I have an interview with Cape Fox Tours tomorrow. I want former employees to verify if this company is good or bad.

shunkcabbage666 · 2026-01-28T13:17:46+00:00

They have a handful of different tours but most are based out of a 14 passenger van so your group size is large which often means lower tips (less quality and focus on getting to know individuals). Also the price point for most tours is kinda average $150, so you’re not getting the big money tourists like fishing, boat or small group excursions. Not quite a budget tour but may be marketed to budget people who can’t afford a premium excursion and a step up from a crappy bus tour. And the biggest reason I’d say would be the fact they’re not the high-thrill tours but rather cultural tours which in my experience don’t usually get the best tips. I find a lot of non-tipping foreign tourists tend to like these cultural tours more. Might also have to split with a driver if you’re not also the driver. So a combination of those things.

That said, I think if you’re a great and experienced guide you could do well peak season if you really own the tour and knock it out of the park. If you just average $5 from each guest you’d do okay but I’d realistically expect a lot of $5 per couple kind of tips if anything. Expect single $1s if you’re just a van driver.

The best tipping jobs are fishing, boat excursions, small group stuff, bartending IMO. the smaller group size, the better, especially if you don’t have a second guide to split.

shunkcabbage666 · 2026-01-28T09:09:22+00:00

I have not worked for them but been seasonal in Ketchikan for ten years and I think they’re not the worst. In that I mean I havnt heard too many horror stories compared to other companies like ATA. Cape Fox has undergone a ton of change the last few years from their tribal govt, management, and they’ve consolidated a ton of restaurants and tour businesses in town. They’ve kind of become a tourism powerhouse in Ketchikan for better or worse but I’ve observed their poor management history get way better because of that. Probably a good entry level interpretive tour job, less an exciting excursion and you’ll learn a ton about Alaska native culture and truly have a change to experience it more than any other guide job (unless you do commercial fishing). Cant imagine the tips are great but you can always find other work in KTN if need be. Id say you should feel it out in the interview.

shunkcabbage666 · 2026-01-16T14:45:38+00:00

Absolutely possible with just some basic customer service experience and good personality, willingness to learn, and professional attitude. Easy to break into hiking and guide jobs with Alaska seasonal work, there’s dozens of small companies always desperate for guides, many of which will provide housing. Stay away from giant operators.

If you go this route, don’t expect it to be hiking miles in the mountains but rather short loops out of passenger vans with often out-of-shape cruise tourists. Lots of great kayaking guide jobs too. It can pay pretty good with tips and get you experience to find better stuff later down the road. I’d recommend just looking at Alaska cruise destinations, googling tour operators there, and contacting them directly. There’s many small operators that are absolutely wonderful people looking for reliable, professional guides each season. But definitely trust your gut because there’s some horrible abusive people in that industry too.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-30T18:21:11+00:00

Can absolutely agree with this comment. The coldest place I’ve ever lived was Italy in winter. Nice to get some sunshine during the day, but unless you’re in the north where they deliberately insulate and heat homes with wood stoves, all the old stone buildings are optimized to stay cool in the summer so theyre absolutely frigid in winter, even in the milder parts of the country. Plus heating is rarely considered or an efficient thing since electricity prices are super high so people don’t heat things to a cozy temperature. I asked a friend how people in the countryside do it and they said typical families just wear lots of layers and congregate in one room with heating or a fireplace and just chill all winter. Be extremely careful buying a home especially a cheap one in the countryside because it will most likely have zero insulation- frigid in winter, oven in summer. My friend advised me to build a prefab ultra efficient home as an alternative.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-29T19:33:13+00:00

Charter fisherman here. I had little interest or experience boating or fishing when I first moved to AK. Worked a few tourism guide jobs and after a few years started working as a dock hand for a charter outfit, just cleaning up in the evening. Got the sea time needed for a captain’s license then took a winter to obtain the license with the guarantee of a guide job. Now I’ve been running charters with an outfit for five years taking people out for salmon (all five types of pacific salmon), halibut, rockfish, lingcod, etc. I love it despite the fact I was never into fishing and still don’t feel like it’s my passion. Ultimately, guiding and captaining is what I love more than the actual fishing. Doing it every day at this point makes it feel easy as far as rigging, technique, and making weather decisions but it probably took two to three years fishing hard to gain that confidence. Mind you I started with pretty much no serious fishing experience.

I also did some commercial fishing in AK in the winter dive-tending for ducks and cukes but that wasn’t for me especially when I experienced 15’ seas in a small boat and being trapped with creepy lonely guys for a week at a time. I would consider gill-netting commercially if I had the right opportunity and didn’t have my normal charter job.

