How to…travel on the cheap in the United States of America

Travelling without spending in the States requires a mixture of kindness and knowledge. Kindness on the part of generous people in America and knowledge based on conversations and experiences along the way. Here are our tips for travelling on the cheap in the U.S. of A:

Accommodation:
Couch surfing rocks. This international network of nice people allows you to search for free beds in people’s homes across the U.S. (and the world). You get to meet and live with the locals in exchange for good conversation and the odd beer. We have stayed with some incredible people from musicians and comedians to hipsters and surgeons. Accommodation varies from a pile of blankets on the sitting room floor to a B&B style private room.

Being friendly and meeting people. It‘s amazing how far a smile and a British accent goes in the States. We‘ve met people on beaches and in cars (fellow ridesharers) who have kindly invited us to their homes. Americans are so much more willing than the British to go out of their way for a stranger, giving us lifts across hundreds of miles and buying us meals. We’ve been bowled over.

Travel:
Craig’s List rideshare gets you where you want to go, as long as you can be flexible with the dates. Simply google Craig’s List in the area you’re staying about a week before you want to leave and post an advert in the rideshare section. We were very successful in the southwest, but not so successful in the south. Since petrol is so cheap in the States, splitting fuel costs nearly always works out cheaper than taking public transport, although it‘s not as good for your carbon footprint. You also get to meet some great people who sometimes are prepared to take the slow route to show you the sites and the best places to eat.

Greyhound special deals. The Greyhound is miserable - not dangerous, just depressing. Avoid if you can, but if you must then check their ‘Hotdeals’ for cheap tickets. Booking more than three days in advance allows the person travelling with you to get a half price ‘companion’ ticket.

Megabus has reached the States and is cheaper than Greyhound. Service is limited mainly to the northeast, but it’s expanding all the time. Chinabus takes you from one city’s China town to another and is again cheaper than the Greyhound, although service is more limited (mainly northeast).

Amtrak is more expensive than the bus, but you can get some great deals. The rail pass could work out if you are planning to travel extensively during a two or three week period. The website also offers ‘hot deals’ which can be cheaper than the Greyhound on certain routes. The trains are very comfortable so sleeping on them overnight is possible, thus saving money on accommodation.

Food and drink:
Tap water is potable, so refill your bottle. Restaurants are usually more than happy to oblige.

Happy hour. Most bars offer deals during ’happy hour(s)’ on drinks and food. It’s always worth asking before placing your order.

All-you-can eat buffets. Some restaurants, especially those serving southern cookin’ and pizza, have lunchtime and/or dinner buffets where you eat as much as you can for a reasonable price. Like Mama Hamils lunchtime feast for just $8. You’ll be full for the day.

Giveaways. Look out for free events serving free food in the local entertainment news (like the street gig and hotdogs we found in Nashville). Products are sometimes being promoted on the streets so keep walking by in different disguises to stock up on free samples.

Supermarket tasters. Some supermarkets leave out delicious and plentiful tasters, which can mount up to a sizeable meal. Costco gives away loads of food, although you will need to go in with a member. Treasure Island in Chicago is also generous.

Free breakfasts at Holiday Inn. Apparently it’s easy enough to walk in with a confident stride and help yourself, although we haven’t tried this ourselves.

Dumpster diving is a popular food shopping experience in some parts of the country. Again, we haven’t done it ourselves, but are led to believe that there are rich pickings to be had for free in the skips out the back of supermarkets. Post-midnight is prime diving time. Here you will find trays of pasta sauce where maybe one jar broke and soiled (but didn’t spoil) the rest; out of date bread, crisps and other dry goods that will last forever; dented tins of food etc. If you’re prepared to wash your find you can stock up for weeks.

Fun:
Free music. Check out local entertainment listings (usually in a free mag) for free gigs and events.

Museums often have a free or discounted entry day each week. Have a look on their websites and plan accordingly.

