How Much Did it Cost to Drive The Longest Road in the World?

How much does it really cost to drive north for 1,000 days? Did we really see somebody get shot dead and did my friend actually die in Colombia? That's all coming up. What's up guys and welcome back to Combi Life. I just wanted to say hi because YouTube has been recently promoting this video where we did a bit of a recap of the first three years of our journey as we drove from Chile towards Alaska. Don't you just love it when the YouTube algorithm recommends a video that you actually want to watch and you're interested in? Thanks YouTube. Anyway guys, welcome to Combi Life and thank you very much for subscribing. A lot of you guys have been asking questions based off the back of that highlights video so I wanted to dive into some of those questions because I thought they were kind of interesting and you guys would appreciate an answer. So first up let's get into the most important question from Emilio. Is it just me or do you look like Benedict Cumberbatch? My name is Dane but you can call me Batman. Emilio, I am Benedict Cumberbatch. This is just what I do on my downtime. I travel. A lot of you asked and Thomas asked what do you mean you lost some friends in Colombia? Did they die? We crossed into Colombia. I lost a couple of good friends but I made a few more. No, they didn't die. They are still alive and they're still together. They actually got together whilst we were in the VW bus traveling through South America together and now they are currently living in Germany, Brad and Simone. When I said I lost some friends I actually did lose them as friends. This happened once with a vacuum. Are you all right? Yeah. One of the challenges of living in a tiny space together is that it can be quite stressful and that friendship kind of blew up and we were not friends for a while. We are friends now, I'm pleased to say. We've kind of patched things up but yeah that's one of the challenges of living in a tiny space with a bunch of random people. To be honest at the beginning of this huge journey I was kind of learning how to live in my van whilst I was inviting other people to come and live in this tiny space with me so it did get a little bit difficult. When Brad and Simone were there we actually rebuilt the engine three times in the space of three weeks which was the worst it had ever been and that didn't help when it came to CombiLife stress. I didn't film all of those arguments and losing those friends as part of our series but I did write about it. Actually somebody asked that question. Please for the good lord please write a book. Well I did write a book it wasn't for the good lord and I am going to write about our entire journey. I've just been spending all my time documenting it and filming it so I can share with you on our YouTube channel first. So if you want to read about what happened when the cameras weren't rolling you can check that out up there. I'll link it. The ebook is available for download. It's a pay what you like product so you can pay whatever you want to read it. It's a pretty good story. It's everything that happened when the cameras weren't rolling because at the beginning of this series we didn't even have a camera and we didn't have a computer to edit all those videos we were just borrowing cameras off the people that we were inviting into our combi and recording as much as we could and keeping everything on SD cards. So that is why season one only has four episodes. Royal Cookie Gaming also asked actually did someone really get shot what the hell. Yes somebody did get shot and no we didn't film that happening but we did write about it in our ebook. It was a pretty crazy story. The police shot this guy dead right in front of the combi just after we were speaking to him. It was very scary and a great initiation into our South American adventure. This guy who was there who I was talking with like 10 minutes before and he's now dead by the looks of it. He was calm and I can't believe it they just shot him. Next up Vegan Trader said nice adventure but wouldn't it have been a lot smarter to just buy a decent van instead of fixing that piece of ---- VW bus 100 times. That's a pretty good question. Literally you couldn't write this stuff. To be perfectly honest with you it would have been the smart thing to do to find a more reliable vehicle. I tried to do this adventure in the cheapest wheels that I could find which just so happened to be a Volkswagen combi and I also became very attached to that combi and saw it as a bit of a personal challenge to get that thing from Chile to Alaska. Yes the whole thing did actually take five years. It was quite insane and I think I spent about 12 months of that time in various mechanics in Latin America. After about engine rebuild number six I stopped relying on the crappy mechanics that I was finding and started to learn how to do it myself. Yes there was a steep learning curve. Okay now for probably the most frequently asked question from that video. How much did it cost to drive for a thousand days? Some people like Caden said it must have been like $250,000 for you to do that journey. Other people said you must have rich parents or something. No I didn't borrow any money from my parents at all. I paid for the whole