Tip #2: Planning when you can’t plan?

There are a lot of unknowns that can arise when traveling, even as a revenue passenger. With a purchased ticket, you obtain the luxury of planning your trip, including reserving your lodging, activities, and transportation in advance. You can also learn some basic facts about your destination, which will aid in your politeness as a traveler and respect for other cultures. When your location destination is up in the air, all that goes out the window. It can be a risky bet to make reservations in advance without the security of knowing you will get there. However, there’s a possible solution to this problem.

Itineraries

I’ve devised a strategy to get the peace of mind that comes with planning. I create possible itinerary lists: complete with lodging, hotel stays, food recommendations, transportation, and area-specific information. This allows for the ability to quickly change plans if the number of seats available on the flight changes drastically.

Planning On the Go

I decided this would be a good idea after traveling to Costa Rica. My husband and I had planned on going to Mexico, but the plane filled up, so we weren’t fortunate enough to get a seat. Not wanting our time off work to go to waste, we decided we still wanted to go somewhere. Costa Rica looked wide open, so we went for it. We had to plan the whole trip in a few hours at the airport, which was incredibly stressful.

We thought we had booked a hotel with an airport shuttle but didn’t know they required 24 hours notice to schedule a pickup. (Pro tip, if booking a hotel based on airport shuttle service, call the hotel to ask for shuttle details!) So we ended up in the San José airport, a half hour away from our hotel, not speaking the language, trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B. We ended up in an unlicensed cab that ran up the meter and charged us a ridiculous rate. It was the same color as the official cabs, but we had a nagging gut feeling about entering the vehicle as we had to follow two strangers into a parking garage to get to the cab.

Having a Plan

This could have been avoided if we had a little more planned so we could have had some time to quickly give the hotel a call before booking. Despite this event, we loved our trip to Costa Rica. We would love to return in the future. There will always be unforeseen things that happen on a trip, but the memories of our travels (both good and bad) are worth pushing your comfort zone for. In the future, we would go back with more of a transportation plan.

Moving Forward

Creating a plan for numerous destinations helps with the safety, utilization of time, and comfort of your trip. I plan to upload some of the itineraries I’ve created for possible trips to this blog. This will be a helpful resource for other standby travelers who need to switch plans last minute. It can be a huge comfort to have a plan.

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