Other stuff:
Clothes. Travelling through the U.S.A.’s many climatic zones requires many changes of clothes. So if you get caught short in a snowstorm, as we were, head to the local thrift (second hand) store for bargains galore.

Internet. Libraries offer free use of computers and Internet for up to two hours. Most cities also offer free wifi hotspots in cafes, bars and public places. Useful if you’re travelling with a laptop. Google ‘free wifi hotspots’ to find the nearest places.

This is how we have survived a month in the States on our last few pounds and the tumbling exchange rate. It takes a little more time and effort but has greatly enhanced our experience and understanding of this enormous country. However, don’t take it too far or you could end up being mistaken for a hobo.







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Back to school

“How did you get by without speaking the language?”. People frequently asked us this as we’ve travelled around the world.


It has certainly been challenge to navigate our way through many strange and often impenetrable languages; our eyes bewildered by strange square Cyrillic lettering, beautiful abstract kanji and psychedelic, swirly Thai, our ears twisted by harsh, gutteral Mandarin, soft, whispered Japanese and the long drawl of the American South West.

Yet somehow we managed. Though eating out in a Chinese restaurant often felt like Russian roulette, and coaxing answers in English out of a shy Japanese guesthouse owner, anxious not to loose face by ‘embarrassing themselves’ was like trying to avoid wearing slippers, we managed.

Once we left Asia behind and reached the shores of the Americas I thought it would get easier. It didn’t.

Indeed, for me at least, it was when we reached the new linguistic realm of Latin America that the language barrier, and the associated frustrations of not speaking or understanding the local language, has been at its greatest.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the language more than anywhere else that we’d been, rather it was that, for the first time, I was far behind, in linguistic terms, my fair travelling companion.

With a year in Ecuador under her belt, Lara speaks good Spanish, or rather Latin American. She can hold a conversation, decipher a bus timetable, read a menu.

I, on the other hand cannot. Rather I mumble away in dreadful Spanglish, gleaned from films, television and a fortnight’s glance at my little Spanish phrasebook during our trip across the Pacific.

I couldn’t stand it. I was reduced to the role of a mute bystander on the edge of every conversation, grinning sheepishly in this most machismo of worlds as Lara would happily rabbit on with waiters and bus drivers, hostel owners and even friends.

I’m sure she didn’t appreciate it either, having to shoulder the burden of full-time spokesperson, constantly having to translate for me.

After a month of this, verbally stumbling across Mexico I’d had enough. I decided was time to take things into my own hands. I had to take the plunge into a pool of new vocab, pronouns and verbs.


It was time to go back to school.

Antigua, the grand old former capital of colonial-era Guatemala, is the perfect place to learn Spanish.

It’s a beautiful location, where old cobbled streets are lined with low houses painted sky blue, peach and mustard yellow, their hues faded by the scorching sunshine.

There’s a grand old square bordered by a ruined old Cathedral (a victim of the many earthquakes that have struck the city), decaying old monasteries, and crumbling old churches dedicated to a whole host of saints.

Above the city loomed three massive volcanoes, brooding and very much active, which we could walk up, padding through paths of volcanic dust and gingerly stepping across the sharp fields of recently solidified lava.

Volcanoes and ruins aside the town also offers a huge range of language schools where, for a rock bottom price, gringos can cram in a week or two’s intensive Spanish lessons.

Many choose to do this before pressing further south, heading for other Latin American countries where they can put their newly-learned lingo to use, from San Salvador to Santiago.

We’re both studying at one of these language schools. Lara is ‘just brushing up on’ the pretorect and other difficult and impressive-sounding advanced things; I’m just hoping I can order a bus ticket by the end of the week.

I reckon I stand a fighting chance. After all, we couldn’t be studying in an environment more conducive to learning.

Our school is set in a pleasant courtyard, around which pupils and teachers sit in the open air.

It’s fresh and invigorating, albeit at this this altitude we face the stark choice of either shivering in the shade or sweltering in the sun.

Lessons are one-on-one teaching, four hours a day, which makes for intensive but highly productive learning.

