More Affordable Than University, Travel Is The Best Teacher

Forget school. Instead, travel with your kids. And forget college, get them an around-the-world plane ticket and watch them excel above their peers in terms of understanding.

People think it costs a lot of money to take this route and is very difficult, which is funny, considering that school can be way more expensive and the student loans are the most difficult part of all…way more difficult than travel or the classes you’re actually paying for. Becoming an indentured servant does not come cheaply. 

So what’s holding you back? Nothing, really…except the obstacles in your own mind.

The Blind Traveler

James Holman, known as the “Blind Traveler,” was a British adventurer, author and social observer, who is best known for his travel writings. He was totally blind and suffered from debilitating pain and limited mobility. In spite of these obstacles, he went on a series of solo journeys that were unprecedented in their extent of geography and method of “human echolocation.” Yes, “human echolocation.” What in the world is that? We’ll get to that soon. But first…

Holman became the first blind person to circumnavigate the globe in 1832. He continued traveling, and by October 1846 had visited every inhabited continent. State-biologist Charles Darwin even uses his writings as a source.

So how did that echolocation work? Well, Holman had a knack to sense his surroundings by the reverberations of a tapped cane or horse’s hoof-beats…an amazing adaptation if you think about it. The human mind and body are truly marvelous, as is all of nature. 

The World Without A Plane

One man recently traveled to every country on Earth without using an airplane. Graham Hughes used buses, taxis, trains and his own two feet to travel 160,000 miles in exactly 1,426 days. He is the first person to travel to all 201 countries without using an airplane. He did this on $100 a week. And boy does he have some stories to tell. He spent four days ‘in a leaky boat’ to reach Cape Verde and was jailed for a week in Congo. But he still put everything into perspective:

“The main feeling today is just one of intense gratitude to every person around the world who helped me get here, by giving me a lift, letting me stay on their couch, or pointing me in the right direction.”

Hughes notes how people tend to wonder how he got into the further-out countries like North Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, but he says those were the easy countries to get into. Which is a thought nearly impossible for your average American to compute, probably.

Calgary’s Most Traveled

44-year-old Mike Spencer Bown just wrapped up his twenty year trip of the world at the end of 2013.  

He recalled “taking local transport across Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and hitchhiking through Iraq during the U.S. invasion, including a visit to Saddam Hussein’s hometown.”

He made headlines as the first tourist to visit Mogadishu, Somalia, in over 20 years. Bewildered officials first tried to put him back on the plane to send him off, thinking he was a spy or something. But eventually they let him stay for a few days.

“We have never seen people like this man,” Omar Mohamed, an immigration official, told the blog Middle East Online at the time. “He said he was a tourist, we couldn’t believe him. But later on we found he was serious.”

Travel Quotes

There is no shortage of great quotes to drive home the point that travel might just be where the heart is for some…

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”
-Saint Augustine

“Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.”
-Benjamin Disraeli

“You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.”
-William Hazlitt

See Beyond The Propaganda And Brainwashing

I have heard all the worries, concerns and fear of travel from Westerners but they don’t realize that their fear of travel is simply irrational.

Someone from the US might say, “I hear it is unsafe to go to Morocco because I hear you can get pickpocketed” while getting pickpocketed for nearly half their income every year by the government in the US in the form of taxation… a form of theft they have just grown comfortable with to the point of believing it is just a natural part of life.

Others from the US say, “I hear it is unsafe to go to Mexico because the police are corrupt and may extort you for money” while not thinking twice about how going above an arbitrary speed limit in many parts of the US results in an extortion letter sent directly to their home in the form of a “speeding ticket”… or worse, having armed road pirates, called “law enforcers”, commandeer them and their vehicle under any pretense usually resulting in extortion, physical abuse and rape or their dog being shot… and paying, via taxation, for this “service”.

Actionable Advice

You learn through travel, not by sitting in rowed seats.

Were you aware, for example, that currently Iraq has one of the most lucrative economies in the entire Middle East and almost anyone doing business in the region considers it important to have an office there?  Or that the Mexican stock exchange has gone up 400% in the last ten years?

If you get most of your information from the mainstream Western media you will never really know what is going on… and that is very dangerous to your finances and investments.

Luckily it has never been easier to travel and even expatriate.  James Holman, the blind traveler would chortle if he heard that an able bodied person with $5,000 in the bank with access to intercontinental air travel and all information on Earth in their pocket in the form of the internet and smartphone was fearful of traveling.

And there has been no better time to travel and leave the West as The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) will make life increasingly uncomfortable for those who choose to stay through the collapse.

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Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.