TIPS FOR TRAVELING TO THE UNITED STATES (AND NOT SHIT)

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Are you looking for tips for traveling to the United States? You are in the right place 🙂 We have traveled the country over two months, for free, so we have a few things to tell you. The truth is that it was never a destination that caught our attention, we were sure that the day we would cross the puddle would be to land on a Caribbean island, in Mexico or somewhere in South America. Now that we have been half face of Yankee, we do not know exactly when or how we received the call (a bit like it happens to the nuns) but here we are XD

We soon realized something: organize a trip to the United States It is a work. Let's see, you can actually go on an adventure and just complete a couple of bureaucratic tasks, but if you are going to travel to different areas, for quite some time and also, you want to travel in a backpacking plan ... you will have to work hard! So this article is written with the idea of trying to make your life a little easier, we are going to tell you all the things we have learned to prepare a trip to the United States before leaving, in a few words: we are going to give you a few Tips for traveling to the United States for free.

Contrary to what many people think, the history of the United States is very interesting (a lot of things happened in a relatively short space of time), so we have worked out a mini-summary (not so mini) that will tell you the main stages of the history of the country and will help you understand part of the current problems. Here you find it:

→ (Not so) Brief history of the United States

You can do a search to find the best prices on the skyscanner website, which is what we usually use. That you know that when you check in on your flight to the US they will ask you to show the reservation of a flight out of the country, in addition to showing the page with the ESTA, which we will talk about next.

Normally the cheapest flights are to Boston and / or New York. Although there are often offers to travel to San Francisco and / or Los Angeles.

Start to befriend the ESTA, because without it, you will not be able to enter the United States ... basically it is the "visa" that tourists need to enter the country, it costs € 22 and is requested online. Don't pay more for that: there are many websites that try to get more pasta 🙁

→ We tell you more information about how to process in ESTA for the United States

Our first trip to the United States was a great trip: we wanted to start getting to know the country in a big way and we stayed for more than 2 months! We bought a one-way ticket to Boston and we started putting pushpins on the map ... and it got out of hand XD

We start exploring the East Coast (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Atlanta) and we went down to Louisiana where we visited one of the cities that most excited us: New Orleans.
From there we went to Texas, where we did a road trip of about 4 days.
The next step was to take an infinite bus until Chicago, city that we met before starting the route 66!
We finish the route in The Angels and from there we went to San Francisco where we started another great road trip all over the West Coast.
On July 4, Independence Day, we fly to Miami, where we meet Nancy and Ronald, one of my best friends and her husband.

We leave the map with our route:

This year (2019) we returned and spent a whole month in New York, before going to Canada and going back down to the United States. We made a roadtrip from Seattle to San Francisco through Oregon, a state that freaked us out!

He is always one of the biggest headaches, he tends to think that traveling in the US It is expensive, but if you ride it well and plan to arrange in advance (and read our advice), you can save so much money.

Rent a car

Do you consider buying a car? The truth is that we advise against it ... the issue is that insurance is expensive and nobody guarantees that, at the end of the trip, you can sell the car well and recover the money invested.

The option that most travelers choose is to rent. We will do it twice, both with the company AutoEurope: the first road trip we have scheduled is a trip in the purest road style and blanket through the State of Texas, one of the most curious and controversial in the country. And, of course, we will rent another car to explore the famous for 15 days West Coast of the United States, full of attractions, National Parks and mythical places.

If you decide to rent a car remember that you must request the “International driving license". Obtaining it is very easy: you must make an appointment at the DGT, fill out a form, take a photo and pay € 10.10 (better by card) all on the same day. It is valid for one year. Don't even think about forgetting your driver's license at home: the international license is obviously only valid if you accompany it with your license.

Relocation

We will make Route 66, one of the most mythical trips in the world, with a caravan that we find with a relocation! What is relocation? It is an offer that consists of “relocating” a car: picking it up from an X point and taking it to a Y point.

The good thing is that it is a very cheap way (sometimes even free!) To travel: offers are available from 1 $ / day !. The bad thing is that, in our case, it has not been so pulled in price: each relocation day will cost us $ 30 (in total $ 390, for 13 days), but given the rental prices of a motorhome on Route 66 and Adding the one-way supplement, in the end it's not too bad!

The issue is that it is very difficult to find relocations at $ 1 for more than 3 days and even more in high season. The truth is that we think about it and considering that the caravan will serve us as a means of transportation, hotel and kitchen ... well, we believe that in the end we will make a lot of $ 390!

