Couple Quit Their Jobs to Travel The World, Now They Scrub Toilets For Food (Photos)

Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger quit their jobs to travel the world. Now they've been forced to scrub toilets to make ends meet.

Dropping everything to travel the world might sound like a far off dream to some — but not for Stevo Dirnberger and Chanel Cartell.


The couple runs the blog How Far From Home, where they hold up signs that read how far they are in kilometers from their home in Cape Town, South Africa.

They quit their jobs in advertising to travel for a year — and now they're beginning to understand what a serious commitment that really was.

In order to survive during their travels, they have taken on menial jobs like scrubbing toilets, cleaning glasses, and chopping wood to make their dream a reality, according to a recent blog post by Cartell.

"So far, I think we've tallied 135 toilets scrubbed, 250 kilos of cow dung spread, two tons of rocks shoveled, 60 meters of pathway laid, 57 beds made, and I cannot even remember how many wine glasses we've polished," she wrote.

They receive these jobs through a program called Workaway, in which travellers can work in exchange for food.

It seems wherever they go, manual labour follows them. But all this physical work doesn't mean they're in great shape or eating fresh vegetables.

"I am not at my fittest, slimmest, or physically healthiest. We eat jam on crackers most days, get roughly five hours of sleep per night, and lug our extremely heavy bags through cobbled streets at 1 a.m., trying to find our accommodation," Cartell wrote, noting that bus travel is not a part of their extremely tight budget.

So who wants to travel the world?