Key Takeaways
- One of the most popular budget-travel apps is Couchsurfing. It’s a social network website that allows you to connect with locals abroad who can share
- I remember I used it when I was first traveling and stayed at this lovely home in Athens. Since that first trip, I’ve used it dozens of times to meet
- Celinne, on the other hand, created — and used — her own personal social network. She traveled the world only by staying with friends and friends of f
Last Updated: 11/9/22 | November 9th, 2022
One of the most popular budget-travel platforms is Couchsurfing — a social network that connects travelers with local hosts who offer free accommodation and insider guidance.
I remember using it early in my travels and staying at a warm, welcoming home in Athens. Since that first experience, I’ve used it dozens of times to meet locals, share stories, and significantly reduce lodging costs.
Celinne, however, built her own organic social network for travel. She journeyed across the globe exclusively by staying with friends — and friends of friends — reaching out digitally to strangers who opened their homes to her. This approach not only slashed her expenses but also led to deeply authentic human encounters.
To many, travel is defined less by destinations and more by the people we meet along the way — and Celinne found a powerful way to prioritize those connections. Below is her story: what inspired her unconventional journey, how she made it happen, and what she discovered about trust, generosity, and belonging.
Route for Less: Tell us about yourself. Who are you? What drives you?
Celinne Da Costa: My love story with travel dates as far back as I can remember: I was born in the heart of Rome to an immigrant Brazilian mother and a German-raised Italian father.
Since leaving Italy, I’ve gone from living in the quintessential suburbia neighborhoods that American dreams are made of, to frenziedly exploring Philadelphia while balancing my studies at University of Pennsylvania, to adventuring my way through every nook and cranny of New York City.
Last year, I left behind my corporate advertising job in the city to design my dream life from scratch. I began with a journey around the world, in which I harnessed the power of human connection and kindness to stay with 70+ strangers in 17 countries across four continents.
Eighteen months later, I’m still traveling full-time and writing a book about my experience circumnavigating the globe by couchsurfing through my social network.
What fuels your passion for travel?
Travel accelerates personal growth and challenges me to become the best version of myself. There are so many beautiful places in the world, but after a while, they begin to blend into one another. What truly makes travel valuable is the lessons it can teach you, if you are willing to be present and pay attention to your environment.
Travel has helped me develop the humility and goodwill to learn from people that I meet along the way. It has pushed me to understand my insignificance on this planet, yet still take actions that will positively impact others.
Most importantly, it has challenged me to open my heart to others and live in the moment. Ultimately, travel is not a matter of what I see, but who I become along the way. I don’t need to see the entire world. I just want to feel it run through my veins.
Tell us about this long adventure you were just on. How did you think of it? How long did it last? Where did you go? What did you do?
I didn’t want to just quit my corporate 9-5 job on a whim and travel the world without a plan. I wanted to make travel into a lifestyle, not a sabbatical, so I decided to design a project that would:
- Incorporate my main passions (travel, writing, and making connections with interesting humans)
- Create opportunities for a lifestyle change once I was done.
I challenged myself to design my dream life, attempt to live it out for six months and re-evaluate once I got there.
That’s where the idea of my social experiment came from: I circumnavigated the globe by couchsurfing through my network. I wanted to reincorporate real human connection back into my life.
During this time, I never used Couchsurfing since everyone who hosted me was connected to me somehow (friends, friends of friends, people I met on the road).
I ended up being on the road for nine months for this project, and having 73 hosts in 17 countries across 4 continents: I passed through Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the United States.
How did you actually find hosts to host you? How far ahead did you know where you were going to sleep?
There were no websites involved! Only sheer human connection. All the interactions were initiated by me and were enabled by my phone (texting, voice notes, calling) and social media (mostly Instagram and Facebook).
I reached out to everyone I knew telling them about my project and asking whether they knew someone they could connect me with. I kept moving from one connection to the next until I found someone willing to host me. As my project grew and people started finding out about it, hosts started to reach out to me through Instagram.
I only had a one-way ticket to Italy (where I’m originally from) booked – everything else was on a whim. I had a general trajectory of where I was going, and I would add or subtract places depending on my hosting situation.
There were places I wanted to visit no matter what, so there were often times when I was down to the wire and didn’t find a host until super last minute. Other times, I had hosts lined up months ahead.
It always worked out — I was only left without a host once, in Croatia. I ended up renting a cheap room last minute, but luckily, I did make some local friends on that trip so I’ll have a place to stay if I return!
What was the furthest connection with a host that you stayed with?