Despite this the atmosphere remains highly relaxed and the courtyard echoes to peals of laughter amongst the strangled words.

Learning a new language can be very rewarding and it’s made all the more enjoyable when you get to mix with so many people, old and young, from across the world, all here to learn themselves and somehow, in the process find out about other countries and cultures.

And alongside the international pleasantries there’s some serious business to be done. I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in, taking a nosedive straight into a new language.

My teacher is a lovely chap called Raphael, a charming retired farmer with a gentle manner and an infectious laugh. He’s no Mr Bronson, Grange Hill’s tyrannical French teacher, that's for sure. Rather he’s an immensely laid-back fellow, encouraging and - most crucially for me - patient.

On the first day we sat down to work and he spread out his teaching materials, tattered old books, held together with yellowing sellotape.

Straight away he was off, gabbling away in Spanish and scribbling indecipherable words on scraps of paper.

I was bemused at first and, as an absolute beginner, terribly lost, clumsy and awkward like a baby bird.

It was a shock to be back at school. After ten years lying somewhat dormant my part of the brain which is meant to absorb and learn things like new languages is rather dusty and unused. It took quite some effort to shake it back to life and coax it into absorbing a rather daunting-looking foreign language.

It was also intense; and after four hours of hard study I’m left reeling, my brain frying, my memory overloaded with verbs and definite articles.

I’m confused by conjugations and assaulted with adjectives, irked by infinitives and perplexed by pronouns.

Then there’s the pronounciation - all that seems to come out of my cakehole is a bizarre form of mangled Spanglish.

I have to relearn how to speak. I’m trying desperately to reprogramme my Anglo-Saxon genes so that I can replace my long English vowels and sharp BBC pronunciation with the ability to speak in one long, fast rolling sentences and to roll my ‘r’s like a rattling motorbike exhaust.

Raphael gave me a couple of tonguetwisters to get this process going - fiendishly difficult ones that reduced me to slathering, jibbering fool.

Try this one for instance:

Rapido corren los carros cargados de ferrocarril

See?

At first it seemed hopeless. How on earth, I thought, I am going to pick this up in five days? Is it really worth putting myself through this linguistic pain?

Lara can speak the lingo, and besides is it really worth it in a country where a sizeable proportion of people don’t even speak Spanish (the various indigenous peoples, descendents of the Maya, speaking 28 different languages and dialects of their own)? Surely I should be delving into the mysteries of K’iche, Kaqchikel or Mam.

Gradually things improved. A surprising amount of the words were familiar (thanks to everything from the Roman conquest of Britain to the films of Quentin Tarantino) and besides this was conversational Spanish I was after, not Don Quixote.

Now we jibber jabber along quite happily. It helped that, like many Guatemalans, Raphael speaks far slower and clearer then a Spaniard.

He’s a great one for gossip and greatly enjoys the tales I have to tale him of our homestay in a crumbling old casa in one of the nearby streets. It’s owned by an old lady with small darting eyes which nervously follow you round the room.

Raphael grinned when he recognised her name, and laughed out loud when I recounted to him our experiences of her food, or rather the extra ingredients she unwittingly added to each meal.

We seemed to take it in turns to be served a bug of some sort: spiders in our orange juice, flies on our pasta, even a couple of maggots in a chicken fillet (or was it fish?), our hostess provided them all.

Lara and I bravely ploughed on through the courses, determined to stay the course. Our fellow housemate, a game young Aussie fellow, did his best but, after numerous occasions it got too much - our hostess simply couldn’t understand why he eschewed her sena and started to eat out.

Back at school, as we sit under the avocado tree, learning verb endings, a large boom rolled out across the town.

Everyone looked up to see smoke rising from one of the 3000m beasties. A common occurrence, apparently, and one that doesn't seem to concern the locals at all.

It was enough to distract me though and my mind started wandering away from verb stems and pondering the fate of Pompeii.

Maybe I needed Mr Bronson after all.

You boy! Fewins! Pay attention in class!



