International Travel Tips - The Wildflower Way

Skim through our international travel trips to make sure you are prepared ahead of time. A few of these tips we had to learn the hard way!

Car Rental

Don’t forget to take pictures and videos of the car before you leave the lot, even if you are delirious from a flight! It can save you from getting charged for dents and scratches you didn’t make.
Some insurance policies cover you for rental cars but it does not always apply to international car rentals. Double-check your auto insurance before you go to avoid paying for insurance you don’t need.
Some credit cards do cover rental car damage. Amex platinum is one of them and saved us from a $1,500 damage charge from our Iceland trip.
We loved using Turo when we were in Hawaii instead of the traditional airport car rental because it was less of a hassle and they dropped the car right to us. I recommend checking if your international destination has Turo. If not, we have had positive experiences with Enterprise and Alamo. We will never use Sixt again due to a negative experience.

Always bring some cash just in case your credit cards don’t work. For example, many gas stations in Iceland only took debit cards, not credit cards.
Research the country you are visiting to assess how common using cash is to determine the amount you should bring. Most countries take credit cards often but we still usually need $100-$200 in cash for places that don’t take card.
We use Xe app to convert the country’s currency to USD. It will work offline using the most recent market rate that it has which is close enough when we are determining the price for something.

We are lucky that many other countries speak English however we are always prepared to communicate in their native language
We download the offline version of the country’s language on the Google Translate app before we leave since that allows us to translate even if we don’t have service or wifi

Print out pictures of your passport, hotel reservations, transportation reservations, activity reservations, etc. If you don’t have access to the internet at any point on your trip you can use the printouts to prove who you are or your reservation.
We have also used these printouts to tell transportation the address of where we are going when our phones are slow to load the email confirmation
Use Sherpa to confirm if you need a visa or other travel documentation for the country you are visiting

Research what type of voltage the country uses to see if it is compatible with your country. If they are not compatible, you can purchase a power converter to use during your trip. We typically just purchase via Amazon.
Some countries might use the same voltage but your hair tools still fry when plugging them in. This happened to us in St. Martin twice. Check the voltage capability before turning them on.