To Plan or Not to Plan?

I’ll be honest, I am not a laidback person. I am never late; I thrive on schedules and routines, and I own multiple planners and calendars that I keep up with religiously. I show up at the airport hours in advance and anxiously check that the gate number or departure time still haven’t changed about every 10 minutes until boarding.

But when it comes to travel planning, I think I have adopted more of a happy medium. I always book my flights and lodging in advance, but I often leave food and excursions up to the whims of a moment. If there are multiple things I really want to see, or if they have certain hours I need to keep in mind, I may draw up a rough schedule and note any potential conflicts, but I have learned that trying to keep to a strict schedule while traveling makes me feel like I’m checking items off a list instead of enjoying the experience of being there and doing what feels intriguing or exciting in the moment.

With my upcoming shift to long-term travel or the nomadic lifestyle, I’m starting to wonder if it’s time to loosen up on even my restrictions on flights and places to stay.

My next chance to put this into practice will be during my two week trip to Peru in June. We have tickets booked to and from Lima, a ticket from Lima to Cusco, and our hostels booked all the way up until our hike begins, but I am trying to keep up the nerve to leave our return ticket to Lima and our hostels after the hike up to whatever we can book in the moment.

There are several reasons I’m considering this route. For one, it’s cheaper to book the domestic flights in Peru. There are several of them every day and they’re all pretty affordable (under $100), so the risk seems pretty low. This also leaves us the flexibility to decide how long we are going to stay in Cusco after our hike, and how long we want to spend in Lima before our flight home.

Not knowing which city we’re going to be in makes it more difficult to know which hostels to book. Hostelworld often offers a very generous refund policy up to 100% if you cancel even 24 hours before, so there isn’t a real downside to booking in advance other than wanting to test my mettle. Not having anything booked in advance will narrow our options, and rather than lovingly pouring through tabs of all the photos and reviews for each hostel, we will have to rely on our instincts and whatever’s available. It also opens the opportunity for finding somewhere through word of mouth that blows anything we saw online out of the water. People backpack around the world following the whims of the moment, showing up to the first hostel they see and booking a bed. The point of the stay isn’t where you sleep, it’s what you do during the day.

Through my own writing on this post, I just convinced myself that I should book the hostels and just be open to changing them at any time. It is true that while budget backpacking, the point of a hostel is often a place to sleep and nothing more– but I am not backpacking on this trip. Private rooms at beautiful and highly-rated hostels in Peru are around $30. There’s no reason not to book whatever room I want and then use the generous cancellation policy to change my mind if we find somewhere better or decide to leave Cusco earlier or later than expected. When it’s just me, traveling solo for a year on a shoestring budget, I will be more willing to sleep in whatever is available. But on this trip, I just want to enjoy a vacation with my boyfriend. Yes, we will be gathering intel for what future travel might look like for us, both separately and together, but I want to have ample time to rest, relax, and recharge from the school year. It just goes to show how much understanding the purpose behind your travel should guide your plans.

What do you all think? How much do you plan on your trips and how much are you willing to leave to chance? How has it paid off and what do you wish you could change?