Meet the Coles, a family of digital nomads who have been traveling the world full-time since 2019. Brodi and David Cole, along with their son ‘Little Man’, have embraced a life of adventure, exploring 37 countries and driving the Pan American Highway from the U.S. to Argentina.
Combining their passion for travel with worldschooling, they’ve created unique learning experiences for their son while working remotely. Through their travel brand, “Our Offbeat Life” which includes a website, podcast and Youtube channel they inspire other families to take the leap into long-term travel and explore the world on their own terms.
Opening question: Using your own words please introduce yourself to our travellers/community?
Hi, I’m Brodi Cole. Since 2019, I’ve been living my dream as a full-time digital nomad, traveling the world with my family and turning our adventures into incredible learning experiences. My background as an HR Director has really shaped how I approach helping other families plan their travel journeys – I love combining the organizational aspects of my previous career with my passion for alternative education. Now, as a travel consultant and co-host of the ‘Our Offbeat Life’ podcast, I get to inspire other families to break free from conventional living and create their own unique paths. Every day, I get to help families navigate everything from travel logistics to worldschooling, and I couldn’t be more grateful for this lifestyle we’ve created.
Hello, I’m David Cole, and I’m passionate about helping families embrace the worldschooling lifestyle. I’ve been fortunate enough to explore 37 countries, covering over 48,000 miles by road and 151,000 miles by air. As the host of ‘Our Offbeat Life’ podcast, I love sharing our experiences and interviewing other traveling families to provide practical insights for those considering this lifestyle. I’m also the co-founder of The Tutor Resource, where I combine my love for education with travel, helping families create meaningful learning experiences on the road. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing families gain the confidence to start their own worldschooling adventures and create lasting memories together.
Hi, ‘Little Man’! My parents had me start traveling pretty early – my first trip was to the British Virgin Islands when I was just 7 months old, and by 14 months, I was exploring Cambodia, Thailand, and China. At 6 years old, my parents asked me how I would like to leave school and travel the world full time with them. By the time I turned seven, I was off galavanting around Southeast Asia, taking online classes and learning from our travels. Now that I’ve just turned 12, I’ve already been to 29 countries, which is pretty cool! I’m always excited to see what new adventures are waiting around the corner.
We are the Coles, a digital nomad family from Chicago that sold everything and have been traveling full time since 2019! We spent the bulk of the pandemic years in Southeast Asia and returned to the Americas in 2021, where we began our overlanding journey.
Since then, we spent two years driving the Pan American Highway from the US to the southern tip of Argentina and back up to Brazil followed by another six months exploring Mexico and a five week whirlwind road trip coast to coast across the USA.
Like many digital nomads, we aren’t independently wealthy. We both work remotely while our son worldschools wherever we are at the time. Worldschooling is like homeschooling but using world travel as the “curriculum” instead of a bunch of heavy textbooks and workbooks.
We have a family travel brand, Our Offbeat Life, that includes a website, podcast, Youtube channel, and various social media platforms all geared toward inspiring more families to take the plunge into long term travel.
What initially drew you to overlanding?
During the pandemic, our travel plans kept getting canceled due to border closures. When foreign tourists were asked to leave Malaysia in April 2021, very few countries were open yet and we didn’t want to return to the US long term. We booked a repositioning cruise but that got canceled since Japan’s borders were still closed.
However, Mexico and Central America were open and accessible to us and we liked the idea of being able to control our travel destiny in an age of uncertainty. So, we changed up our travel strategy, bought a vehicle, and headed south! We debated between an RV, campervan, and SUV.
Ultimately, we ruled out living in an RV because blackwater pumpouts (for toilets) don’t seem to really exist south of Mexico, and campervans wouldn’t work because Starlink wasn’t popular yet and we needed the internet for our remote jobs. An SUV that could handle rugged roads made sense, and we decided to combine overlanding with Airbnb stays and housesitting (which we’ve done a lot of!) as well as some occasional car or tent camping.
Overall, we loved the idea of travel freedom, and seeing more of the countries we were visiting. Overlanding seemed like a better way to truly experience a place, and it was a natural extension of our slow travel approach to life.
What has been the most surprising thing you’ve learned about yourself through overlanding?
