Yeah, these "facts" don't really stack up for me.

I love outdoors occasionally. Sure, I enjoy the ability to pitch my tent in a scenic spot and watch the sun set with a and a campfire. I also really enjoy coming into a new city, finding a language exchange evening on meetup.com or couchsurfing, and meeting a dozen young locals who are specifically there to talk to foreigners. I also enjoy hanging out in the common room of a hostel, hearing others' travel tales and telling my own - and the fact that I'm on a bike and having a very different experience from the majority of backpackers there, only makes me more likely to get a free .

Sure - but as a motorcycle traveler, the gear I've invested in is the stuff that's acceptably comfortable/waterproof, but still packs down small enough. Space on the bike is at a premium and that's where I will invest money. This means that unpacking the camp gear and setting it up, then breaking it down, is annoying. If there's a low-effort, low-cost alternative available, I'd rather leave it packed.

Compared to what? A three-star hotel? The campsite owner has invested into buying a piece of land that's convenient for road access, but is also scenic; instead of turning it into condos, they invested in bringing in electricity hookups, boilers, probably at least a few wooden cabins, and all of that requires maintenance. Certainly no less maintenance than somebody renting out a spare room in their house on AirBNB, where the incremental cost is just an extra load for the washing machine for the bedlinen.

The CAPEX of setting up a campsite might be smaller than that of building a hotel, but the OPEX won't necessarily be smaller, especially because labor costs are a massive factor. And a campsite is only making revenue in the high season!

You know you're on a mostly-motorcycle board, right?

Also quite reductionist. Overlanders like the experience of travel, and the ability to easily find the company of like-minded travelers. A campsite or hostel can be a better place to find such company than a five-star hotel, but if I could afford a private room with my own shower every night, I would take that over a tent without hesitation, and I think most people would as well.

If you think there is a universal standard of prices to be had between Mexico and Norway, you are crazy.

I tend to agree - however, the thread is a decent one that has prompted some thoughtful responses, so far.
It deserves to be within some other part of the HUBB (maybe "questions that don't fit in anywhere else") rather than the "no useful input required" pub.
Why?
Because it tries to address the varied aspects and questions related to why people are out there on the highways and byways, albeit restricted to the single aspect of "where one lays one head for the night".

It does remind me that I paid 38 Euro for a single night on a camp site in the Netherlands last year - why?
Because I had been travelling for about 15 hours at that point, it was about an hour before nightfall and it was about the 3rd or 4th camp site that I had looked at 'on the road' without pre-booking.
What I got for my money included access to the swimming pool and the kids play area (!) and a personal washroom/toilet facility i.e. that site had a self contained facility provided for every camping pitch (of which there were 100s) and the site was full (of families).
Each of those recently constructed washroom facilities was immaculately clean and included provision of what amounted to a personal washbag of toiletries, just to illustrate the standards of the whole camp site.

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Dave

I think you missed the point and maybe there is some sort of misunderstanding.

I am not in a UNIMOG or mega truck. I am travelling in a Toyota camper van with a bed and a kitchen. We dont even have a toilet inside.. and if you think that its not important for the guys, ask my partner who is traveliving 6 years non-stop WITHOUT a toilet!


To be honest, the article is about a fair price for what is offered to ALL OVERLANDERS in an organized campground.

Obviously, I mentioned dry camp/ bush camp/ wild camp for the sake of my analysis BUT the main point was what we expect and what we deserve as OVERLANDERS in an organised campground.

We personally have met overlanders on motorbikes who have a golden membership on Booking.com and pre-book almost all their stays BUT they carry super expensive/technical travel gear & equipment just for the night they will wild camp or they will stay in an organised campground.

Plus, the common picture I have experienced all these years of travelling is heavy-loaded motorbikes with camping equipment. If you take out sleeping bags, tents, air mattresses, portable stoves, cooking equipment etc. then you definitely have more space! Plus, you save some good money for this private room!

