Life Nomadic: Traveling without Planning

by Tynan on

Ahh, and we’re back. After a semi-hiatus of a few months, Todd and I are back to the full nomad lifestyle. I say semi-hiatus because within those four months we both spent a good amount of our time traveling around the US, Mexico, and Canada. And even when I was in Austin, where my family and most friends are, I lived in a 21′ RV on the side of the road.

Once a nomad, always a nomad?

Our trip this year is going to be very different from last year, but our first stop is the same as last year’s first stop: Panama.

I’m not sure why exactly we chose Panama last year, but this year we chose it because we’d fallen in love with the country. The people are universally friendly and warm, as is the weather, the food is dirt cheap and amazing, and there’s no shortage of adventure to be found.

Not to mention that Todd and I are both nearing fluency in Spanish and Panamanian Spanish is actually known for being very clear.

One hallmark of our trips is that we usually don’t plan much. We often go to a city with no place to stay and no plans, assuming we’ll figure it out once we get there. That’s probably where our mantra, “everything always works out” comes in.
When our flight landed in Panama, it was two in the morning. We have a few friends in Panama from last year, but imposing on them to sleep on their couches at 3am seemed a bit cruel. Getting a hotel was an option, too, but it doesn’t make much sense to pay for a hotel you’re going to be in for just eight hours, even at Panama’s bargain rates.

And so we chose the third, less obvious option. In our backpacks we cram in luxury-lite cots, giving us the ability to sleep in perfect comfort just about anywhere.

(side note: if you have the foresight, check www.sleepinginairports.net before deciding to sleep in an airport. They have a good database, though most of the complaints people register are negated with a luxury-lite.)

We headed upstairs to the waiting lounge, where a dozen or so fellow travelers were awkwardly sleeping on the hard tile floor or slumped over in chairs. I hate to admit it, but I felt pretty smug knowing we were about to rest in perfect comfort in an otherwise inhospitable environment.

And we did. A security guard gently woke us up at 7am, we packed up our cots, and headed in to one of our favorite cities in the world with no plans or accommodations to speak of.

Life Nomadic: Welcome to Life Nomadic

by Tynan on

The border agent was very suspicious of me.

“Where’s your luggage?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Do you have a return ticket?”

“No, but I have a ticket to Panama for next week.”

“Where do you live?”

This never goes over well.

“Well, nowhere, really…”

And it’s true. The closest thing I have to a home is a 21 foot RV that I park on the street and live in when I’m in Austin, Texas for a few months every year.

Last year my friend Todd and I made the decision to become modern day nomads and make the wonders of the world the backdrop for our every day lives.

We sold everything we owned other than two small backpacks crammed with cutting edge gear, and chased our whims around the world.

We ran with the bulls in Spain, sat under the cherry blossom trees in Tokyo, explored the catacombs of Paris, rode 4x4s across the dunes of Qatar, marched in the Carnaval parades of Panama, and a whole lot more.

This year we have a lot more planned, along with plenty of time to fill with whatever last minute adventure catches our attention.

And even better, we’re blogging about it exclusively for Gadling. Our goal this year is to show you what it’s like to be a modern day nomad, how to do it, and also how to use some hardcore nomad strategies to make regular travel even better.

We have three main principles that we follow, which you will hear a lot more about:

  1. Versatility

    We aim to be as versatile as possible. We pack extremely light, but with enough gear to cover any likely contingency. My small 28 liter pack has enough gear to keep me warm in 10 degree Toronto (where I write this from) and cool in 90 degree Panama (where I head this week).

    Our incomes are unbound from any location and we’ve developed good work habits to put in a full effort from anywhere in the world.

    We have no obligations back home to pull us back or encumber us while we’re gone.

    On top of all that, we eat healthy foods and exercise so that we can hike a few miles through the mountains just as easily as we can flop down on a hammock on the beach.

  2. Technology

    We use the latest technology available to fuel our worldwide adventures. Not just electronics, although we’re packed to the gills with those, but cutting edge clothing technology (more exciting than it sounds…) and even camping gadgets.

    Beyond what we carry, we use technology to keep in touch with family and friends all around the world as well as to generate enough income to fund our nomadic lifestyles.

  3. Deep Experience

    Our backgrounds and available time pose some restrictions, but we try to live like natives rather than trample the country like tourists.

    We try to learn the language of anywhere we stay for at least a month, rent apartments rather than hotels, and spend our time exploring the city rather than hopping from one Carlos and Charlie’s to the next.

    Whenever we’re able to make friends with locals we get a much richer experience, and we follow their recommendations on where to visit.

