Since you know Spanish: Buenos Aires & CDMX. Medellín is also popular for DNs but I wasn’t a fan and don’t know if you’ll get much personal growth.

Honorable mention for Brazil (Rio is more fun but Sao Paolo is safer); depending on how good your Spanish is you might be able to pick up some Portuguese quite quickly.

It’s still South America as in you should be careful about phone snatchings, but it’s on the safer side for sure and violet crime is not an issue in Miraflores & Barranco.

I was there in July & August. Lima, Cusco, and Arequipa are all known to be fine. Most of the north is also fine. There was a protest when I was in Cusco but it was not a big deal. Nobody expects it to be as bad as it was earlier. The only place I heard to to exercise some caution is Puno, but it’s more of a logistical concern than a safety one.

I did a lot of little trips on my own but my first big one was backpacking Southeast Asia for 3 months on my own. I did it after college so kind of just jumped right into the big-time solo travel world.

As someone with social anxiety myself, here are my thoughts:

• You don’t have to start big. I tell my friends who are nervous about solo travel to start small - go on a day trip near your hometown by yourself, then maybe a weekend trip, and then maybe a domestic trip before diving into an international backpacking trip if that would make you feel better.
• You don’t have to be social! I alternate between hostels and airbnbs. I usually avoid party hostels because that’s just too much. Even at hostels, sometimes I’ll pull the curtain and just not talk to anyone. I’m not saying hostels aren’t tough for us socially anxious people but there’s ways around it.
• One of the best “cures” for my social anxiety was traveling solo. Building the confidence to interact with different types of people and travel on my own has helped me to fight my social anxiety at home. I am so so so thankful that I discovered it. And I did it just by doing it. That first trip I had some REALLY hard days, and I still have them, but the impact on my overall improved quality of life is tremendous.

I don’t think you’re going to find anyone who had overstayed because people don’t mess around with Schengen (just as they wouldn’t mess around in the US).

Maybe you can source some horror stories from like r/travel or something, I think most people on this sub know the correct limits when it comes to these things.

And as everyone else has already said I would absolutely not risk this for an extended vacation. This isn’t SEA or Argentina. Lots of other non-Schengen places you can go to.

Idk if the really big island is in Argentina but when I was in Argentina I met more than one Argentinian through the DN community that did something similar - they would spend summers traveling around Patagonia end winters up in the northern parts of Argentina. Seemed pretty awesome to me.

But yeah even if it’s just on an island a nomad is a nomad 🤷🏽‍♀️

I mean i just downvoted you not because I have a political agenda but you seem to be weirdly rude/aggressive about it and I’ve enjoyed this sub being one of the more civil ones I participate in

FYI I did a bunch of research on the Blue Zones (I got sucked into a rabbit hole) and the community-oriented nature of these communities contributes just as much to if not more than the food. So the diets here aren’t necessarily better than reasonable diets anywhere else.

I also remember reading about a tight knit Italian community in Pennsylvania that ate a standard (read: horrible) American diet but were significantly healthier, and once they weren’t as isolated anymore, their health metrics became the same as everyone else.

I am not sure about the waste water thing, I’ve never looked into that, but from my research on Japan so far, apartments seem less expensive than or maybe just around the prices I’ve seen in Spain & Portugal. So lower end of EU prices. I’ve heard that groceries are cheap in Japan but eating out can be around Western Europe prices. But I have not been yet, I’ve just been researching.

I asked this question a bit ago and the best answer I got was Japan. I wasn’t worried about clean air but if you’re away from the cities or even on an island like Okinawa that should do it. Food is healthy and affordable and it’s not in the tropics so none of those illnesses.

I have to agree with others here, sorry this isn’t a constructive take but I’m not buying some of these numbers. For instance Nepal is one of the cheapest places in the world but it’s far down the list and it’s right next to Jordan, which I found to be a bit expensive (as in, comparable to EU). Portugal is also known to be cheaper than Spain, and Ethiopia much cheaper than both, in my experiences (and also of people I know in the nomad community). Maybe the lifestyle and location variables are screwing with it… I also think there’s a difference between a business expat and a DN; with expat assignments they really spend a ton more than they should in developing countries.

Also there is a similar service to this called NomadList; they break it down by city and also include a bunch of other really helpful data around safety, internet speeds, English literacy, and a ton of other data points.

Also as an aside, your website has a lot of ads; as someone who loves travel blogs I would be so annoyed and exit immediately.