Family Preparations

Family Preparations

Book your family into a nice hotel - forget bargain-hunting the first night.  If there's one time you need to splurge when adventuring, it's now while you're trying to familiarize yourself with an area.  Don't bother trying to book your first night ahead unless you are absolutely sure of a place.  Except for luxury accommodations, this is difficult to do despite the conveniences of phones, faxes and the assurances of a travel agent. 

Until you see a place, it's difficult to know what it will be like, or in some cases, even what it will cost.  There are always places to stay once you get somewhere.  Our mistake in Madeira was not spending the money when we should have, after arriving in a place that was more expensive than we had expected.   The experience taught us the value of paying for a first night in comfortable conditions, no matter what the cost.

Bring plenty of food.  Go out somewhere nice to eat your first night, then fill in the gaps in your children's hunger with food you brought with you.  It's one thing to spend $50-$60 for a nice room and quite another to spend nearly that much just to eat.

Bring along some special foods to tide your family over until you discover where to shop.  Peanut butter is a good choice because even if the whole family is sick to death of it in a few days, the chances are you won't see it again until you go home.  I carry peanut butter, crackers or rice cakes, trail mix, sunflower seeds and dried fruit on all our trips.

 We actually dined on an exclusive diet of this for three days the time we made the mistake of arriving in a country on Friday where all the shops were closed over the weekend.  In the end no one cared because we never saw these foods again during five months of travel.

Bring everything you think you might need-avoid having to go find a store in the first 24 hours.  This is a time for recuperating, relaxing and getting to know a place in an enjoyable way, not rushing around trying to find aspirin or toothpaste.

Let the children play-after the rigors of traveling to wherever you are, they need a day just to have fun.  Take a book along, sit in a cafe, go to a beach or a park while your children play.  They'll forget whatever hardships they went through to get there and develop a positive feeling towards adventure travel.