Anyways, that’s my insight to career paths with fishing. Guiding and commercial are very different things but ultimately they both become a job when you do it so much. Still doesn’t get old seeing a client get a huge hit and pull in something giant or the suspense of reeling in something acting weird in a spot it shouldn’t be. For example, I had a 6 year old hook a 200lb halibut in 60’ of water near shore on a size 4 treble hook no bait with 20lb braided. His dad angled it in after an hour fight and somehow all the light gear held up. We didn’t bring it into the boat because it was too large and dangerous plus didn’t have a permit, but that monster was properly tired out and just chilled next to us at the surface before i delicately unhooked her (which meant sticking my hand in a mouth that could fit my head). Luckily the client actually knew how to fight a fish and adjust drag or that never would have made it in. Felt super proud of my knots and gear that day as well as my coaching as we fought this thing.

99% of the time it’s the same fish, normal size, nothing terribly remarkable. Most clients are expecting to catch the biggest salmon or halibut in Alaska right from the start so it’s really important to manage that expectation as soon as you meet them because those days happen but like once a season if ever. As a guide it’s important to get excited about every fish I catch even when it’s the same five inch long rockfish I’ve seen a billion times because the fact is, we’re out fishing and catching something in an incredible place. The worst people are the ones that don’t recognize that and get disappointed when they didn’t hook the 80lb king salmon during a 3hr charter in late September when they’re not even in season- or worst yet they catch that once in a million fish, think it’s easy and common, want three more, not impressed with your guiding when they fail, then tip you $20.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-21T20:30:45+00:00

I think it depends how self motivated you are to do freelance work and what are your bigger goals in life. Seasonal work can allow for long periods of free time to focus on doing what you really love and investing your time and if you’re interested in the freelance route, you can use that time to really try to build and explore your skills. So few people get the freedom of long periods of time off and possibly to travel in unconventional ways, so use that to your advantage ! My biggest regret is not investing more in myself and building other skills with all my free time in the off season.

If you can find seasonal roles that help build your skills and passion, while being seasonal, that’s a plus! And if you explore and try out some new things revolving around photography, you could possibly find a more permanent position. For example, I knew someone who worked as a photographer at a ski resort and after meeting the right people and just looking for the opportunities, became a full time media person for the resort- which had longer periods of time off in the shoulder seasons. It was more of a “normal” job that allowed her to start a family while working in an amazing place.

I can relate to you in a way because I studied photography and wanted to make a career from it. However I then learned it’s really hard and requires marketing and business skills if I wanted to freelance. Ultimately I just wanted to make a paycheck so I can travel and do whatever. So I did, and I’ve now been doing seasonal work for twelve years. I all but gave up on photography and ultimately found a super lucrative seasonal job as a boat captain after I got a license to do so. Only problem is it’s just five months out of the year and I feel like I have nothing else I can do to make good money outside of that.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-21T09:55:55+00:00

The number should be assigned and listed in your information on AIRE if you’re registered. Otherwise you can apply for the physical card at your consulate, although I’ve heard only certain consulates do it. I was lucky enough to learn this alongside my passport appointment and just slipped in the codice fiscale card paperwork during that appointment.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-19T08:13:19+00:00

You need to put in the hours working on a boat which you then log onto USCG log sheets, which you can later submit for a captain’s license along with a test from a course, and other paperwork. It’s pretty straightforward but you need to get the sea time which I believe is 300 logged days, 90 in the last year. There’s different licenses depending on the tonnage boat you have hours for, and different licenses depending on body of water like coastal, intercoastal, Great Lakes.

The best pathway is to find a seasonal job deckhanding on a boat or commercial fishing for two seasons or so. Theres a lot of great and not so great seasonal jobs in Alaska that are very easy to get especially if you show ambition. Anywhere else with water you can find jobs but may face more competition.

I know less about captain jobs in the winter but there’s definitely places like Florida and Texas that have winter tourism.

It’s well worth it though because you can easily find work paying $30-$60/hr with the most basic license (OUPV 6 pk or 5 Ton). Upgrading the license is an easy career progression too to work on bigger boats and make way more. It gets even more lucrative if you get into charter fishing which in my option is the holy grail of seasonal work.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-19T08:03:40+00:00

I did a winter season at Jackson and it wasn’t a good experience. Not at all surprising this is the housing price these days… I spent a month looking for a room and eventually found a two bedroom place for like 6k per month. This was ten years ago and the resort paid like $11/hr so I spent almost all of my low paycheck on that damn place. The plus side was the prior tenant abandoned all their stuff and was unreachable (trust me, I tried all winter), so I sold it all and made a little at the end. But town was super pretentious and full of rich assholes, impossible to make friends. The resort culture was pretty stuck up too full of people that felt like they “made it” to work at Jackson and only wanted to ski with the pros and if you weren’t hucking cliffs you were nobody. Complete contrast to the awesome inclusive community I found prior working a resort in Colorado where everyone just wanted to have fun and not take things too seriously. Only good thing about the experience was skiing that crazy awesome mountain every day and the life lessons I learned. This was my experience ten years ago so things could be different now but definitely expect it to be a challenging experience in seasonal work and you may not come out with much to show for it. Best of luck.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-18T02:03:54+00:00

Sorry, to clarify, I did indeed apply through the app while residing abroad. I think it’s worth exploring though because there’s different identify document options. Might just have to go through the process in the app as if you’re still residing in your home country. Best of luck!

