Tips on Travelling to Florida

By Struan Goss

For those of you who are first time travelers, making the trip with Workaway to Florida this coming season, here are a few helpful tips on travelling.

On several occasions while travelling, having copies of important documents saved in the cloud has gotten me out of a tight spot. You can upload your flight itinerary, certified copies of your ID and Passport as well as any other important documentation. Once in the cloud you can access it later from your smartphone anywhere, anytime. Personally I prefer to use Google Drive, however there are several cloud storage options available, another popular one being Dropbox.

Unless you’re a machine who enjoys watching 16hrs of in-flight films back to back, at some point you’ll want to sleep on your flight over. There’s nothing worse than sitting in an airplane seat restlessly shifting about trying to find a comfortable sleeping position. Every time you are about to drift off into a warm, dark place your head rolls around to the side and then flops forward; waking you up with a sudden jolt in a disgruntled state. If I could recommend only one thing to make the flight across the Atlantic easier it would definitely be to get a travel pillow. This provides your neck with support and ensures a far more comfortable sleep. While not a necessity, an eye cover, ear plugs, and sleeping pills can also be helpful for those of you hoping to get some shut eye. The latter should however be used after consultation with your doctor and not anytime near the end of a flight. You don’t want to be drowsy when you get off the plane into a bustling airport.

Be wary of using currency exchanges at the airports as they may be more expensive than your local bank. That said, I would be careful not to take all pocket money for the first two to three weeks in cash. Most South African bank cards have a Visa facility that allows you to withdraw dollars from Visa friendly ATM’s in the States. Just check with your bank if you need to have your debit card ‘activated’ for foreign withdrawals before you leave.

I would also be sure to have warm clothing as the stopover in New York can be a cold one. Other than proudly wearing my Springbok jersey at JFK International, I only got a handful opportunities to wear it while I was in Florida as the Sunshine State does well in living up to its name.