We plan to write an entire article on relocation, sooner or later :-p

What are the pages to find cars or caravans in relocation in the United States?

Imoova
Apollo
Transfercar
Jucy

Travel by bus

If you do not drive and want to travel by bus, we recommend the Megabus company as it is the cheapest option (it has tickets from $ 1!). It is the company that we will use in the first part of the trip on the Coast. If you manage to catch offers in advance, it is VERY cheap. The bad thing is that "alone" has routes along the East Coast, something in the center and little through California. Another weak point is that you cannot book buses with more than 45 days in advance ... the truth is that you don't understand why! (Look we put pressure on twitter!)

Tip1: they charge $ 2 per operation, so the ideal thing is that you put in the cart the maximum number of routes and proceed with the payment only once.

We leave you the breakdown of all the routes and their price for 2 people, you will see that, with some luck and organization, you can travel cheaply in the United States.

Boston - New York $ 2
New York -Filadelfia $ 14
Philadelphia - Washington DC $ 10
Washington DC - Atlanta $ 26
Atlanta- New Orleans $ 6
New Orleans - San Antonio $ 21
Dallas - Chicago $ 30
Chicago - Minneapolis $ 12
Los Angeles - San Francisco $ 4
TOTAL: 125$ (that is: less than $ 7 per way, and beware that several are nocturnal!).

Tip2: In honor of the truth, our backpacking rat level has reached a new trick: traveling in separate buses, which leave with a difference of one hour apart (Boston - New York and Los Angeles - San Francisco). In this way we reserve the only tickets at $ 1 that were in each way :-p Total Mochiratitas!

(Well, we finally discovered that for $ 5 you could change and advance the exit so we changed Rober's seat and he came with me XD)

Greyhound, is another good option. It is one of the oldest and most famous company in the USA. It has routes throughout the country but it is not, by far, as cheap as Megabus. There are passes (similar to the interrail, but bus version) although we were not too interesting since for long distances it is best to take a plane: it usually costs less and is much faster.

Another company that has been recommended to us, similar to Megabus is Boltbus.

To see the routes, the schedules and the different companies we advise you to use the Wanderu search engine

Travel by train

The train is the favorite means of transport for many (among which we include ourselves). We were considering the possibility of making one or several sections by train, but we found very expensive. The national rail company is Amtrak and also has a series of passes that save money. For example, him pass for 8 trips in 15 days costs $ 459 (an average of about $ 60 per trip) ... come on, what we were saying: cheap is not.

Travel by airplane

Good news: there are very cheap flights from Spain to the United States! We will fly with Norwegian from Madrid to Boston for € 140 per person. Recently a new low cost company, Level, opened routes from Spain to the US with i / v flights for around € 200! Amazing.

Flying within the United States is also quite convenient. We will only do an internal flight: from San Francisco to Miami with American Airlines. It cost us € 128 per person. Considering the distance is not bad (and that is not the best rate in history and we flew on July 4, national holiday!).

Although the fine print looks good: I recently traveled from San Francisco to Las Vegas with the Frontier company and the standard ticket only includes hand luggage (small backpack, 20l plan and max 5 kg). If I had wanted to add checked luggage, the joke would have cost me twice as much!

We always look for flights on Skyscanner, so we highly recommend it.

We hope to be able to pull Wifi as much as possible (we don't live without Netflix!) But, in case the flies, we have a plan B: a Holafly SIM card that has several advantages:

Internet connection without data limit.
Unlimited calls and SMS to American numbers (perfect for staying in touch with accommodations, new friends or emergencies).
Use Whatsapp to make calls to Spain.
Free shipping.
5% discount for being our reader.
Assistance.

Here we explain in more detail how to have internet in the United States.

If the transport was one of the headaches, the accommodation is undoubtedly what makes those who plan a trip through the United States lose their sleep. But do not despair, that there are many sleeping options:

Hostels

In most cities of our trip we will stay in the hostels of Hostelling International USA, one of the most famous and important chains in the United States (and the world!). The mission we have is to teach you howthe hostels are one of the best (and cheapest) options to enjoy a trip in the United States. Apart from beautiful ones, these hostels have a great advantage: you can meet other travelers and share experiences, participate in tours and activities and also tend to be very central, so they also save you a little money in transportation. If you are traveling on a low budget, it is recommended: staying in community dormitories is much cheaper than doing it in private rooms and you can also save on food since all hostels have kitchens.

