Huntington’s vanlife hashtag was a joking reference to Tupac’s “thug life” tattoo. “You know, it’s not thug life—it's van life!” he told me. Six years later, more than 1.2 million Instagram posts have been tagged #vanlife.

Logan Watts, founder of Bikepacking.com, says the Swallows’ journeys have resonated with his site’s readers because, rather than pedaling abroad, they’re tackling places that seem within reach. After all, the allure of dropping out of mainstream existence spawned the entire vanlife movement—and bikepacking is more approach­able than coughing up twenty grand for a fully equipped vehicle.

In 2011, Foster Huntington created the #vanlife Instagram hashtag, and unexpectedly spawned hundreds of thousands of posts and a family of eager followers.

While spending the "winter" hitchhiking and backpacking around the islands, I discovered that going on foot and sleeping under the stars in the tropics is often much preferable to the vanlife I knew so well.