Surviving a Foreign Road Trip with Kids

Road trips with kids are enough of a challenge as it is, but how about road tripping in a foreign country?  How do you prepare when you don’t know what sort of things you’ll see and obstacles you encounter?

Here are a few tips to keep the conflict to a minimum on your international road trip.

You’ll likely have to book your rental car before you leave home. In addition to comparison shopping to make sure you get the best deal on a low cost car hire, be sure to take the following steps:

• Find a rental car company close to the airport (or at least one that offers free transfers). There’s no need to complicate things by trying to figure out a way to get your whole family and all your luggage to the rental agency.
• Rent a car with more seats than you think you need. Don’t try to save a few bucks by squeezing your family and all your belongings into a tiny hatchback. If the kids have room to stretch their legs and maybe even recline, they’ll be less fidgety.
• Get vehicle rental insurance and roadside assistance.  This should be something you do whenever you rent a car, but when you're traveling with children it is an absolute must.  You don't want to have to entertain the young ones while you innovate a solution to a flat tire or price out different mechanics in a foreign city. 
  

Some of the games you play on road trips at home might not translate well to another country.  How will you play the license plate game when you’re traveling down an empty highway in New Zealand? 

A few games will translate well to any road trip, but to take advantage of the new scenery, try a few of these games:

• What’s that?  Whenever you spy something out the window that isn’t common in your home country, have the kids try to guess what it is.  You can be as silly or as serious as you like with this game, and you’re all sure to get a few laughs out of some of the more creative responses.
• Map game.  Pick up a few maps of the area you’re travelling through and see if your kids can figure out where you are, based on street signs and landmarks.  This is a better game for older kids, who are more likely to enjoy the challenge and succeed in figuring it out.
• Scavenger hunt.  Make up a list of objects for your kids to spot out the window (this might be best written after a day or two when you yourself know what’s out there).  You can be specific (“a blue pickup truck”) or general (“a kind of bird we don’t have at home”).  A great variation on this is a photo scavenger hunt, where your kids have to take pictures of the items on the list.  Buying a cheap, digital camera for each child is a great way to keep them entertained.

If you’re in a foreign country, you might not be able to pack the car full of entertainment like you would if you were leaving from home.  Without the iPods, stack of books and portable DVD players you usually bring along for a drive, you might wonder what you’re going to do to keep the kids entertained while you drive.

• Visit a local bookstore you head out and pick up some age-appropriate books and magazines.  It might pay to ask someone in the store what some iconic, local kid’s books are.  Your kids will get to read something new, and they may discover a few new things about the culture.
• If the country you’re traveling through isn’t and English-speaking country, grab a few picture books anyway and encourage your kids to try and figure out what’s going on in the story based on the pictures.
  
• As always, crayons and coloring books can go a long way in car trips.  These things are also cheap enough to pick up when you arrive and throw away on your way home without feeling guilty about. 

Packing snacks for the trip can be challenging when the packages in the grocery store are completely unfamiliar.  For best results, hit up a local grocery store and:

• Buy a few things you recognize.  Pick up apples, bananas and bread…  The more basic the food is, the more confident you can be that it won’t contain any unfamiliar flavors or textures (plus it’s healthier!).
• Buy a few mystery items.  Turn it into a game and have your kids pick out the strangest, most exotic looking snack foods in the store.  Even if they don’t like them, tasting the snacks will have been a fun time-killer.  Just a warning though, this is not the kind of thing you want to do with kids who have food allergies or dietary restrictions.  Even if labels are in English, you can’t be sure about the national labeling laws.  There may be more in the product than is listed.
• Buy too much.  In this case, you’re better off buying too many snacks than not enough.  You can’t know for sure if your mystery foods will be a hit, or what kind of eating options you’ll have on the road.  Better to pick up a few extra pieces of fruit that go bad than to have hungry kids in the backseat.
  

Multiple, unplanned stops along the way are part of any road trip with kids.  It’s a little easier to be flexible with stopping in your home country though, when you know there will be rest stops every twenty minutes down the freeway and when you’re familiar with the chain restaurants.  You might find that stopping is a little different in some countries than others.

Are there rest stops?  Not every country has rest stops conveniently located along the highways.  You might have to be less flexible than usual when it comes to bathroom breaks.  Let the kids know this and make sure they take advantage of the bathroom whenever you do stop.

What kind of roadside food is available?  You may or may not find tempting restaurants along the way.  Here, it pays to do some Internet research first.  Post on travel forums and expat blogs about roadside dining.  If you’re worried about the options, pack some extra sandwiches.

Here are a few light items worth throwing in your suitcase to make the trip a little smoother.

• A compilation CD of the kids’ favorite songs.  Most rental cars will come with a CD player, and familiar music is a great way to both keep your kids entertained and also stave off a little homesickness.
• Motion sickness pills.  These can often be purchased abroad, but tracking down pills in a foreign pharmacy may not be something you want to spend time doing on your trip.