travel off of savings from a job that I had previously. It's actually not that expensive to travel when you do it in your own vehicle because you have your accommodation and you can cook your own food so it's not like going on vacation. Lots of people have said that you must be rich to be able to do this. That's just not true. A big part of the reason why I created this whole travel series for you guys to watch at home was to inspire you to show you that you don't need to be rich to travel. So for a thousand days how much did it cost me? Well I actually spent around 10 to 15 US dollars per day that I was on the journey. How the heck can you live for 10 to 15 dollars? Well what I did was I invited people to come into the Kombi. As you can see in our travel series the whole point of it was to go and pick up random people and invite them to come and stay with us. We gave them free accommodation and free adventures. We just shared the cost of gasoline and food which was my two biggest expenses. So if six people came into the Kombi and we all brought ten dollars each per day that is sixty dollars travel fund for that day. And believe me in Latin America sixty dollars goes a long way for a day. You can drive a little bit, you can eat quite a lot and you can even have a few beers. So traveling in this way it doesn't have to be expensive. I think over the three years it cost me somewhere between ten thousand and fifteen thousand dollars for the travel. Aside from that there was quite a lot of mechanical drama so I did have to spend a lot on engines and engine parts. But those fixes usually cost me between a hundred and five hundred dollars. Only once did it cost me about a thousand dollars. Finally back on the road with a face covered in oil as usual. I'd say compared to most travelers this is a really low amount. I've always traveled Spartan style forgoing creature comforts, eating little and avoiding expensive tourist locations. This means I can get as many adventures as possible for the money that I do have. I really didn't spend a lot primarily because I didn't have a lot. I stopped and worked when I needed to and at some point I started to monetize this YouTube channel which kept me going and is now my only source of income as I work full-time on content creation. If you want to travel don't let a lack of money stop you. You only need a little to get you there and you can have a huge adventure on a tiny budget. Consider working abroad for full cultural immersion and spend your earnings on budget backpacking trips through cheap regions like Asia. That's where I started. Or maybe even get yourself some wheels and make some new friends along the way like me. If you're interested in watching our travel series I highly recommend it. It is very interesting and believe me it's not your typical story. Lots of crazy stuff happened and now is a really good time to watch it because seasons 1, 2, 3 and 4 are already out and season 5 is coming soon. You can watch it now on Patreon but it will be coming soon for free on YouTube just as soon as all of those episodes are done and season 5 will be our best season yet so stay tuned for that. One last thing I wanted to say guys and it's just another comment. The most popular comment on that 1000 Days Travelling North video. It's from a guy called Satu and he says I almost feel like crying when I see these young attractive people having fun adventures around the world. Here I am in my late 20s, overweight, alone, poor and riddled with anxiety and a lot of people are giving him a thumbs up to support him and quite a few people feel the same way. I know what you feel like too. Every time I open my Instagram I feel kind of insta jealous of the beautiful photos that people are taking around the world and videos like the one I uploaded of me traveling across Latin America for three years can have that effect on people. It can make people feel like their life isn't as good in comparison. You just have to remember that these videos that people upload and like the ones I do are only a snapshot of our lives. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes and these are usually the best moments. On Combi Life I try to share all of the ups and the downs and give you a full picture of what life is like on the road. This video was pretty much all of the highlights so I recommend you go and check out our series so you can see some of the really really crap times we had whilst we were living in a van. Also if this is something that you would like to do, if you do want to spend your life traveling then by all means do it. I'm a normal person, I am in my 30s, I used to have a career, I used to be an IT geek. Now I travel around the world in my van and that's because that is something that really appealed to me and that was a dream of mine. So I decided to just sit back and picture the life that I would like to have and then figured out all of the steps that I'd need to take to make that happen. And the hardest step is the first step and that's when you step out your front door. If you can overcome that hurdle, the world is your oyster mate. Anyway enough from me, thanks again for joining us on Combi Life and stay tuned for more adventure travel videos and inspiration coming to you soon. Until next time, happy travels.