Get Paid to Travel the World
By Sandra Kennedy
It was while exploring the Schist villages of central Portugal earlier this year that I realized just how much my life has changed. I'd retired from teaching and wasn't sure how I'd keep myself busy. But now here I am getting paid to travel, take pictures along the way, and write about what I recommend other people do and see. It's hard to believe it's even a real job!
But I'm living proof: It is.
I stayed at lavish haciendas, ate the freshest foods in Ecuador, got to know the smiling, helpful locals. I went to a Shaman healing ceremony, rode horses in the Andes and learned to weave. And then I sat sipping fresh mango juice, relaxing by the pool. It's hard to believe it costs me nothing to travel like this.
Okay, so I take notes and photos along the way and spend a few evenings writing up my impressions while they're fresh in my mind. Back home, I put them into proper sentences. But then more than one editor pays me for them.
I used to think it was too good to be true. But it's the life I lead today. I've always loved travel and photography. And as a retired teacher, I figured I could put a sentence together—though I'd hardly say I have great literary flair. So a few years back, I attended the Ultimate Travel Writer's Workshop in Buenos Aires to see if I couldn't gather the secrets to getting stories into print and cashing in on some of the perks I knew could come with this line of work.
One morning after breakfast, I asked International Living's roving European editor, Steenie Harvey (who was speaking at the event) about ideas for the workshop's writing assignment. After I told her how I'd rented an apartment to stay in for a week before the event, she suggested an article about living like a local.
I wrote it. And Escape Artist published it within a few weeks of my return home. I was hooked. I had the first clip for my travel writing portfolio.
Now, fiveyears later, my portfolio is filled with travel articles and photographs from Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Portugal, Uruguay, Argentina, Alaska, Maine, Oregon and Washington. And many of those articles came out of trips I enjoyed for nexttonothing or even free.
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