We learned that we can handle some really bananas predicaments! We’ve had a dirt road collapse under our 4Runner in Ecuador and changed travel plans in the moment when landslides destroyed Colombia’s major highway, which resulted in us driving the Trampolin de la Muerte to get across the border before our travel permits expired.
We even passed through Peru just after the nationwide protests created impassable roadblocks around the country, which would have prevented us from even entering! Thankfully, they calmed down a few weeks before we arrived.
We even canceled our plans to drive through Bolivia, a mere week before we left, because we essentially found out we wouldn’t be legally allowed to buy gas there. People do it, but that level of stress and uncertainty wasn’t appealing to us as a traveling family unit.
Overall, we’ve realized we can do a lot more than we realized and we don’t need to plan ahead! More often than not, we’ll roll into a town without anything booked and wing it.
How do you choose your travel destinations?
As overlanders, we pick our destinations based on what country is next door. It’s actually a nice way to relieve some destination decision fatigue knowing that we only have to pick places inside the country next door to explore, rather than choosing any country on earth to go next.
However, for our Pan American overlanding adventure, we made a list of must-do activities and the necessary timing for it. In order to go skiing in Argentina and enjoy Christmas in Antarctica, as part of our goal to enjoy 7 Christmases on 7 Continents in 7 Years, everything in between had to fit into that larger plan. We also arranged house sits along the way and occasionally had to rush to get there by the start date.
Once the big picture was worked out, we just looked at the types of activities we enjoy (coffee, hiking, and animal experiences) and sought out destinations within the countries on our Pan American list that best suited us.
For example, while we drove south from skiing in Bariloche, Argentina we decided to cross into Chile and drive the Carretera Austral instead of through the Argentine desert. That gave us access to some amazing hiking and camping opportunities!
What has been the most challenging part of overlanding with children?
Finding other families to socialize with was more difficult than we expected. Once we got south of Mexico, and especially when we entered South America, we realized that there aren’t many families overlanding in that area. In fact, we only encountered three other overlanding families in South America during the 18+ months we were there. Most overlanders were single or couple travelers.
This led us to create our own community opportunities outside the overlanding community, like Pop Up Hubs in Mexico and Argentina, where families from all travel styles joined us for pre-organized, budget-friendly adventures.
We also filled our social agenda with meet ups with local homeschool families and expats, which ultimately gave us a unique overlanding experience since we went beyond campgrounds and playgrounds to make new friends.
What has been the most rewarding aspect of overlanding as a family?
We’ve been so grateful for such a unique way to see our son blossom. He’s very shy, and we’ve made it a priority to do and see the things that are really important to him. Like eating a Penguino (South America’s name for a cream filled chocolate Hostess cupcake) with a penguino (penguin in Spanish). The look of joy on his face in Puerto Deseado, Argentina while eating that sugary, commercially-produced cupcake in the midst of a massive rockhopper penguin colony was priceless!
We even went to the giant rainbow slide in San Salvador, El Salvador just because he saw it on an IG reel! He knows that when he wants to do something, we make it happen.
The trust he has in us to empower him to speak up is something we didn’t really plan on when we started overlanding. While we’d been worldschooling for several years before we started overlanding, being in the car together has brought us together in a special way.
As our son puts it, if we can get through a sinkhole trying to eat our car we can get through anything!
What are some of the cultural experiences you’ve had that have impacted your family?
One of our family’s favorite cultural experiences was learning about alibrijes from the family who created them in the 1900s. We even got to learn painting techniques from the creator’s son, and make our own, too! Our son absolutely loved being able to take what he initially learned from the movie Coco and apply it in real life to a creation from his own mind. And we loved how much he got into it!
We also participated in a Quechuan Shamanic blessing ceremony in Cusco, Peru that was surprisingly touching, even for our son. During the ceremony, the Shaman suggested that we ask something from the gods, but not for ourselves. For someone else or for the good of humanity.
We weren’t really sure if our kiddo would have it in him to ask for something non-material since he was a bit grumpy that day. He surprised us…and told us after that he asked for everyone to have good health in their travels. It never stops surprising us that kids can rise to the challenge set for them more often than not!
One of our first cultural experiences while overlanding was in Mexico, when we enjoyed a Mayan cultural tour in Playa del Carmen. Our guide told us about two brothers who were changed into trees, Chechen and Chaca. One tree causes a rash if you touch it while the other is the antidote, and they always grow near each other.
