One of the big barriers between most people and becoming a nomad is money. It sounds expensive. Most questions I get about it have to do with affording the trips.

Here's the big secret: being a nomad is not expensive. In fact, without knowing how much money you spend monthly, I can confidently say that you can probably comfortably become a nomad and spend less.

I don't have exact numbers, but I'd say that Todd and I each average spending under $3000 per month. That includes everything including lodging, airfare, food, entertainment, and small gear purchases along the way.

There's a big difference between "cheaply" and traveling "cheaply and well". I have little interest in eating ramen in a hostel or taking buses across the country.

That's backpacking. Nothing wrong with that, but being a nomad is different.

The key is not treat it like a vacation. Many people spend money outrageously "because I'm on vacation". Life Nomadic is a lifestyle that's intended to be sustainable.

One big advantage the nomad has is that he has no expenses back home. The tourist is paying nightly for a hotel, but he's also paying rent, electricity, and cable back home.

That's like trying to pay for two lives at once.

We woke up the next morning, eager to see what Boquete looked like. We spent all day driving there from Panama City the day before, but by the time we got there it was too dark to see anything.

"Wow. It's paradise here."

It was. Whenever I imagine paradise, I think of a white sand beach with perfect blue water. But then when I get to such a beach, I get sick of it within hours and want to leave.

This was different. Boquete is in the Panama highlands and is bordered on two sides by mountains. The result is year round perfect temperatures (if not perfect weather), and the feeling of being nestled in some secret valley.

My first thought was of Galt Gulch from Atlas Shrugged. It was exactly how I had imagined Ayn Rand's utopia.

If you go to Boquete, and you really should, I recommend staying at Hostel Nomba. I'm normally not much of a fan of hostels, but Nomba was really clean, everyone there was friendly, the location was perfect, and the owner, Ryan, was unbelievably helpful.

A lot of people had cars around town, but we also noticed that some people had horses instead. I'm not talking about horses for recreation, I'm talking about daily driver horses for transportation. They tied them up outside of cafes, just like a cowboy might.

Neither Todd nor I had ridden horses in ages, but we decided that we absolutely had to find some horses to ride.

I'm a bit fanatical about shaving. Most of my possessions are pared down to the bare minimum, but my shaving stuff is the one big exception. I use a Merkur travel safety razor with Merkur platinum coated blades, a Dovo silver tip shaving brush, and Truefitt and Hill shaving cream.

Excessive, I know.

The blades that the razor uses are standard "safety razor" blades. They're thin pieces of metal with a blade on each side. That sounds like something that the TSA would possibly prohibit, but in fact they don't. They mention them specifically in their rules.



They prohibit "Razor-Type Blades - such as box cutters, utility knives, razor blades not in a cartridge, but excluding safety razors."

Clearly, safety razors are permitted. This is consistent with my experience, too. I'm almost invariably selected for further screening. TSA agents see my razor blades and move on.

And somehow I've managed to resist any temptation to hijack a plane with them so far.

In New York a few weeks ago, things were different. The TSA agent didn't like my razor blades. I insisted that the TSA rules permitted the blades. Things got escalated to the supervisor, an icy woman named Gohel.

"I specifically checked the TSA site and saw that these are allowed. Can we please look over the rules together?"

Gohel told me in clear language that the blades would not be allowed on the plane, and that, no, I could not look at the TSA rules with her. No amount of friendly yet firm pleading would change her mind.

The blades were taken.

I anticipated that this might happen, so I came up with a way to pass small metal objects through the metal detector. I doubt any serious weapon could possibly make it through, but it's great insurance for those worried that poorly trained TSA agents will confiscate items you're legally permitted to carry on.

The best adventures are the unexpected ones.

We sat at La Novena, an amazing Vegetarian restaurant on Via Argentina in Panama City. We order the same thing every time. Soup of the day, avocado salad for me, almond and pear salad for Todd, and whole wheat pasta with eggplant and tomato. We ordered it so much last year that when we returned the chef already knew exactly what we wanted.

After a predictably amazing dinner we stood in front of the kitchen chatting with the chef, Arturo. He used to be an engineer, and it shows in his meticulous preparation of the food.

Next to him was one of his employees, chipping away at the shells of dark brown beans, putting the cleaned bean in a small tupperware container.

"Que hace ella?"

And that's when our education on the making of chocalate began. From a town near the Costa Rican border, called Al Mirante, came the raw cacao beans. Then they fermented them, roasted them, chipped away the shells, and ground them into cocoa powder.

Amazing. Todd and I are huge fans of dark chocolate. Anything above 85%. Can we try one of the beans?

The beans were delicious. We'd had both tried packaged cocoa nibs back in the states, but this was something different. They were barely bitter, just an overpowering chocolate explosion with a subtle fruity flavor.

