In the months leading up to our travels in South Africa, our research was getting a little discouraging on the transport front. It seemed that everybody, absolutely everybody, was insisting that we really really needed to rent a car in South Africa.

We've written before about the virtues we see in traveling light. Well, lately we've been taking that to an extreme. As hard as it is for me to write it, since we've so long described ourselves as backpackers... we will probably never travel with anything as big as a backpack again.

Welcome back for the final installment of the Golden Hedgehog Awards for Lodging, wherein we recognize the finest and most spectacularly wonderful places we stayed on our round-the-world trip! After an unintentional delay of more than a year, it's finally time to unveil our grand-prize winner!

Coming home after an around-the-world trip can be daunting. Is it as daunting as selling everything you own, saving like crazy, and then throwing caution to the wind and stepping on a plane with one-way tickets? Probably not. But your entry back home should require some thought before you leave.

If you adhere to no other tip on this page, adhere to this one. Keep an open mind. Be open to not knowing every place you want to go and the day you want to get there. Be open to not going to every place you think you will go. Be open to not planning every country, every city, every village, every stop before your trip.