Whether you’re a fellow nomad, someone who plans to go nomadic eventually, a hardcore traveler, or even just an occasional traveler who wants to get more from his trips, I hope that we’ll be able to provide you with inspiration as well as practical tips.

There are a couple things I’d like from you:

  1. Your questions. Every week I will write an “Ask a Nomad” column. E-mail me directly at tynan DOT gadling AT weblogsinc DOT com and you may find your question answered right here.
  2. Your feedback. We’re nomads because it makes our lives better, but we write to try to make your life better. If you let me know which articles you like and which you don’t like, I can do a better job covering topics you’re interested in. Again, my e-mail is tynan DOT gadling AT weblogsinc DOT com.
  3. Subscribe. You can subscribe to the Gadling feed here, or to Life-Nomadic-only posts here.

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Elephant Island, South Shetland Islands

by Jon Bowermaster on

Six a.m. and the sea is clouded by a morning mist, making the always mysterious-looking Elephant Island appear evermore … mysterious. Its sharp rocky peaks climb out of the Southern Ocean in inverted Vs; the tide is high, washing out the few shallow beaches that ring it. Just off Point Wild – named for Frank Wild, Ernest Shackleton’s right hand man – penguins feed near the surface of the gray sea and a solitary Weddell seal curls up in the rocks. Just around the point we watch a leopard seal rip a penguin to bits for breakfast, flopping it around on the surface like a rag doll.

I wonder how Elephant Island would have fared historically if this weren’t the very beach where Shackleton and the twenty two men from his crushed “Endurance” had pulled and sailed to back in 1916. It is impossible to land on the beach this morning, due to the high tide, but I have been here before. Even when the seas are calm and the tide low it is a narrow, rocky, inhospitable place. That they managed to sail their trio of tiny lifeboats here, to the far eastern end of the South Shetland Islands at all is a miracle. That they survived for many months on this thin sliver of rock is testament to … well … I’m not sure what exactly. Fortitude? Patience? Belief in myriad higher powers?

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Minus the Shackleton quotient, I doubt many around the world would have ever heard of this rocky lump. But today it holds a historical context far larger than its minute circumference. Bobbing in the rough seas just offshore, I can make out the monument built by the Chileans who sailed to the rescue aboard the “Yelcho” to rescue Shackleton’s men.

As we rock in the morning mist I try to imagine the scene as Shackleton and his crew prepared the small, twenty-three foot, six-inch lifeboat “James Caird” for its last-gasp, 800 mile sail to South Georgia. I envision them chasing down seals as they slid up onto the rocks, both for the sustenance they would give and the warmth their just-slit bellies held for the men’s long-frozen hands. I can imagine the men gathering in small groups to discuss among themselves the wisdom in the choices made by “the Boss” of who would go … and who would stay behind.

Today the pack ice is far from Elephant Island, but in April 1916 it was threatening to return any day, trapping the entire crew for another winter. They’d already been “lost” for fifteen months and were nearing the end of … everything … food, health, sanity. Which meant as they pounded nails straight, gathered provisions (matches, paraffin, extra socks) and filled the bow of the small boat with rocks for ballast there was an urgency that we cannot imagine from this vantage point. They all knew the risks of trying to sail a gerry-rigged lifeboat across the stormiest seas in the world with the scantest of navigational tools and a tiny, homemade sail. In the quiet of this morning I can almost hear their last conversations as they readied to push the “James Caird” off into the rising seas.

Click HERE for more dispatches from Antarctica!

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Marguerite Bay

by Jon Bowermaster on

I spent the afternoon walking on a piece of fast ice the size of a small town – floating on the surface, about six feet thick, still attached to the continent – in a fjord known as Beaujoix. Many of the landmarks in the area bear French names, like the big island of Pourquoi Pas, for example, thanks to the early exploits this far south by Frenchman Jean Charcot.

Surrounded on three sides by breathtaking tall mountains and glaciers and on the other by the black Southern Ocean, this is as far south as I’ve ever been. Further south than all but a few ever get along the Peninsula. The reward was a long walk on new snow-covered ice. A dozen leopard seals play along the ice edge and small squadrons of Adelie penguins walk and scoot on their bellies alongside.

We tried to get here last year by sea kayak, but our attempt to sneak through the Gullet just north – a narrow sliver of sometimes-open water – was for naught, and we only got as far as the bottom of Crystal Sound. Our goal last year was to get exactly to this point, to Blailock Island where, on the northeast corner, an old friend, Giles Kershaw, is buried. I think we may have spotted the sight today, marked by a stone cairn, as we trekked.

