Give a traveler an extra penny....

So it occurred to me yesterday while booking last minute flights to Boston and Philly that most people, experienced travelers and newbies alike, probably have no effing idea how to search for really good deals on airfare. Hell, why spend $1000 to get somewhere when you could switch up your search and save a few hundred bucks? That's more doe for food and wine (always priorities of mine). And since most of my skipping town adventures have literally been same day spontaneity, I have become somewhat of a badass at finding super last minute flights out of the country that don't require my first born son as part of the payment. Por ejemplo, when I left for Guatemala it was because I'd had a bad day. That morning was like any other morning. I went for a run, hung out with some friends, and dreaded my bar shift that coming night. Unfortunately my day rapidly went downhill, and instead of going out and drinking my face off, I decided to leave the country for a minute. When leaving super spontaneously, I don't usually have a particular country in mind. My goal is to find the cheapest ticket that in leaving ASAP. When using this approach, there are a ton of factors to keep in mind if you're looking for a good deal. Season, airport locations, hemisphere, and currency value of a country will play a drastic role in the cost of your ticket. When I sat down at my trusty old school MacBook, I decided to look up countries where peak travel season was over but where the weather wouldn't be too shitty. Indonesia, Morocco, and Guatemala all fit the profile (and they are all places on my bucket list). I spent about 2 hours comparing sites, trying different airports, looking at one way fares, researching local airlines for hopper flights, and combinations of the like. People usually forget there are smaller local airlines within countries or continents that can get you to where you need to go for much cheaper. By looking at these airlines, I was able to get to Guatemala and back, completely last minute (and I mean LAST minute. I bought a ticket for a flight that left SFO 3 hours later. I almost missed it!) for around $400 total. I took an AeroMexico flight to Mexico City, and transferred to a Central and South American airline called Lan to get to Guatemala City. If I had stayed on AeroMexico the flight would've been closer to $800. Fu%k that. You can find these types of smaller airlines all over the world, Easy Jet and Ryan Air in Europe. Always expand your flight search to include multiple airports, as some places are just cheaper to fly into. Gatwick is cheaper than Heathrow. Frankfurt is cheaper than Paris or Berlin, San Fransisco is cheaper than Sacramento, so on and so forth. Do your research. Trust me, it's well worth it. Wouldn't YOU rather spend more money on food and booze than an overpriced flight? Yeah, I thought so:)

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Cheers,
Danni