Road-Trip

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why car rental in Iceland is unlike anywhere else in Europe The rental agent at Keflavik slid a laminated sheet across the desk and pointed to a row of add-ons. CDW. SAAP. GP. Windstorm. Each with a daily rate and a blank checkbox. I’d read enough before the trip to know what each one meant, but I still paused at the Sand and Ash Protection line, because “sand and ash” is not something you encounter on a car-hire form in, say, Portugal. Iceland is not Portugal. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why car rental in Mallorca changes the whole trip The queue at the Rentalcars desk in Palma airport snaked back almost to the baggage carousel. It was mid-July, roughly half past noon, and the couple in front of me had their confirmation email open on a phone with a cracked screen and a booking made the night before. They waited 47 minutes. I waited eleven, because I had booked three weeks earlier with a reserved slot, walked past the main hall to the quieter off-airport shuttle pick-up, and had a white Seat Ibiza in my hands before their queue even moved. I’m not telling you this to brag — I’m telling you because that 36-minute difference is the whole story of car rental in Mallorca. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why car rental in Morocco changes the trip entirely The checkpoint materialised out of the heat shimmer about three kilometres past Ait Benhaddou. A policeman waved us to the verge, walked slowly to my window, and said nothing for a moment. I had the rental agreement in my hand before he asked. Licence too. He glanced at both, nodded and waved us on. Total elapsed time: forty-five seconds. The road to Ouarzazate was ours again. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why car rental in Sicily is the best decision you’ll make on this trip The woman at the Catania airport counter smiled and said she was doing us a favour. A full tank of fuel, pre-purchased, at a fixed rate — no need to worry about finding a station before returning the car. My partner looked at me. We’d read the warnings. We smiled back and said no thank you. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why car rental in Tenerife changes your whole trip The guy at the Tenerife South desk gave me the full upsell — extra cover, pre-purchased fuel, a sat-nav I didn’t need. I smiled, said no to most of it, and walked out to a compact Seat Ibiza I’d booked online three weeks earlier for just under twenty-five euros a day. Twenty minutes later I was on the motorway heading north, watching the landscape shift from pale resort concrete to dark volcanic rock to pine forest, and thinking that everyone who stays inside a sun-lounger radius of their hotel is making a serious mistake. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why car rental in the Algarve is the best decision you’ll make I almost made the mistake of not booking a car. The resort looked walkable on the map, the EN125 coast road was marked in orange — how far could the beaches really be? The answer, on day one, was a forty-minute walk along a road with no pavement and nothing on either side. I turned back, pulled out my phone, and had a Renault Clio reserved at Faro airport for the next morning. The rest of the week was a completely different holiday. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Garden Route, Done at the Right Pace We made the classic mistake on our first South African road trip: we gave the Garden Route a single day, treating it as the boring drive between Cape Town and the safari. We flew through Knysna in the rain, didn’t stop for the forest, and spent the next year hearing friends describe the suspension bridges and the lagoon we’d blown past at 120 km/h. So we went back, gave it five days instead of one, and finally understood why people plan whole trips around this stretch of coast. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Renting a scooter or car in Bali: what no one tells you until the checkpoint The first police checkpoint I saw in Canggu was on a Tuesday at 9 in the morning, exactly where the beach road narrows near the rice fields. Two officers, two tourists off their scooters, one conversation that looked uncomfortably long. I didn’t stop. I had my International Driving Permit in my bag and a helmet that actually fit. The couple without theirs paid around 250,000 IDR each — and that was before anyone asked about insurance. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Iceland, in One Sentence It was 11:40 at night and the sky over Thingvellir was still the color of weak tea. We’d pulled the campervan onto a gravel shoulder, too tired to drive but too wired by the light to sleep, and my brother said the thing I’ve thought every June since: “It’s like the day forgot to end.” That was the midnight sun, and it spoiled us. The flights had cost a fortune and the campsite fees stung, but nobody warned us how hard it is to go to bed when the sun won’t. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit New Zealand, in One Sentence I’ll never forget the moment a German guy in our Wanaka hostel kitchen unfolded a map and traced the route he’d planned: a tight ten-day loop of both islands in late June, all of it built around beaches and the Great Walks. He’d booked it from the other side of the world assuming June meant summer. It does not. Half the alpine tracks were snowed in, the campervan heater became his best friend, and he ended up reinventing the whole trip around hot pools and ski fields, which, to be fair, he loved. But it could have gone very differently with a little planning. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why a car changes everything in Crete The guy at the Chania counter slid the form across and tapped a line near the bottom. Twenty-two euros a day, he said, and your excess drops to zero. My wife caught my eye. We already had that covered, bought online for a fraction of the price, but he didn’t know that yet, and the small Fiat Panda we’d reserved three weeks earlier for about thirty euros a day was sitting in the lot with a scratch on the rear bumper I was about to photograph. I’ll come back to that scratch, because it nearly cost us a deposit we never should have been on the hook for. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Car Rental in Lisbon: When It Saves You and When It Stings We spent our first afternoon in Lisbon doing exactly what I’m about to tell you not to do: circling Bairro Alto in a rented VW Polo, my wife reading out parking-app prices while I rode the clutch up another cobbled hill. We paid almost 20 euros to leave that car in a garage overnight and never touched it the next day. The car wasn’t the mistake. The timing was, and it’s the one almost everyone makes. ...