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I met Giles in the mid-1980s, when he already had a reputation as the very best Arctic and Antarctic pilot in the business. He had flown for the British Antarctic Survey from 1974 to 1979 and had around the world, over both poles, and provided air support for many major expeditions. In 1983 alone he landed at the North Pole twenty-three times. In 1980 he was awarded a medal from the Queen of England, after he flew across a thousand miles of trackless Antarctic white to rescue three South African scientists who had been marooned on an iceberg for eight days. Even among his adventuring peers, Giles was considered the most adventuresome, the most curious, and the most visionary.

In 1985, after successfully helping a pair of wealthy American climbers scale the tallest peak on the continent, Mt. Vinson, he and two Canadian partners (Martyn Williams and Pat Morrow) started what is still the only private business operating in Antarctica. Then called Adventure Network International, they set up a seasonal base camp at Patriot Hills, near the Thiel Mountains in Antarctica’s interior, and flew in climbers, expeditioners and South Pole-bound tourists. Along the way they helped out a fair amount of international scientists, which is why the Antarctic Treaty and its membership – which bans private enterprise here – looked the other way and allowed them to operate.

In 1988 Giles helped lay supply caches between the tip of the Peninsula and the South Pole for my friend Will Steger’s Transantarctica Expedition and, on March 5, 1990, he was killed just near where I walked today. His Antarctica season had just ended and he was on a boat anchored just offshore from here, making experimental flights with a homemade gyrocopter. It crashed into a glacier at the edge of the Jones Ice Shelf. Several years later the mountain that anchors the northeast corner of the island across from where I stand is named for him.

That personal history notwithstanding, this spot on the map is one of the most remarkable places I’ve ever put my feet. Remote, stark, and unrelentingly beautiful. Even turning a full 360, twisting my boots in the soft snow, I can’t take it all in, too enormous to describe or articulate. You’ll have to come see it for yourself one day!

Click HERE for more dispatches from Antarctica!

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Port Lockroy

by Jon Bowermaster on



I spent the afternoon at the small island of Pt. Lockroy, where I’ve been many times before. We stopped in a couple times last January, during our sea kayak exploration, and hung out on the beaches and its protected bay. When we left Antarctica late that month, we actually left our kayaks tied down to big rocks on the island; they were picked up in February by the “National Geographic Endeavour” and carried back to Spain; from there they were shipped in a container to the U.S. and now sit happily in my Hudson Valley backyard.

Rick Atkinson, a Scotsman who first came to Antarctica more than thirty years ago as a 21-year-old dog sled driver for the British Antarctic Survey, greeted us on the penguin-crowded stone beach. The black and red refuge hut on the hill behind is surrounded by Gentoos (and an oddly out of place pair of Adelie penguins). An overpowering whiff of guano fills my nostrils … Aaaaah, Antarctica! Like elsewhere along the Peninsula this season, the hut is surrounded by still-deep snow.

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He’s been coming here for thirteen years and has done and overseen the renovations during that period that have turned the hut into a British historical site. Part museum, part souvenir shop, Pt. Lockroy is today a must-stop along the Peninsula both for its recreation of life and work here fifty years ago, and also to stock up on Antarctica books, t-shirts, stickers and stuffed penguins. It’s an admittedly odd thing to stumble upon here in this remote place. But Rick and his three assistants wear their work with a smile, greeting on average one tourist ship a day, often hosting more than three hundred people in and out of their tiny work/living space.

The boom in tourism is evident everywhere along the Peninsula. Last season more than 46,000 visitors arrived by cruise boat. About 32,000 of them put their feet on land (or ice); the rest arrive aboard giant cruise liners too large to offload anyone. Rick’s experience is the frontline in how tourism is impacting the Peninsula and he’s the first to point out that you cannot come here, no matter how careful you are, and not make an impact. Though he cites a scientific study that shows that penguins, rigged with heart monitors, showed absolutely no change in rate as hundreds of red-coat clad tourists stomped by.

It was with Rick last January that we endured one thing we’d never expected in Antarctica: Horrific rains. We sat inside the hut then and watched the rain pour in buckets off the roof, soaking the penguin chicks still-covered in down. “That was the worst I’ve ever seen it,” he remembers. “But given that we’ve just experienced another very warm winter, I won’t be surprised if we see it again this year. Every year, it seems, there’s more and more rain at Lockroy.”

He and his team have been here a month and will stay until early March. Recording tools left on in the hut over-winter suggest the temperatures only dropped to -12, which for Antarctica, even inside the small, unheated cabin, suggests more warming.

We leave Rick some fresh water, baking soda and peppermint tea, assuming we’ll see him again soon.

Click HERE for more dispatches from Antarctica!