If you care about the world, you’ll care about what you eat.
We’re vegetarian travellers eating everything from Taiwanese street food to Costa Rican rice and beans. We want to know where our food comes from and always try to eat ethically sourced and local produce. We often chow down on vegan food.
We’re one week into our 31-day vegan travel challenge as part of Veganuary. We’ve had ups and downs, we’ve experimented with new foods, we’ve stocked up on 2kg of nuts and we’ve raided Brighton‘s most delicious vegan food joints. Next we’re going to be travelling vegan in Bulgaria.
As someone who would gladly eat cheese and eggs three times a day, Luke is going to find veganism tough – but never one to turn down a challenge and an admirable boyfriend as ever, he’s committed to joining me for 30 days of vegan travel.
Inspired by fellow vegan travel bloggers Dale and Franca who went vegan last year for “Veganuary,” Luke and I are making the switch and will be travelling vegan for the month of January.
Are we going to make it? We’re pretty determined that we will. Will a life of vegan travel be for us? We don’t know.
Seville is one of those beautiful historic cities that you can’t not love, but if you’re a vegetarian in Seville then prepare to be assaulted by huge pig legs hanging from the ceiling of just about every restaurant. Sevillians adore their jamón and they won’t let you forget it.
Being vegetarian in Seville, you can easily end up relying on the big bread basket and small ramekin of olives that comes with every meal. While bread and olives are pretty delicious, after the fourth or fifth time of them appearing on the table, you’ll be craving some variety and veggies.
Seville isn’t the most vegetarian friendly of places, but it’s not completely in the dark ages when it comes to meat-free cuisine either. Being a vegetarian in Seville takes a bit more effort and forward planning. Here’s our guide on how to survive as a vegetarian in Seville without just eating bread.
The vegetarian restaurants in Barcelona are some of the best we’ve eaten in. As a country that loves jamón and paella, Spain isn’t known for its vegetarian restaurants. But Barcelona is an exception to the rule. You won’t even believe your eyes (or your belly!)
With my family’s new home base being in Dorset, I set out on a hunt for delicious vegetarian and vegan cafes in and around Bournemouth. The area isn’t exactly known as a vegetarian and vegan scene compared to more alternative UK cities like Brighton and Liverpool. But there are some real veggie-friendly gems to be found.
Between the odd long haul flight, seemingly endless bus journeys and train rides across countries, and small towns where you end up just snacking on white buns and pre-packaged foods when passing through, travelling can sometimes leave you feeling unfit and unhealthy.
If you don’t take good care of your body while travelling, you can wind up feeling exhausted. It’s natural for travellers to want to make the most of their time in a new place and pack in as much sightseeing as possible. Too often though, that’s at the expense of their health and fitness and eventually leads to a complete travel burnout.
The raw food movement, or raw foodism, is a massively growing trend. My Instagram feed is always crammed with raw food bloggers posting images of incredible raw cakes, spiralised veggies and superfood salads, which I admittedly go a little wild over.
Raw foodism refers to a diet with a high consumption of uncooked, unprocessed foods. A raw food diet mainly focuses on eating lots of raw fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds, but interpretations of what else is considered part of a raw food diet varies.
You hear a lot of buzz about raw food diets from places like California, Vancouver, Australia and New Zealand’s North Island, but far less so over in Asia. While travelling in Thailand though, I unexpectedly discovered that the raw food movement is slowly starting to set down roots over there too.
If you spend any time at all in Thailand, or any Asian country, you’ll immediately notice that rice is essential to the local diet. Many people, especially from the older generations and in the countryside, eat some form of rice three times a day. Having spent so much time in Asia, Charlie and I have also become a little bit addicted to rice, and quite happily eat it seven days a week, and sometimes for breakfast too!
So naturally I was keen to visit Phu Ruea Ruean Mai resort, an organic rice farm, and learn more about how some Thai people are trying their hand at ecotourism. The rice farm is run by Nu Dee, a young, well-educated woman from Bangkok, and her mother. Nu Dee is one of a small handful of people bucking the urban migration trend, and she argues that there’s more to life than sitting at a standstill in Bangkok’s notorious traffic jams.
You know when I was a kid, I never ate peanut butter. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with it, actually I don’t even recall knowing it existed until the age of thirteen. That seems pretty crazy to most of you, right? Peanut butter isn’t big in England like it is in the States, and mainly it’s just wasn’t something that my family were all that keen on. When I was thirteen however, I had my first peanut butter and jam sandwich – and I was hooked.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that it’s not just peanut butter that I need a regular fix of, it’s all kinds of nut butters. Oh yes. Delicious, creamy, nutty, sticky nut butters. If I was going to run a business, it would definitely be selling homemade, organic, one-ingredient nut and seed butters – that’s another story though. With my nut butter obsession right out in the open now, you can imagine how crazy excited I was when I read that not only is there a macadamia nut farm in Antigua, but they also sell jars of macadamia nut butter!
Needless to say, top of my travel to-do list in Antigua was a visit to the Valhalla Macadamia Nut Farm.
I learned two things from our Guatemalan cooking class: number one is that making tortillas isn’t as easy as it looks and I suck at it, and number two is that the traditional Guatemalan dish of Pepian can be made vegetarian even though not everyone says it can.
We headed to a small town just down the road from where we were house sitting to meet an old Guatemalan farmer whose wife and daughters were going to teach us to cook. We went through the gate into their courtyard area where a long row of women were sorting coffee beans and dogs were sleeping in the sun.
As vegetarian – and even more so as vegan – travellers, the one question we often get asked is what do you actually eat? For a non-vegetarian traveller, the idea of finding food which doesn’t come with meat included while on the road can seem like an impossible task. There’s no doubt that it requires a bit of extra effort to find good vegetarian and vegan food while travelling, but it’s wholly possible and when you’re actually looking out for it, it’s much easier.
I asked five travel bloggers who have vegetarian, vegan or raw diets what they eat in order to keep healthy on a typical day while travelling.
Think eating vegetarian in Costa Rica means endless days of “rice and beans – hold the chicken?” Think again.
Friends of ours who travelled in Costa Rica said that we’d be sick of rice and beans in no time. Though we’ve certainly eaten more rice and beans than is probably healthy while on the road, Costa Rica has proven to be an excellent destination for vegetarian travel. Being able to order vegetarian food in local sodas (cheap eateries) is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to vegetarian travel in Costa Rica.
We’re Charlie and Luke — UK travel bloggers, adventurers and storytellers. We travel slow and write about sustainable travel. We want to make responsible travel choices and help you do the same. Get to know us.