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First impressions of Japan

Neon rules. A man waters his bonsai trees on the pavement. Friends meet for lunch, a song and a dance in the street. A man collapses from exhaustion on the morning tube. A million lights adorn skyscrapers then dim grey and disappear as the sun rises. Business men in shirt sleeves slurp noodles. You never go thirsty with a green tea vending machine on every corner. No street names. Trains that look like rockets. A communal hot bath after every shower. Tatami mat floors. Sliding paper walls. Sore knees from kneeling. Pears that look like giant apples. Miso soup, salad and red bean rice for breakfast. Baby voices. Scuffing, shuffling feet. Every appliance has its own song. Manga cafes serve unlimited icecream. The toilet has a control pad. Small bowls and chopsticks. It`s not as expensive as you think. Paddy fields for village greens. Forested mountain slopes appear and disappear in swirling mist. Big flying insects. Paedophilic comics. The bows get bigger the more important the person you`re bidding farewell. Packaging, packaging, packaging. Generous gifts galore as we we`re packed on the train with almighty bags of snacks. People love umbrellas. Women only carriages on the tube. Apprentice gangsters. Frozen tuna look like torpedoes. Is this Japan?



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A typical Trans-Siberian stop

Like our fellow passengers we spent our time on board the Trans-Siberian sleeping, playing chess, reading, paying visits to the samovar for hot drinks and more sleeping (train travel always seems to have a pleasantly soporific effect).

This monotony was only broken by the handful of stops our train made every day which allowed passengers to alight and stretch their legs. The following describes a typical stop.

The toilets have been closed for the last ten minutes, the passengers mill about in the corridor, expectant fags at the ready, the train starts to slow: there must be a stop coming up

Heaving to a shuddering halt, the expectant passengers impatiently wait for the provodnitsa to open the heavy steel door and haul down the steps. A physically-challenging and rather complex process, this often seems to require the help of one of the many bare-chested men who always seem to be on hanging around.

Outside on the platform a gaggle of Babuskas (is that the collective noun?) line up their improvised stalls, ready to hawk their wares - packets of noodles and biscuits, along with more homegrown treats such as cabbage dumplings, boiled potatoes and smoked fish.

The passengers gingerly step off the train, heaving themselves down off the high steps, dodging puddles, piles of ballast and the broken glass of beer bottles to make the ‘platform’, often little more than a rough strip of concrete, or even bare ground, with great waterlogged holes in it

The flock over to the babuskas, waving roubles and plastic bags in a frenzy of hunting and gathering.

The little shop set back from the platform soon attracts their attention: time to stock up on booze and fags. Passengers crowd around the tiny window, always seemingly built with your average Oompa-Lumpa, rather than a human, in mind.

Back by the train, a leathery chap saunters along the platform banging the wheels and undercarriages as he goes. This is no act of state-sponsored vandalism, rather he plays a key and rather reassuring role, searching the wheels for cracks and checking the integrity of our moving home.

He is followed by a weatherbeaten, broad lady, who jams a metal rod through a crack in the concrete platform, heaves on a dilapidated old valve and feeds water somewhere into the bowels of the carriage.

In the background the tannoy crackles and enormous freight trains roll by, dragging rusty wagons, past stray dogs, departing families and railway workers taking a break in the shade of a advertising hoarding.

Over on the next platform a train rolls up, carrying armoured personal carriers. From every window hordes of brawny soldiers crane their necks out, their eyes screwed up against the sun, on the lookout for more beer and fags.

Back on our side, other soldiers, off-duty and travelling amongst us strut about in their sandals and tight polyester shorts, swigging warm lager and sunning their bare, heavily-tattooed chests.

Suddenly the provodnitsa bellows: “All aboard, get back on now or spend the next night in the middle of nowhere.”

Like chicks to a mother hen, the passengers duly oblige and scurry back to their stuffy little cabins, waiting for the train to get moving and the air con to once more heave back into life.

Oh well, only another four hours of eating and sleeping until the next stop...
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