Definitely a motorbike equipment cannot be compared with the one in a camper van BUT somehow you are self-contained as well and you can enjoy some well being in an organized campground -or even one night in the bush.

I am not arguing or fighting back.. I am just trying to have a constructive discussion in one of the biggest overlanders' forum.

Plus, I tried to write up something funny, of course with some generalizations, for the sake of humor that would provoke some laughs, ideas and so on.. No hard feelings, no arguments..

After all, we are at the same boat, no?

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The Pin Project | Overland Greece

Hmm, what do you mean by "deserve"? Why do you think overlanders deserve anything just by virtue of being overlanders?

If I put myself in the theoretical shoes of a campsite owner... I don't especially care about overlanders as a source of business. Unless I am running a highly specialized site like Motocamp Bulgaria, overlanders are people who come in for one night, leave the next night and never come back. And when they do come, in that one night, they are probably doing a lot of laundry, using up a lot of the hot water to wash off the road grime (even if I charge per minute in the shower, the hot water is still limited, and if other customers don't get any - they are angry at me), and quite possibly even doing oil changes on their bikes! Now I am worried about maybe having to deal with oil stains on the ground. Oh, and all this time they are complaining about how expensive the campsite is!

Nah, my best customers are the families from the nearest big city who come for a week and keep coming every summer.

The one advantage overlanders have as customers is that they are unlikely to be loud and party on into the night. They'll probably just crawl into their tent and sleep.

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Overland travelers, and especially motorcycle travelers, get a massive advantage in terms of goodwill from people they meet on the road. It's a very common refrain about how nice everyone is when you're traveling. Heck, with rare exceptions, motorcyclists get goodwill and good karma everywhere...

Just this weekend, when I crashed my bike on black ice in the forest, the local tow truck guy came out, brought my bike to his garage, let me keep it there for three days until I got a hold of a new clutch lever and footpegs on Monday, and didn't charge me anything! He used to ride himself when he was younger, and he was entertained that I was the first bike he'd ever had to pick up, even though he'd been a rescue driver in the area for decades. I think he also appreciated that I did as much of the hard work myself, showed him how to properly strap down a road bike without damaging anything, etc. I brought him some barbecue stuff from a high-end butcher in the city that I like, as thanks.

That goodwill is not intrinsic. Yeah, people are always nice to us - but those people have their own lives and their own problems, all of them will go back to their boring lives and annoying jobs, and will go back to that everyday level of petty assholeness that almost everyone has. While they are around us, they are living vicariously, they are enjoying being involved in the travel lifestyle in some way. They are contributing to the smooth working of the travel community that is so important, but every such transaction is valuable to them too - they get a shot of romance and escapism.

Here's the important part: we need to be mindful of this and always give our helpers what they need.

Part of it is being humble and appreciative. Part of it is being as little trouble to them as you can be. Part of it is being the great storyteller, the great guest who always has great stories and is engaging to talk to. They invite you to their home and to the bar where all their friends hang out, because they have been having the same conversation with those spouses and friends for the last ten years. Your job is to entertain them, to make this night different and better.

That bottle of Bombay Sapphire that I picked up in duty-free for my friends in Auckland was more expensive than a hostel bed would have been, but I got to stay on Waiheke Island in their beautiful home, have gin & tonics with them at sunset on their deck, and swim on their beach with their dog.

It's not limited to overlanders, but moto travelers are an especially good source of romance and escapism for people. Our air of personal freedom and engagement with the road, but also our vulnerability and sacrifice of comfort, give us an extra dose of goodwill.

We don't deserve anything. We take, and so we must give back. There is no overlander's right. There is an overlander's privilege. The traveler's goodwill is a precious, limited, and public resource in the same way that unspoiled wilderness is. And in the same way, we must enjoy it responsibly.

FAIR????? Life ain't fair, son. Get used to it.

And get used to the fact (FACT) that YOU, like everyone else on the planet, are a unit of economic activity to our lords and masters (that would be the bankers).

