Tag Archives: Senior Nomads

Grounded

June 15, 2020 djarmul 1 Comment

Older folks who love to travel have been having a tough time since the pandemic started.

Some have been scrambling to deal with canceled airline tickets, visa extensions and medical insurance. Others have expired passports and are waiting with 1.7 million other Americans for the State Department to work through a backlog of renewals. Still others are waiting for their stimulus payments or wondering whether the countries they hope to visit will even allow them to enter.

Screen Shot 2020-06-14 at 1.45.54 PM — From one of the Facebook groups

All know they are at higher risk for coronavirus because of their age and any complicating conditions.

More than 413,000 retired workers receive Social Security benefits abroad, according to one study. That’s an imperfect marker that includes retirees who move abroad to be with family and for other reasons, but it’s big nonetheless. As I learned during our own “not exactly retired” adventure, there are a lot more seniors on the road than you might guess by counting R.V.s with bumper stickers saying they’re spending their kids’ inheritance.

Two of my favorite bloggers, the Senior Nomads Debbie and Michael Campbell, have spent the past seven years staying in more than 250 Airbnbs in 85 countries. Now their foreign travels have been curtailed.

Debbie and Michael recently started a Facebook group for like-minded seniors. The response amazed me. I couldn’t believe how many older people had similar stories to share. Some sold their homes to travel full-time, or to live abroad for all or part of the year in places like Costa Rica, Portugal or Malaysia. Others have been using long-term Airbnbs or other foreign rentals. Almost all have seen their plans disrupted.

I’ve been seeing the same thing on other Facebook groups such as an Earth Vagabonds group for “retired budget travelers” and a 50+ hikers of the world group.

Recent posts on these sites have described retirees “sheltering in place” from Taiwan to Nicaragua. They’ve been locked down in Cyprus, stranded in Chile and cooped up in Croatia. They’ve had cooking classes canceled in Italy and insects swarming in Costa Rica, or are happily riding out the pandemic in Mexico or the Philippines.

Others feel stuck in America, “bored out of my mind” as one person wrote. Another said: “We are close to retirement and this has significantly recalibrated our thinking about the future.” And another: ““My entire future life has been radically altered.”

On the “Senior Nomads” Facebook page, people have amused each other by posting photos of where they were one year ago. They’re also guessing the locations of each other’s travel photos, including one I posted of Champa beside a beautiful church in Armenia, above. (Yes, someone identified it.)

At a moment when the pandemic continues to spread and our country is confronting its ugly history of racism and police violence, I hasten to put all of this in perspective. The problems I’m discussing do not compare with being on a ventilator or having a policeman’s knee on your throat. Even senior travelers with modest means — which describes many of them — are still privileged relative to many other people.

I do hope they will be able to return to the road before long, especially given their medical vulnerability and shorter time horizons. Certainly no industry needs their business more than airlines, hotels and restaurants.

As for Champa and me, we will continue spending the pandemic at home until we consider it safe to travel again. We don’t know when that will be. Maybe soon. Probably not. We have our suitcases ready.

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Top photo: We visited Ghent, Belgium, during our last trip before the pandemic.

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One reviewer calls it “a love story and adventure book all in one. A truly inspirational tale.” Another says “it shows how adventure can give new meaning to our lives and make them richer.” Visit the book website for Not Exactly Retired: A Life-Changing Journey on the Road and in the Peace Corps.

Homes on the Road

January 6, 2018 djarmul 4 Comments

We stayed at an Airbnb apartment instead of a hotel when we visited Sofia, Bulgaria last week. We also stayed at Airbnbs when we visited Tbilisi, Georgia and Sibiu, Romania in 2017.

The living room of our Airbnb in Sofia, Bulgaria. (Sorry for the mess.)

All three apartments were central located, with kitchens, living rooms, washing machines and comfortable beds. All cost much less than hotels, although more than local hostels. All three hosts were helpful and responsive. The woman who welcomed us to our apartment in Sofia told us about a wonderful local Nepalese restaurant, Gurkha, where we ended up having a delicious meal and conversation with the owner, as you can see in the photo.

Champa and I still use hotels, such as when we stayed in Bucharest for a couple of nights last week and weren’t sure when we would arrive. But we now prefer staying in Airbnbs because they provide us with extra room and a local contact to help us learn about a city.

Many of our fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in Moldova use Airbnbs, too, when traveling or coming to stay in the capital, Chișinău.

I describe all of this because some Americans are still uneasy about staying in a private home instead of a hotel, whether through Airbnb or another service. Others include HomeAway, Couchsurfing, FlipKey, VRBO and Roomorama.

The concept may seem especially novel to some older travelers. As one wrote on the Senior Planet website, “At first glance, Airbnb looked to me like a site for freewheeling hipsters.” That writer tried Airbnb and became a fan, saying, “I’ve learned something new about myself: I really enjoy staying in a ‘real’ neighborhood and being a traveler, not a tourist.”

Champa and our guide, Florin, at the Airbnb we used in Sibiu, Romania, also shown in the photo at the bottom of this post.

We feel the same way and are not unique. Airbnb says more than one million of its users are now over 60, as are 10 percent of its hosts. Its 2016 report said some older Airbnb hosts now depend on this extra income to remain in their homes.

This past year, the Freebird Club launched an Airbnb-like service especially for older travelers and hosts. More broadly, older Americans have begun turning to a variety of flexible gigs and part-time jobs. In her latest list of 100 Great Second-Act Career Resources, career expert Nancy Collamer (my sister) identifies many of these.

One of my favorite blogs, The Senior Nomads, describes how a retired Seattle couple, Michael and Debbie Campbell, has spent several years staying at Airbnbs while traveling around the world. They explain: “As we were closing in on retirement, we felt we had ‘one more adventure in us’ so in July of 2013 we rented our house, sold our sailboat and one of our cars, and reduced our stuff until it fit in a small storage unit. We waved goodbye to our family and friends and set off to explore the world!”

This past summer, when we visited home, Champa and I experimented with the “sharing economy” in another way, by using a car-sharing service. We rented a blue Toyota Camry on Turo from a guy in Virginia for about half of what we would have spent with a car rental company. We had a great experience and would use the service again.

Serving as older Peace Corps Volunteers has opened our eyes in so many ways, and not only about Moldova. We’ve also become more comfortable with new online travel resources favored by people our children’s age. It turns out they work nicely for us, too. If you’ve had an interesting experience of your own with these resources, good or bad, I invite you to share them with a comment.