How to Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle – Win a Camera & DJI Drone with liligo.com! @liligo

We have decided to write this article, because we are about to embark on the biggest trip of our lives and which has been our greatest travel dream for the past three years, longer even! Having started out on separate paths over three years ago, quitting our jobs to backpack around the world, we’re now married, running a successful online business and travelling the world as luxury adventure travellers – From monkey backpackers to luxury travellers!

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

The really huge news, though, is that in just a few days, we are finally going to achieve our biggest goal of the past three years – To set foot on Antarctica! Yes, finally, we are going on a 16 day Antarctica cruise! But we’re not going to talk too much about that now (don’t worry, it’s all we’re going to talk about for the next month!). Here’s a picture of some penguins!

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle © Chadica

What we want to talk about now is one of the ways we have managed to travel for as long as we have and some of the ways we’ve managed to get the most out of our travel budget without taking anything away from the experience. In short – how to travel smart in order to maintain what we have always called our, ‘Sustainable Travel Lifestyle.’ That is, to be able to sustain your travels as a lifestyle for as long as you want to or need to. This all comes back to learning how to travel smart!

There are lot’s of ways to do this, such as learning useful skills, volunteering and finding jobs as you travel, which you can read about here, but in this article, we’re talking about choosing the best way to get from one place to another on your travels.

We’re also going to introduce you to liligo.com, the first travel comparison website we have found which actually thinks in the same way we do when we make our travel plans. It’s like they built a computer program out of our travel brains!

Win an insta360 Nano camera or a DJI Mavic Drone

Make sure you read the whole way through this article, because as well as sharing some great tips about how we travel, it also contains the details about how you can enter to win 15 Insta360 Nano Cameras as prizes, a 10% discount code off the Nano to all participants, and one DJI Mavic Pro Drone!

Kach and I use the insta360 all the time. This is a really cool new way to capture Travel memories in 360 degrees!

The DJI Mavic Drone is the world’s first folding, almost pocket-sized drone, with a 4k camera!

Actually, you can win one of those, not all of them, don’t be greedy! There will be 16 winners in total, which is probably the biggest giveaway we’ve ever had on the site. Thanks, liligo.com!

While many people mistakenly think we travel everywhere for free because of Two Monkeys Travel, this is far from the truth. Some of our travel is sponsored, but when it isn’t we slip straight back into our ‘Sustainable Travel Lifestyle’ mode again!

Here’s a little bit of back-story to remind you why we had to learn to travel this way out of necessity…

The History of our Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

I still remember those first two months in Peru, flat broke, cleaning hostel rooms in exchange for bed and breakfast and living on 2 dollars a day to make vegetable soup for lunch and dinner. We had next to nothing. Those were probably the most challenging times we had put ourselves through, but looking back it really pushed us to be creative and to come up with new ways to support ourselves. And we did find a way, in the form of an old massage table and a rusty wheelbarrow which instantly became our mobile massage business, soothing away the aches and pains of the hotel guests who had been hiking to and from Machu Picchu.

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get us going again. After several weeks of pushing a heavy massage table around Jonathan was starting to need a massage himself, but we had managed to save up just enough cash to make the journey to Machu Picchu. After all, even though it was all we had, the whole reason we were there was to travel! To make it work, we had to weigh up all our options; train, bus + hike, or just hike! At just 30 kilometres away, the train would take about an hour, but at $80 US p/p each way it would cost everything we had and leave nothing to buy our tickets into Machu Picchu. The bus would cost more like $20 each but would only get us part of the way, and then we would have to walk the rest of the way.

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle (Even our pictures were smaller back then!)

We laid all our options out with the prices, weighed up the pro’s, con’s and experience factor of each one and then made a decision – to walk the 30 kilometres from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu), by walking along the train tracks and jumping out of the way when we heard a train coming! It was a very, very long walk and even though we could barely make it up to Machu Picchu, the experience we had hiking 30 kilometres through the Andes was worth it!

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

The whole point of this story is that we had a number of options, with very different prices, different benefits and disadvantages and altogether very different experiences. So we had to lay them all out on the table in the right way so that we could make the right decision for our trip to Machu Picchu. Not anyone else’s, just ours!

Now, what has all this got to do with liligo.com? We’ll tell you…

What all this has to do with liligo.com!

Our story about us choosing the best way to get to Machu Picchu can be applied to any travel scenario. Think about travelling from one part of the country to another and all the options and decisions that come with finding the best deal. What liligo.com does is allow you to gather most, if not all, of the information you need about the various options for your desired route in one place, rather than having to trawl through multiple websites with hundreds of tabs open and scraps of paper to keep track of all the times and prices.

