1. Make several copies of your passport when you travel. Hide your passport somewhere safe in your room, or in an actual safe, if your room has one (if your hotel keeps the safes behind their desk, don’t put your passport there. You might forget it). Keep a copy with you at all times, in case you need ID, and keep the other one(s) somewhere in your room (but not with your actual passport).
2. If you’re planning on using your debit and/or credit card(s) while you’re away, ALERT YOUR BANK. They may think your card’s been stolen and cancel it. You should also make sure your cards will be accepted in ATMs, restaurants, etc. wherever you’re going.
3. Don’t convert all of your American money, just in case. And don’t keep all your money in one place. Hide bills in different pockets of your wallet or even leave some cash hidden in a safe place [in your bags] at the hotel. Be prepared for our nightmare: ATMs without money and banks without tellers.
4. If you carry a purse or bag or satchel or murse or whatever, make sure it zips securely, keep it zipped, and don’t leave it hanging off the bag of your chair when you’re out or hanging loosely off your arm, etc. The best kind have lots of pockets to put your money and valuables.
5. Don’t wander around with your camera strapped to your wrist, or in any other easily accessible place. Put it away after you take your pictures, and make sure you close your bag after.
6. Carry water with you. You never know how long it’ll be before you’ll find water, and there’s no reason to continually buy water if you just get a reusable bottle. Hooray for saving money (and the environment)! You might want to also carry (a) snack(s).
7. SUNSCREEN IS A MUST IN MAR DEL PLATA (and in other sunny places). Even on cloudy days. And even if you’re just going to be outside for a bit. Almost everyone in our group is at least a little bit burnt (and most got super burnt and are now in pain and/or peeling. Ew).
8. Avoid tourist shops. A lot of the time, their items are overpriced and not necessarily high quality. Ask a local, the concierge or google where to find souvenirs for less money.
9. If you’re someone who likes to get up and go and/or order, eat and pay with ease at restaurants, DON’T TRAVEL WITH BIG GROUPS. Friends want to wait for friends who wind up taking forever to get ready, it’s tough to agree on what to do or where to go, ordering in restaurants is confusing, the food takes forever to arrive, and figuring out the bill is hellish. Seriously. A few days ago, a large group of us went to this delish Mexican place and wound up being over 100 pesos short. Not cool. Some people left after dropping some bills on the table, which sucked, because the bills here are pretty confusing (ex: if you order spaghetti, it comes with butter, unless you order sauce. You need to pay for everything separately, which a lot of people forget).
10. Get ready for your internal clock to be all crazy, especially if you’re wintering in a warm country in the middle of their summer where people eat late at night. It stays pretty light out here until around 8:30 or 9, and it starts to get light again around 4 am. Most of us go out to dinner between 8 and 11 pm, so we’re getting back late. Then it’s weird for me to go to bed just after eating, and I need to take a shower before I go to bed anyway because I don’t have time in the mornings. I usually wind up going to bed between 1 and 3, and our wake up call comes at 7. My internal clock is muy disoriented, and all of me is muy tired, which brings me to my next point:
11. SIESTAS ARE AMAZING. THEY ARE A MUST.

More life lessons and words of wisdom to come… It’s 8:38 pm – time to get dressed for dinner!