So many goodbyes during the last week! After two years in Barcelona, in a few days I’m leaving for a one-way trip to Quito, Ecuador. I leave here many good friends and awesome memories, but it’s time for new adventures!
The first resolution of my 2018 was working remotely. The second one was traveling to Latin America. Here we are!
Remote work
I have worked for one year and a half as a Frontend Engineer in Wallapop, the most famous mobile marketplace in Spain for buying and selling second-hand items. The team is awesome, the environment and the office are cool, and Barcelona is the best city I have ever lived in. Anyway, after two years here, now I want to move on and explore more, although I’m sure my path will lead me again to Barcelona in the future.
Wallapop is not a company with a remote working philosophy: it has more than one hundred people working from an office in Barcelona and no remote worker at all. Until now!
In fact, at the beginning, my idea was looking for another remote job, maybe freelancing for a German agency or a US startup. But, hey, why not convince Wallapop to give me a try and work remotely for them? After all, I’m a good asset, I have a lot of knowledge of their products and it’s not easy to find another senior Frontend.
And so I did: I played my cards well and eventually I persuaded them to let me work from South America, also thanks to my Product Owner and the CPO who pushed a lot for me. Of course, the team will have to change its routines a little bit and adapt to my different timezone, but it’s something that everybody agreed it’s worth.
Slow travel
My plan was not traveling through Latin America as a backpacker, nor taking a sabbatical year, rather than keeping working during the week and enjoying the place over the weekend. A sort of slow traveling, changing country every month.
It seemed a good plan, but the drawbacks of this are many: firstly I would have to find a place where to stay every month. And I already know how painful is looking for an accommodation in a new place (it was a nightmare when I did it in Fuerteventura and in Barcelona many times). Doing it every month? No, thanks.
Moreover, even if I find a nice room or apartment, what about wifi? Who can guarantee me that it’s working and it’s good enough for working every day and making Skype calls?
Finally, I will travel on my own and, actually, this is my first travel of this kind. I have never been outside Europe yet, so it would be a big step for me. Furthermore, I would have to find a community of people in every place: I like the idea of meeting local people and discover new cultures, but I also would like to meet up with other Digital Nomads. And, if I change place every month, I would have to start from scratch every time.
Meet WifiTribe!
After much research, I found the solution: WifiTribe!
Ok, what’s that? They define themselves as a “Coliving & Coworking expedition around the World”. Basically, it’s a community of Digital Nomads, living and working together every month in a different place.
You just pay a fixed price per month and you’ll get a nice accommodation or villa, with a tested and guaranteed wifi, plenty of space for work and a selected community of no more than 20 awesome like-minded people.
Yes, selected! In order to join the tribe, you’ll have to get through a Skype interview with the founder and a personality test, just in case you are a psycho and to understand if you fit with the community. The small number of people guarantees you can actually meet and know everyone and that the tribe doesn’t split up into subgroups.
There are three tribes traveling the whole year: one in South and Central America, one in Europe and one in Asia. You can join them for as much time as you want: just a month, a few months in a row, a few months spread over the year… Every month is called “Chapter” and you can book a pack of chapters to spend in a 12-months period. The more chapters you book together, the less it costs.
Comparing to other nomad communities like ROAM, Remote Year or Outsite, the WifiTribe program is far cheaper: if you get the 6-chapters pack, you will pay just $800 for a shared room per month. It includes accommodation, wifi, workplace, house cleaning and awesome people. Other travel programs include more things like flights, transfers, activities, food… but you find yourself paying something like $2.000 per month or much more!
WifiTribe is more informal: activities and excursions are not scheduled. The tribe just organize itself, suggests and plans excursions and trips on its own and shares the expenses, which can be quite convenient when booking as a group.
My travel
I’ll join the tribe in South and Central America. At the moment they are in Colombia, but I’m joining them in less than ten days at their next chapter: Quito, Ecuador.
I booked a pack of 6 chapters for now and the idea is to spend them in a row and probably add more ones, traveling for about a year. After Ecuador, we will move to Peru, Bolivia, Brasil, Argentina, Mexico and Costa Rica. This is the travel plan:
We will work during the week and every weekend we will do activities, excursions, hikes… In my bucket list there are: Galapagos Islands, Machu Pichu, Salar de Uyuni, and much more!
I’m super excited and I have been preparing for this travel since a few months, buying the necessary things (suitcase, clothes, travel insurance…), opening new nomad bank accounts, taking vaccines… I will tell you in details in another blog post maybe.
Meanwhile, I’m in the WifiTribe Slack chat where I can already have an idea of the people I’ll meet. There are developers, designers, entrepreneurs, marketers… Everyone is super interesting! But I realized that I’m the only crazy one who is planning to do 6 chapters in a row! Other people just stay for one or two months and maybe come back again for some other chapters later over the year. Well, that means I will meet a lot of people! There is someone from Europe, but most of them are from North America.
It’s going to be a crazy and amazing experience and I will document everything with photos, videos and posts here on the blog. So, if you want to be up to date, stay tuned, subscribe to the mailing list below and follow me on Instagram!
Let the adventure begin!
Do you want to travel the world with a group of engineers, designers, marketers and entrepreneurs? Check out WifiTribe and don't forget to mention me if you subscribe!