Here’s an example of a fairly common US journey, from Miami to Los Angeles:

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

First of all, WOW, that is cheap! But there are a couple of things we really like about this search results page:

1. The ‘Best Offers’ summary box at the top. You don’t even have to scroll down to look at the options lower down the page! It also clearly displays the Direct, one stop and 2 or more stops options in one place, rather than having to use clunky filters.

2. At the top of the page, there is also an unchecked box, showing the price of the same journey by bus. This is the only travel comparison site we have seen which does this so simply.

What this means is that we can find all the travel options for our intended route in one place and easily make the best decision.

Here is another example where the option for bus or train travel comes in really handy – Miami, FL to Jacksonville, FL:

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

This is a really interesting example because it’s far enough that you would start to consider taking a cheap flight for 2 hours, rather than travel for 8 hours by train. This is when budget, priorities and experience come in, because if you’re not in a rush, it would actually be a slightly cheaper and even more enjoyable experience to sit on the train, watching the scenery from the window, reading a book, or getting some writing done. No flight anxiety, no airport taxis, no baggage restrictions and no security checks. The third option of the bus would certainly be less enjoyable than the train, but at nearly $20 cheaper it may be worth considering.

On the other hand, you may be considering a very long bus journey to save money, for example from New York to Chicago, a 22-hour ride. By making one search, it’s immediately clear that for less than $10 more, you could fly there in 2.5 hours. Factor in airport transfers and maybe you’re going to pay $20 to $30 more to save 20 hours!

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

This is exactly the kind of research and decision making we’re talking about when it comes to travelling smart to maintain a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle – it’s all about finding the right information and using it to make informed decisions. Liligo.com won’t make the right decision for you, but lit will give you the right information in a way that’s easy to understand.

How about international travel?

We know that many of our readers who are living in the US have family members in the Philippines and also in the Middle East, so here are a couple of great examples of the kind of advance deals you can find. Obviously, you can’t compare travel by train or bus for these routes, but you can still use the ‘Best Offers’ box at the top to easily spot the best deals.

Los Angeles LAX to Manila MNL

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

New York NYC to Manila MNL

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

Los Angeles LAX to Dubai DBX

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

New York NYC to Dubai DBX

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

Feeling Spontaneous? Use the ‘Where to go?’ function!

The ‘Where to go?’ function is a cool addition to the experience of travel planning and price comparison. Simply set the month you would like to travel, set your budget and click go. You’ll then be shown a map with all the locations you could travel to within your budget. You can even specify what temperature you would like to relax in!

I tested it out by posing as a New Yorker looking to escape the freezing winter in December, with a flight budget of $295 US. It turns out that I could get away to Florida, Cuba, or Puerto Rico for well under my budget!

Two Monkeys Travel – Travel Smart for a Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

So the next time you’re planning your 2017 travels, see if liligo.com can help you find the right fit for your next trips, by comparing all your transport options so you can travel smart and build your own Sustainable Travel Lifestyle!

Finally – How to enter win one of 15 insta360 cameras, and a DJI Mavic Drone!

As we said before, we have teamed up with liligo.com to help you make the best travel memories, by offering the chance to win one of 15 insta360 cameras or one of the coolest drones on the market – the DJI Mavic drone!

We use the insta360 all the time, and we love being able to look back at our travels in 360 as if we were back there all over again! As for the DJI Mavic, it’s the world’s first fold up, near pocket-size drone with the same quality and capability as its bigger brothers, the DJI Phantoms!

Who can participate:

only US Residents

How to enter: (Multiple entries possible!)

Visit the Contest Homepage HERE and enter multiple times through any of the following ways:

– Signing up for liligo’s newsletter

– Following liligo.com on Twitter

– Retweeting the contest

– Sharing a link to the contest with friends (Facebook, Twitter, Email) – You get another entry every time a friend signs up through your link!

Prizes:

• 16 Winners
• 1 DJI Mavic Pro Drone
• 15 insta360 Nano Cameras
• 10% discount code on Insta360 Nano to be sent to all contestants

Winners to be announced:

On December 26th, liligo.com will contact winners individually by email and will announce the winners on their publicly on the January 9th, 2016.

Random drawing to be conducted by gleam.io contest software after the sweepstake ends. Gleam uses the random number generator random.org to pick winners.

(Note – This sweepstake is being managed by liligo.com and they will be the ones to collect all entries and draw the winner, as described above. Two Monkeys Travel Group have no involvement in that part of the contest!)

We hope you enter as many times as possible so that you can use one of these awesome prizes to make more amazing travel memories!

This article has been written in conjunction sweepstakes, and prize giveaway by liligo.com, but all ideas and opinions expressed are my own.

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