Prices are determined by markets +/- the business sense of the owner; that's it. "Fair" don't come into it.

Elaine, as you know Australia has a similar, larger but in some ways less developed system of free and low cost campsites made available on the basis that there are rules about length of stay and whether the vehicle has to be self-contained or not - and similarly, the system is invariably abused by those who believe their rights are more important than their responsibilities. Many of these travelers/backpackers come from Europe where France and Germany and a couple of others also have aires and stellplatz which have similar rules, but the big difference there seems to me that anyone whose vehicle or standards of behavior doesn't comply will either be given their marching orders by other campers or the police.

When I was helping out on iOverlander I had to respond to many emails from town councils or village representatives in South America pleading for help against the tribe of grubs who were intent in trashing overloaded camping areas, or trespassing, or encroaching on wildlife nesting areas, so the first world isn't the only one to suffer.

As for the original premise that every traveler should pay 6 euro per night, I'd restate my assertion that it is just not realistic to try and sum up the entire world in one fixed camping fee when you consider the huge range of living costs and standards of living and the great range of locations where one might want to camp. I've seen ioverlander entries where people happily paid US$55 a night to pitch a tent along the Californian coast while others whose budget obviously makes their day to day living quite precarious, object hugely to a camping fee equating to little more than a dollar a night per site and insist on haggling over it or storming off in protest.

In my own case, I actually regard having to pay 12 Euro a night for Betty and myself quite excessive and my ideal outlay for a perfect camping spot that ticks all of my boxes is actually zero dollars and zero cents - and that applies in all countries whether it is the USA, Central Europe or Bolivia or Morocco. Generally we succeed as you can see at https://get.google.com/albumarchive/...aDxXw-TqICg7hF and average costs per night for those 350 sites, and a few hundred others as well would be so close to zero as doesn't matter.

However, there are places where it isn't convenient to free camp so if luckily there is camping available, I'm quite happy to pay a reasonable price for reasonable facilities yet there are whingers who really don't understand the basics of position, position, position and supply and demand and get very very sulky when they have to pay the price asked. Fairly often they then write indignant letters to iOverlander demanding action and fairly often, since I had stayed there, it gave me a fair bit of pleasure to tell them to go bite their bum.

Yes, I mentioned vehicle repairs earlier as it suffers from the same wide variations in quality and price throughout the world and there are some travelers who believe that even in a capital city at a workshop with some of the highest recommendations from overlanders anywhere in the world, they are entitled to get first class service at a similar hourly rate to that offered by a poor tyre repairer on a dusty back road. What some don't realise is that there are many such businesses who go to great lengths to give overlanders superlative service and jump them to the front of a very long queue so when some ungrateful complains about paying ten dollars extra for instant service then it is quite on the cards that the obliging business owner will decide to shut the doors to overlanders. We have lost a couple of places like that, one of whom gave me the most fantastic service I have ever experienced. Yes, we paid the price, but in fact saved plenty because the boss arranged free accommodation for us. Now that workshop is off-limits.

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Tony
Click here for Travel Photos & Travel Map

Said quite a lot.




Bears don't camp in one place and shit 10 feet away and leave toilet paper and wet wipes strewn everywhere. They don't leave fire scars all over the grass and they don't throw bottles and cans around. Nor do they cut live trees down and try to burn them in their smoky fire.


Silly comparison

Travel isn't a right, especially into other countries. Which country allows totally free access to everyone? Vatican?

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Tony
Click here for Travel Photos & Travel Map

Honestly, I had no intention to create such a controversial discussion that became social, national, political etc.

It was just another stupid humorous article about the vain life of overlanders. Nobody owes to overlanders anything, overlanders are not special and overlanders definitely dont deserve anything.

(Tony keeps mentioning here at HUBB the iOverlander garage story that nobody is aware, I dont know why. [snip])

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The Pin Project | Overland Greece