While we’ve heard various versions of this story throughout our travels, the basic story has stuck with us – even our son – so that he appreciates not just the cultural lore but the reality of plant medicine.
How do you think overlanding has impacted your children’s development and worldview?
Honestly, the fact that our kid has a worldview is pretty impressive. So many kids never leave their home country, let alone visit 30+ countries by the time they’re 12. He’s very interested in why people look and act differently, and similarly, for us…and he’s very interested in etymology.
More often than not, he’ll hear a word in another language and try to make connections with other worlds he knows, and usually wants to discuss where the word came from historically. He thinks about things in a way that’s just so different from other kids, and we love it!
Our son is also very open to making new friends with people who look, act, and talk differently than he does. He’s very open minded, and appreciates the differences in his friends. He’s kept in touch with many kids we’ve met from around the world due to the technology we have access to in this modern age. It’s great!
How do your solo travel experiences differ from traveling with your family?
Brodi traveled solo in her university years and we traveled a lot as a couple before having a child. Those were short term vacations rather than long term travel, though, so it’s just a totally different mindset now. We aren’t in a rush to see and do everything in one place, the way we used to be when we only had a week or two of time off before we returned to “normal”.
The biggest difference between solo and couple travel experiences and our family travel is we’re much less likely to make new travel friends at bars. Friendships often start either online when we realize we’ll be in the same place at the same time and make plans to meet up at a museum or playground, or we click with a random family we meet out and about and stay in touch.
The latter happened with another family we met in Mexico. We ended up seeing them again in Peru, Argentina, Chile, and even spent a couple of months hanging out with them in Buenos Aires!
What are your future travel plans and goals?
We recently sold our beloved 4Runner that took us all through the Americas, just before taking a repositioning cruise ship from Seattle, USA to Sydney, Australia (stopping in Hawaii, French Polynesia, and Fiji along the way). We’re here for three months, overlanding and house sitting our way between Melbourne and Brisbane. We’ll be here through Christmas to enjoy Continent #5 in our 7 Christmases plan.
After that, we’re not entirely sure. We’d love to do some overlanding and house sitting in New Zealand, but we may head up to SE Asia to see some friends. Maybe we’ll even visit Japan for cherry blossom season. What we do know is that we’ll be in Africa and Europe for Christmases 2025 and 2026!
How did you hear about Nomadmania? And what made you join us?
David discovered Nomadmania when looking for a way to track all the places and countries we’ve visited. Before becoming digital nomads, we had a tack board map on our living room wall with pins in each place we’d been, and that had to go when we sold everything. Nomadmania has resources that digitally replace that tack board for us!
How NomadMania was helpful to your travels/journeys?
Nomadmania has a comprehensive way to track travel so we joined and now use it to visualize our journey. Plus, we really like how NomadMania emphasizes sustainable travel and responsible tourism, which aligns with our values.
If you could invite 4 people to an imaginary dinner, anybody from any period in human history, who would you invite and why?’
We’d love to have dinner with Steve Irwin, Leonardo DaVinci, Cleopatra, and Gene Roddenberry. This diverse group promises an engaging evening filled with rich perspectives on leadership, conservation, ethics, and creativity that even our kiddo would likely enjoy!
Steve Irwin, the passionate conservationist known as the “Crocodile Hunter,” would bring his infectious enthusiasm for wildlife and stories from his adventures in the wild while Leonardo da Vinci would contribute his multifaceted genius to spark conversations about creativity and innovation.
Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, would offer unique insights on leadership and diplomacy in a male-dominated world while Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, would inspire discussions about a future of diversity, cooperation, and human potential.
Each of these people has been inspiring in their own right, so enjoying a conversation that engages each of them together would be a true dinner party treat!
An ending question: what is your message to the community/travellers of NomadMania?
Don’t let what ifs hold you back. Whether it’s wondering whether you can still travel adventurously with kids (you can!) or if your kid can still get a decent education (they can!) there are so many reasons to take the travel plunge right now.
Our biggest regret is not leaving sooner because all of our biggest fears were resolved or never even came to be. We missed out on several amazing years of full time travel just because we were too scared to leave our routines (and Brodi’s soul-sucking day job).