Something that we loved about HI is that, taking advantage of the fact that 2017 is the Year of Sustainable Tourism, they have created the “Pack your impact” campaign that wants to reflect on the importance of the impact of travelers (environmentally, the local community ...). In addition, they have many proposals for free and green-friendly activities, we are very fans!

If you are interested in the subject we have a post on Responsible Tourism very cool 🙂

Motels

In the road trips, staying in motels is the most frequent option. These are simple accommodations (in many cases quite outdated), comfortable and simple. Come on, they are perfect to stop at night and leave again the next day! We will use the motels on our route through Texas and the West Coast. The average price is between $ 40-60

* In high season they recommend booking in advance!

Campsites

Since we will do the route 66 in caravan, we will take advantage to stay in campsites (to be free!). We have read that this way of traveling is quite common in the United States and that there are even businesses, such as Wallmart, that let caravans and cars stay overnight in their parking lots. We will probably pull campsites on some nights through the national parks of the west coast.

We have downloaded a couple of APP to search for free campsites in the US on the progress:

WikiCamps Usa, we already used the New Zealand version and it went very well, so we hope to repeat positive experience.
Free Campsite, with many places to camp / park for free, they also have a very cool web version.

Airbnb

You know that Airbnb is a website that we always recommend: we love being able to be independent because, for work, sometimes we have to lock ourselves in “home” for a few hours. But it is also a good option to spend a few days in a new city. For example, in New York, we have rented a room in a little house in the Astoria neighborhood that looks great! We will use Airbnb also in Philadelphia and New Orleans, so we will tell you how.

We leave a bonus of 35 for your next reservation on Airbnb (and if you book, we also take a bonus, so we all win yeaaaah)

Wimdu

It is a website very similar to Airbnb that we already used in the past and we liked it a lot. We will stay with Wimdu in Miami, in a very cool place ... we will show you 🙂

Couchsurfing

Another great alternative is couchsurfing but for our type of trip (we will be a few days in each destination and we will take the time to visit the cities) we have ruled it out: couchsurfing is not just “free roof”, it is mostly a meeting between people and cultures and if we cannot fulfill this “exchange”, well… we prefer not to take advantage of anyone's hospitality!

But hey, you know that the couchsurfing community in the United States is wide and if you have time ... we highly recommend it!

To have dollars you will have two options: change your money or get money at ATMs. We always recommend using a card when traveling. Both for payments and to get money. But watch out for commissions! Here we tell you the solutions to have money abroad. The ones we carry are always the Bnext card, which we use as the first option, and the N26 card, for payments and if the first fails. Both are free and will allow you to save money on commissions.

If you do not want to get this card, it is best to take € and change a small amount at the airport and a large part in a city exchange (which usually offer better change).

Fundamental! Going to the United States without good travel insurance is a real madness ... we have not thought twice about it and we have put it in the hands of Iati Seguros, a company we have been trusting for some time

Soon we will prepare a complete and complete post where we will tell you toooodo what you should know about deviance insurance although we already anticipate you, that for a trip to the US, where health is very expensive, it is advisable to bet on IATI Estrella insurance with up to € 200,000 of medical assistance.

We also give you a 5% discount and this sensual dance, which will make you pale… pale (ahem):

Everyone had told us that we were going to get fed up with hamburgers, hot dogs, pizzas and tacos ... (and we didn't care too much, hehe) but we had a mission: to discover something good, rich and cheap that comes out of the typical food prejudices. We did it? Partly. Here you can see tricks to eat healthy in the United States and here we tell you what are the typical dishes that you have to try.

If you are one of those who look at comments and reviews on Tripadvisor, be aware that in the US The Yelp website also works great!

This information is essential if you are going to visit different National Parks! There is a pass, called “America the Beautiful”What does it cost 80$ and allows access to all National Parks of the United States for one year. It is valid for two cars (that is, if you travel in May and your best friend in September ... you can share it!).

Eye: there is a park that charges per person, not per vehicle. In these cases the pass covers the entrance of up to 4 people.
It can be purchased on the web although it is best to buy it in the first park you visit (this saves you shipping costs).
Here you can see all the National Parks covered by the pass.
The Antelope Canyon and the Monument Valley they are part of the Navajos Indian territories andare not included in the pass. You must pay the entrance fee separately.

