There is something about a road trip that gets us all excited. Throw in a complete lack of responsibility, with priceless local knowledge of the surfing setups and you’re in for one hell of a ride.
On a classic road trip back roads are sought out, whilst motorway service stations are shunned. The countryside melts into the ocean, with the scenery floating by at the same tempo as your Mellow Bars playlist. However, tedious technicalities will become tiresome, so either join our Bali, Sri Lanka or South Africa auto excursions or take into account the following five road trip tips before you embark on your own journey.
Road trippin’ Sri Lanka style
Journey or Destination?
You’ve heard the phrase “Life’s about the journey, not the destination” but on a road trip this is something you must seriously consider. Road trips in their nature entail enduring lengthy periods of time on the road, but how much time do you actually want to spend in your vehicle? I quite like driving, sharing time behind the wheel singing along to meticulously thought out playlists and in somewhere like Northern Spain, cruising down the windy coastal roads is truly magical. But for those with a more fast-paced temperament, this can be a form of torture.
So before you go, decide how much time you want to spend in the car versus how much time you want to see stuff. Or plan a trip which includes a balance of both, such as a trip to Galicia where you will have an awesome end goal in sight and the journey there will be as incredible.
Playlists
As briefly mentioned above, your iPhone tooled up with playlists on Spotify will provide the anthems to your trip, which will mentally take you back down that road for years to come. Or you can use your abundance of time to educate or lose yourself in podcasts and audiobooks. I’ll spare you my suggestions.
Food
This is a tricky one because whilst traveling what you eat is one third of the trifecta that make the experience, alongside waves and weather. But eating out for every meal will seriously smash your budget and living off packed sandwiches isn’t much fun either, so try to find a balance of both. In Europe going out for lunch is a great opportunity to sample local dishes without breaking the bank with a plat du jour in France and menu del dia in Spain rarely costing more than €12, this will also help break up your itinerary for the day. However you should always have healthy snacks in your vehicle to stave off any sudden cravings, thus preventing any hasty and costly hunger-fuelled food decisions.
Sat Nav
It actually does feel like cheating using a GPS but using one will save you a huge amount of time and stress. Getting lost is always stressful and the story told back home rarely outweighs the inconvenience experienced. I once opted to forgo the $5 add-on for a sat nav in Costa Rica on a trip from the Pacific to the Caribbean Coast as the journey looked simple enough. Needless to say after getting completely lost, nearly driving down the side of a volcano, circling the capital city countless times, getting pulled over by the police in a crack town, to finally arrive at our destination 8 hours later than planned with an extremely pissed off partner, I regretted my decision.
Rules
Never one to be a buzzkill but some countries have unique laws that seem set out to sting you. France requires all drivers to carry a hi-vis jacket and cones in case of an accident and in Spain it’s illegal to use the sat nav on your phone, well apparently as I got fined €200 for using mine in some sort of sat nav sting operation.
Are you going on a road trip this Summer? Any rules of the road to add? Feel free to comment below.