20-year nomad Wandering Earl talks the future of travel post-pandemic from Bali, Indonesia
The Adventure Calls Podcast
English - September 25, 2020 01:00 - 42 minutes - 28.9 MBPlaces & Travel Society & Culture Homepage Download Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
In 1999, at the age of 22, Derek Baron left home for a 3 month trip to Southeast Asia that has never come to an end. He’s been traveling the world for over 20 years, 7097 days of travel according to the counter on his travel blog, WanderingEarl.com. Derek has visited over 120 countries, and now runs his tour company, Wandering Earl Tours, to locations around the world.
I first met Derek in Mexico in 2011, when he had already been traveling and working on cruise ships around the world for over a decade. In this interview, Derek was in Bali with his girlfriend and his rescue kitten, but has since moved on to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico to spend the next phase of the pandemic.
If you want to learn more about how to break free and move abroad, check out my new book: How To Move Abroad And Why It’s The Best Thing You’ll Do.
Episode highlights
06:51 Derek talks about the Visa process in Spain and how that’s been due to COVID.
07:51 How a nomad like Derek ended up with his own rescue kitten.
10:31 Derek gets into detail about his 20 years of experience traveling through more than 130 countries.
13:51 How Derek worked on cruise ships for four years and how that helped him to sustain his life of travel long afterward.
18:52 We discuss the future of cruising in a post-pandemic world.
23:22 How Derek has made a success of his blog and tours.
29:10 The future of in-person group tours and how he has been able to survive and thrive despite COVID.
35:21 How Derek feels about his American identity being abroad for 20 years.
38:37 Wandering Earl’s next steps.
Links mentioned in this episode
@wanderingearl on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
About Adventure Calls
From her quarantine to theirs, world-traveler and author of How To Move Abroad And Why It’s The Best Thing You’ll Do, Jessica Drucker, calls up travel experts to find out what they envision for the future of travel in a post-pandemic world. You can find Jessica at www.jessicadrucker.com, and sign up for expat and radical change coaching here.
Follow Jessica on Instagram @jessicavdrucker.