Here at The World by Road, we have many different ways of saving money. From the full service kitchen we can setup out of the back of the truck or even sometimes bring with us into the hotel room for late night snacks to the faring we are working on to increase gas mileage, we have many ways to cuts costs across the board. The floorspace in hotel rooms many times is a sea of foam pads and sleeping bags filled with crew members and in some cases like our latest room in Agadir, Morocco, a 4 little bears setup keeps the four of us just an arms reach away all night long in our $22 per night room. We eat local food and sometimes just don’t eat at all. Coca Cola has enough calories to count as a meal, right?
At the end of the day we are still struggling for money and sometimes it is nice to treat ourselves to a top notch hotel to break up the monotony of our streamlined budgeting techniques. At place like the Hyatt or the Hilton, everything is taken care of, and there is something to be said for that. All of the backpackers and self-proclaimed hardcore travelers out there are probably scoffing as they read this, but from time to time it is nice to check into a hotel and when we ask the question of where we can park the cars the immediate answer is, “Where would you like the valet to park them, sir?” The truth is that I prefer to camp over staying in a hotel at all, but in a city where there are security concerns about the cars, a ton of work to do and enough grime caking everything you own to raise concerns with the local health department, a couple of nights on the other side of the tracks is welcome.
Since the beginning of the trip we have been honing our skills on getting everything discounted or free when possible. In Casablanca we may have gotten a little too confident in our skills of persuasion when we approached the Hyatt in the center of downtown with the grandiose idea of getting accommodation for the entire crew at a moments notice, but hey, how do you get better if you do not try for bigger fish?
