incorrect info. Fun times!

Even at the best hostels, we still face a host of small challenges that you would never think about at home. For example, when you are sharing a 10 bed dorm and 3 people are trying to catch a 4am bus, you are probably going to be woken up no matter how quietly they pull their toothbrushes out of their ziplocs. Or how you have to bag and label all your food in the hostel refrigerator; when you are in a busy hostel you have to play “find my white plastic bag” amongst 20 other white plastic bags to be able to eat your food – and sometimes it's simply disappeared.

How We Find and Pick Hostels

So how do you go about finding and picking a hostel? There are tons of websites that are literally hostel search engines, just like Orbitz or Expedia are for hotels. They contain reviews, pictures, and you can make reservations. We also frequent online message boards for independent travelers, but by far the most useful tactic is simply to talk to other travelers at your hostel who have been to where you're going.

We almost never book a hostel in advance. We find that pictures and reviews can be deceiving, so whenever possible we just show up in a city with a few in mind and take a look around. Here's our list of important criteria we always look for when finding a hostel:

- Clean!
- A well-equipped kitchen
- Good sociable atmosphere
- Internet access
- Friendly staff and good information

Our next "Life on the Road" post will focus on how we afford this craziness. Look for it in the next few weeks. Later kids!