Frankly, I have some concerns about buying property in Puerto Rico – the island’s finances are a mess, public services aren’t good and there’s an exodus occuring. It seems potentially opportunistic. The U.S. government has never supported the island as it should, and abused its resources, basically creating the situation. …
I joined some FB groups for people looking to relocate and it’s a lot of very well-off people looking to buy vacation and investment rental properties.
As much as I love the dream of living there part time, I don’t want to contribute to Puerto Rico’s problems. So, arguably the best thing I could do would be to keep visiting and be mindful of where I spend by money when I’m there.
Otoh … I’m not looking to financially profit so much as find a way to spend more time there. Having a permanent campsite or off-grid cabin in the hills seems definsible in a way that buying a beachfront condo and renting it out 3/4 of the year for does not.
Anyone know of any must dos or hidden gems in Iceland in early April? I’m going with family, so the itinerary is mostly set, but anything interesting nearby is fair game. Also good places to eat or stuff to do in Reykjavik. We’ll have a rental car.
Maybe in a few years. Before Covid you could ship your car from Denmark for $1500 round trip. I was planning to do it. Haven’t looked into if it’s still available or ridiculously expensive now.
I’m following the Iceland discussion, since my daughter and her fiance are going to be spending a few days in Iceland next month on their way back from Germany.
Since you’ll have the rental car, you don’t need to pay for this package, but the basic itinerary is ideal for seeing a bunch of the unique geology of the place. There’s some walking involved, but nothing too strenuous and you can pull it off in a day leaving from Reykjavik in the morning and being back in time for dinner.
[The only other tip I have from my trip to Iceland is to make sure everyone has their passport BEFORE you leave the AirBNB instead of discovering it when you get to the airport]
Check up on volcanic activity? Iceland has been exploding lately. And, don’t get me wrong, checking that out from a safe distance would be fucking sweet, but it may complicate travel to, from, and/or around the island.
@ElSapo A boat long term in Puerto Rico is very doable and not super expensive if it’s a sailboat. Short term rentals run $300-600/day. Buying one that’s older but seaworthy enough to get you to the Virgin Islands (I have sailed a similar distance across Lake Michigan) costs $10-30k. Probably $5-10k in initial upgrades and similar for yearly maintenance.
Most people drop an anchor rather than stay in a Marina. The drawbacks are the lack of space, more so if you don’t want to blow 6 figs on a catamaran, and needing to avoid hurricanes. Most people vamoose during hurricane season.
In my neck of the woods, 2k for the winter. Which I was including in maintenance. However, pulling out is not a guarantee against hurricanes, medium to large storm surge will still cause severe damage. Some people certainly leave boats in the region, but others feel it necessary to sail them to the US or Trinidad. The majority of insurance policies won’t cover boats in the Caribbean during hurricane season even if they are on land.
The main resources are cruisersforum.com and noonsite.com. Just read for a while before posting, your questions have been asked a hundred times.
Bucharest is quite poor as far as Euro capitals go, keep your time there to a minimum.
The small cities/towns were pretty great though. Loved Sibiu and Brasov, Sighisoara is great as well (pretty small though). Alba Iulia not bad.
The “Dracula” Castle (Bran Castle) is very underwhelming and could probably be skipped. Peles Castle is awesome and highly underrated.
If the trains weren’t so crappy, we would’ve explored a bit more, would’ve liked to see Cluj-Napoca, but it takes a while to get anywhere and the train cars themselves are poor quality.
We were planning on Bulgaria, Serbia, and maybe others, but we had to move up our plans to go to Thailand by 3 months, so cut those out and just went straight to Istanbul from Bucharest, then Bangkok.
It will be interesting to see if the new EU countries improve rail b/c connections in and between countries in this region are usually very poor unfortunately.
In Romania, the connections between those cities listed above are quite sparse, and sometimes we’d have to take trains at odd hours to make things work. A couple towns I would’ve liked to visit that were only a 90 minute drive away, but there wouldn’t even be a train or bus that goes there. I would probably recommend renting a car if you can, but I think I was unable b/c I lacked an international license or whatever the requirement is there.