We were hooked. Arturo put some of the beans in a cup for us to take home and Todd and I resolved to make the twelve hour drive to Al Mirante try to visit a chocolate plantation.

After dinner we headed to an internet cafe. A quick search revealed that Thrifty would rent us a car for only $8.10 a day.

"At that price, let's just get the thing for two weeks and go everywhere."

"Yup."

[video after the jump]

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.

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.

What I love about Las Vegas is that it has the capacity to be whatever you want it to be. Alcohol soaked bachelor party? Check. Romantic honeymoon? Check. Terrifying ride to wealth? Well, maybe if you're lucky.

I just got back from a long weekend in Vegas with my girlfriend and saw a side of the city that I hadn't seen. A more relaxed, comfortable, and satisfying side. Here are the highlights:

The Signature at MGM

I've stayed at and enjoyed the MGM before, but this was a totally new experience.

There are no regular rooms in the Signature. Every room is a suite. What I particularly appreciated was how thoroughly the suite was appointed.

The kitchen has a large Sub Zero fridge, Miele appliances, and most important: every kitchen utensil you can imagine. Calphalon pots and pans, high quality flatware and silverware, measuring cups, baking sheets, and even a blender.

When I travel I try to cover as many superlatives as possible. The world's tallest building (Taipei 101 for now), the longest tunnel (connecting mainland Japan with Hokkaido), the slowest train in the world.

So when I was trying to figure out how to get from Europe back to the United States, there was only one choice. The grandest choice. A seven day journey aboard the famed Queen Mary 2.

The Queen Mary 2, for those who don't know, is Cunard's flagship ocean liner. She was specially built for trans-Atlantic cruises, an effort which required a laundry list of technological breakthroughs. Even five years after her maiden voyage, she's still the longest passenger ship in the world. She's also the widest, which means she can't make it through the Panama Canal.

Boarding the ship was the easiest cruise boarding experience I've had. Things were off to a good start, although a warning bell went off in my head when a mandatory picture was taken before getting on board.

Was this going to be a regular cruise, just trumped up a bit to seem more fancy?

Ultralight packing is the constant quest for perfection. Each item put away in the bag must be outrageously useful, versatile, small, and light. That rules out almost everything.

And for a while, the ultimate shoes escaped me. Sandals are light and small, but not versatile. I couldn't run or hike with them.

I had some gore tex trail running shoes that I liked, but they weren't light and small. They were fairly versatile, but were a disaster at the beach.

For a long time I carried two pairs of shoes. One in the backpack and one on my feet. Not perfect, but not bad.

Then I stumbled across the perfect pair of shoes by accident. My travel mate bought a pair during a brief stopover in LA.

Vibram Five Fingers.

Welcome back. Last time I talked about how and why to pack light. Today I present to you a list of my best packing tips that I've developed while living out of a 28 liter bag for the past seven months going around the globe.

1. Keep the things you'll need first or most often near the tops of the bag. If you use the Deuter 28 you have two openings for this.
2. Leave spare batteries in their chargers.
3. Use the side water bottle holders to hold more than water bottles. I keep my computer charger bag (which also has a tiny Nokia USB phone charger and tiny universal plug adapter) in one side and my TSA approved bag full of liquids in the other. That way in the airport I can go through the scan quickly and plug in my computer without digging through the bag.
4. If your bag has two compartments like the Deuter, stuff one of them as full as possible with stuff you don't use often and leave the other one partially empty to make it easy to find stuff and to fit stuff you get along the way.
5. Get a Kiva collapsible backpack and clip it to the front of your bag. It's perfect for carrying around a camera or jacket.
6. Use every last bit of space. Put everything you want to pack on your bed, and pack big things first. Then look for an appropriately sized little thing to jam into every nook and cranny created by the big thing.
7. Take a look at your 3-4 biggest space eaters and see if there's a significantly smaller version that will get the job done. Jackets and sleeping bags are easy candidates (modern good sleeping bags can fit in your water bottle holder if a silk liner isn't going to be thorough enough for you).
8. Don't bring a pillow. Inflate an Aloksak partially and put it inside your fleece instead.
9. Wear your bulkiest stuff on travel days.
10. If you have a lot of room left over in your bag, get a smaller bag! Don't fill yours up just to use it.
11. Don't bring a sleeping pad. A Luxury Lite cot is smaller, much more comfortable, and more versatile.
12. Fold jackets to the width of your bag and then roll them as tightly as possible.
13. Never bring cotton clothes. They aren't warm, they dry slowly, they get dirty quickly, and they absorb odor. Wool is the exact opposite, but is still cool enough to run or workout in.
14. Bring as few clothes as possible. No one will notice or care that you wear the same shirts every few days. That's not what traveling is about.
15. If you're going to poor countries, bring balloons as souveniers to give away to kids. They're tiny and kids love them.
16. Don't lose stuff like I do. Double check for all your stuff before you go.

As a bonus, here's a video of me packing my bag: