AROUND THE WORLD ON A DIME

From Dumpster diving to couch surfing, Michael made a once-in-a-lifetime journey to Antarctica

MICHAEL WIGGE WAS SITTING on the couch at The Tonight Show. On his left was Tonight Show host Jay Leno. On his right was the beautiful singer Katy Perry. And Wigge was telling these highly paid celebrities about how he had completed the ultimate low-budget trip around the world—not just for very little money but for nothing at all.

Michael, thirty-six, a television travel reporter who grew up in Berlin, Germany, had wanted to visit Antarctica since childhood.

“It’s one of the very few untouched places in the world and I really wanted to see it,” he told Leno in his German-accented English.

I have been addicted to travel for most of my adult life. During that time, I’ve been to every continent except Antarctica. (Truth be told, I’m just waiting for the first McDonald’s to go in at McMurdo Station before I make the trek!)

As Michael found out himself, you can’t just fly from Berlin to Antarctica. You have to fly to Argentina, then take a luxury cruise ship there.

That got Michael to thinking. Maybe he could come up with a way to get there for free. And while he was at it, why not see the rest of the world as well?

Michael spent a year planning his adventure. With the help of more than one hundred people, he managed to get free food, free lodging, and free transportation for his 150 days across four continents and eleven countries.

He found free places to stay on CouchSurfing.com, a website that allows people to search for others who will let them sleep at their houses and apartments at no cost. And he found other ways. In the tiny Ohio village of Berlin, Amish farmers let him sleep in their barn.

For food, Michael would ask people to feed him, or go “Dumpster diving,” looking for sealed packages of food that had been thrown away by supermarkets.

He crossed the Atlantic Ocean for free by working on a container ship. To get to other places, he hitchhiked. That’s how he got from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas.

If all else failed, he would offer his services in exchange for a meal or for cash. In San Francisco, Michael got two pillows and offered to have a pillow fight with people for one dollar. Fifty people took him up on it.

He ran into some trouble at the outset in his home country. While hitchhiking on a German highway, Michael had to go to the bathroom.

“So I went into the gas station,” Michael told Leno in his Tonight Show appearance, “and it costs 50 cents.” The attendant wouldn’t let him use the toilet for free, so Michael found a nearby bush instead.

“The little things could be very difficult on that trip,” he said.

Michael also had trouble at the Peruvian Inca attraction Machu Picchu, located high in the Andes. Michael wasn’t in good physical condition, and the climbing, he said, was a nightmare.

His scariest moments were in Cusco, Peru, where he stayed in the house of a German expat.

“Unfortunately his apartment was on fire because of a problem with his self-built oven,” Michael said. “We could leave the burning place early enough to rescue ourselves. But it was very scary and I had to stay outside all night long.”

On the plus side, there was Colombia, which was “amazing,” and where people welcomed him into their homes. And Hawaii. “I just love those islands,” he said.

Michael learned some things about himself on the 25,000-mile journey.

“I learned to be on my own for a long time. I also learned to live without money by using the barter system. It was a great experience.”

He also learned that most people in the world “tend to be nice and helpful.”

Michael is back to using money, but he said he values small things much more than he did before the trip.

Michael grew up in the German countryside. His father was a truck driver.

“I often traveled with him throughout Europe. I think that made me start to like traveling a lot.”

So what did he learn that could help people save money on travel, even if they don’t want to hitchhike or rely on people to feed them for free?

You can go by the barter system, he says.

“If you want food, just offer to clean the store or at least tell a funny story. People will appreciate that.”

He shares some of his tips on his website, HowToTraveltheWorldforFree.com.

He really likes CouchSurfing. “It’s wonderful and people are trustworthy. I am going to use it again next week,” he said.

One thing he learned not to do was get too dependent on one person.

“Always keep plan B and C in your pocket,” he said.

What can you learn from Michael’s unique perspective on travel?

Keep flexible on dates and destinations to save on travel.

• A great way to save money when you’re going on vacation actually involves not planning.
• When I see a travel deal, my longtime philosophy has been to buy the deal first and then figure out why I want to go there. By doing that, I’ve gotten to visit every continent except Antarctica and every state except North Dakota. And I’ve done it on the cheap.
• Allow the deal to drive the vacation, because if you let the destination or the calendar drive the trip, you’ll pay more.

The best time to book airfare is . . .

• There’s some debate about whether you’ll get a better deal booking forty-two days (six weeks) or twenty-one days (three weeks) out before your date of travel. My experience? Generally, both can be true. Those two times are points in the calendar with significant dips in fares. Particularly if you’re flying to Europe, six weeks out is going to be a time to find a real deal.
• You can also define your departure and arrival points at websites like Kayak.com and Bing.com/Travel (formerly Farecast.com) and set up a fare alert. With a fare alert, you’re automatically e-mailed when a good price pops up online wherever you want to go in the world. By the way, the Bing travel site also offers a price predictor that tells you if fares are on their way up or down. That way you can know the optimal money-saving time to book.

Know the best money-saving travel sites.

• There’s a new ranking of the best travel sites for bargains as decided by you, the traveler!
• Booking.com claims first place on the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Independent Travel Website Satisfaction Report—though it’s for accommodations only, not airfare. In second and third place, we have Hotwire.com and Priceline.com, respectively. Both of those sites are blind booking sites where you pay nonrefundable money before you find out where you’re staying. I book more travel on Priceline than anywhere else, principally for hotels and cars.
• The traditional players like Orbitz.com, Expedia.com, and Travelocity.com were all in the middle of the heap. And two bargain sites for air travel didn’t get great scores: cheapOair.com and CheapTickets.com.
• No one site will offer the best deals all the time. So you’ve got to shop around.

Go with easy blind booking for hotels.

• I detailed my complicated procedure for researching and bidding through Priceline and Hotwire for hotel rooms on pages 217–219 of my last book, Living Large in Lean Times. Fortunately, there’s a site that basically automates my process and makes it much simpler.
• With TheBiddingTraveler.com, you pick the town where you want to stay and your dates of travel. Then you set the minimum you’re willing to bid and the maximum you’re willing to bid, plus you identify any neighborhoods in the area you’re not willing to occupy.
• Many people don’t like the idea of having no idea where they’re going to stay (aka blind booking) until after they’ve paid nonrefundable money. Yet this is among the best ways to really save money on travel.
• TheBiddingTraveler.com can do in three minutes or less what takes me fifteen or twenty minutes (for select cities) to do. It is far superior to the way I have always booked my own rooms. Give it a try!