United States) has 6 different time zones (the country is huge). Are these:

Eastern Standard Time EST: UTC-5. Example: 4.00 am
Central Standard Time CST: UTC-6. Example: 3:00 am
Mountain Standard Time MST: UTC-7. Example: 2:00 am
Pacific Standard Time PST: UTC-8. Example: 1:00 am
Alaska Standard Time ALKS: UTC-9. Example: 12.00 am
Hawaii Standard Time HST: UTC-10. Example: 11.00 pm

Although the messes do not end here: there are some states like Arizona that do not change to daylight saving time the Navajo territory (within Arizona) does change ... arg. The best? Find the time here XD

Did you think the problems ended the schedule? No way! The units of measure are also different, so leave saying goodbye to the metric system. For example:

1 mile (mile) = 1,609 km
1 yard (yard) = 91.44 cm
1 pound (pound) = 453.6 g
1 stone (stone) = 6.35 kg
80 degrees fahrenheit = 26.6 degrees Celsius
1 gallon (gallon) = 3.78 liters

To easily convert length, mass and volume measurements we recommend you download some APP or take a look here: //www.convertworld.com/es/

It is important to know them since during these dates the cities get up to visitors (it is essential to reserve accommodation with time).

New Year: January 1
Martin Luther King's day: third monday of january
President's day: third monday of february
Memorial Day: last monday of may
Independence Day: July 4th
Labor Day: first Monday of September
Columbus Day: October's second Monday
Veterans Day War: November 11th
Thanksgiving Day: Fourth Thursday of November
Christmas: December 25th

Another novelty that you should be friends with soon is the issue of tips. In most restaurants it is a good habit (almost obligation) to leave a tip of 15-20% of the total cost of the service. How to calculate it? In many places on the ticket they already tell you the amount, and if not ... pull APP (Tip N Split Calculator is fine). Tips are also left in Taxis (20%), to hotel staff and guides ($ 1).

¿Why tip in the United States? Because the base salary of these workers is minimal and they have tips to have an interesting income. And why don't wages rise? Ah, we wonder that too!

Tip: if you want to avoid tips, go to eat at self-service restaurants, street stalls or fast food.

We have prepared the trip with the help of a few books and guides and watching movies and documentaries. We leave you a list ...

Books to travel to the United States

On the road, by Jack Kerouac
Deep America, by Bill Bryson
Trips with Charlie, In Search of the United States, by John Steinbeck
The other story of the United States, Howard Zinn
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Scarlet Letter
Tom Sawyer's adventures
We also recommend two classics of American literature: Blades of grass, Walt Whitman and The Catcher in the Rye, by D. Salinger

Guides

Lonely Planet (East Coast and California Guide. We also have a Lonely general from the United States but it is already discontinued).

Movies to travel to the United States

12 slave years, to learn more about one of the most shameful stages in the history of the United States.
Forrest Gump, to relive several decades and key dates of the country in a couple of hours. And because it's a movie!
The Great Gatsby, to be able to understand (at least in part) the wonderful years '20 (and to see Leo di Caprio, of course).
What the wind took, because it is a clasicazo
The Godfather (all!), To learn more about the history of the Mafia and also has an incredible soundtrack.
The untouchables, to continue diving in the mafia past of the United States.
The grapes of wrath, the movie adapted from the famous Steinbeck book, which talks about the drama of emigration during the Dust Bowl (if you read our summary of the history of the United States you already know what we are talking about).
Thelma and Louise, to fall in love with road trips (but without finishing like them).
Selma, to meet one of the most important characters in the fight for the civil rights of Americans: Martin Luther King. The Malcom X movie and the Nina Simone documentary also deserve to be seen.
Dancing with wolves, to see one of the few films that speak of Indians (in this case Sioux) with respect and truthfulness.
Bowling for Columbine, a documentary by Michael Moore that puts his finger on one of the biggest wounds in the US: the country's relationship with weapons.
Metallic jacket, to see an authentic masterpiece and enter the history of the Vietnam War. If you like the scroll we also recommend Apocalypse Now.
Save soldier Ryan, to revive World War II (Pearl Harbor, is also "pretty" good).
If you like Westerns, I'm sorry ... because we didn't see one!
Also, of course, we cannot miss the occasion to recommend one of the best series in history: Breaking Bad, which will take you to discover New Mexico (and the amphetamine market). Seriously, you have to see it!

So far our preparations and tips for traveling to the United States for free... we hope they help you!