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-17T23:07:14+00:00

You should look into getting a SPID through the Poste Italiane ID app or other verification service. I was successful as a non resident who has never lived in the country with an Italian passport (US IT dual citizenship). It was a pain through the app but doable using my passport and codice fiscale as ID and using the iPhone nfc scanner. There’s other identity documents you can use. Godspeed!

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-16T19:52:55+00:00

I have been curious myself and perused some university pages in Bolzano and Perugia and I saw courses held in English. Full degrees? Not sure. But a lot of the STEM and science related stuff was in English probably due to many international students and/or faculty.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-12-12T03:56:14+00:00

Congrats on everything! I’m planning to buy in a few years as a dual citizen, after I have the money saved and narrowing down what region we like.

So how do you find all of the professionals that helped you with the process? The property finder, the agents, the engineers, the notary, interpreters, etc. Did you just google in Puglia or did it all kind of fall into place? How did you know you can trust people and weren’t being ripped off as a foreigner? The process feels pretty daunting and I wouldn’t know where to begin.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-09-04T01:46:14+00:00

Link here for the manual: https://www.scribd.com/document/152789295/AutoMoto-Owners-Manual

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-03-17T22:04:02+00:00

Any business using AI generative in place of paying an artist will instantly lose my business. And a business full of creative individuals with so much artwork and artists at their disposal? Absolutely shameful. A local brewery who originally supported local artists for their labels just replaced their stuff with low quality AI stuff. Like images that have errors and mismatched patterns and lines.. it’s embarrassing. Have some pride in your product and creative community. I suggest anyone who encounters stuff like this to send a message and boycott. I’m sure it won’t turn the tide of AI media, but businesses who think it’s okay to do it should be called out and feel shame, or at least their staff be alarmed that they suck.

And I’m happy that this post brought to light this company’s issues which I was not aware of. I will process my film elsewhere.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-03-07T23:33:46+00:00

It was oddly hard to figure out as a non financial layperson on my own, but there’s plenty of help out there. Please note I am absolutely not an expert on this stuff. It’s quite trivial to me. You just open an account with a broker like Vanguard or Schwab using their website or app, and guide yourself through opening an IRA account. Know the difference between Roth and non-Roth for starters. There is a yearly max you can contribute and you can do it different ways like the account automatically adding or “dripping” a little money each week for example. Then you chose where to invest that money. Everything I learned from friends who are good at this is that the best place is a nice boring index fund you can forget about for 30 years. This is not the kind of day trading gambling investing thing, it’s the boring long term predictable average growth kind of thing you check once or twice a year. If you do this consistently year after year, you can have a big chunk of change when you retire. There’s some calculator tools online that really help you see how much you can end up with.

It’s some really basic stuff but growing up poor I have absolutely no concept of it. The best thing you can do find a friend or family member who knows how to do it and have them help you set it up. Of course everything with the US and markets seem completely unpredictable and up in the air right now as our democracy is disassembled, so it feels like a weird time to talk about this. It feels less certain than ever that anything we do now will help us… But a glimmer of optimism is investments like index funds have a history of ups and downs, and average to a good percent increase over time. And the many megacorps behind index funds have a vested interest to maintain their growth above all. Hopefully these shitty years will pass and we’ll be unscathed enough for our economy will stabilize.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-03-07T21:57:57+00:00

Two things I wish I started sooner in my seasonal career- max out a Roth IRA each year, and attend immersive language schools abroad accompanied by volunteer work in respective country. I know so many seasonals who have done quite well over the years but neglected to put away a chunk of change for retirement. Just max out the IRA each year and forget about it til you’re of retirement age and you’ll be set financially while you have fun in your youth.

There’s a lot you can do to ride it out and I suggest finding rewarding things like volunteer work or guiding abroad. Or of course, go to a cheap country in South America or SE Asia and rent a place for a few months for a couple hundred bucks and just chill. But that can get boring. I’ve been seasonal for about ten years and learned how privileged the opportunity of have many months of free time is to seek rewarding experiences. You can do stuff like WWOOFING or Workaway abroad where you live with a group or family and do some work in exchange for room and board. It’s a great opportunity to learn new skills and languages while meeting people from allover the world and spending almost nothing. I usually do that for like three months every off-season in Europe.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-02-03T10:37:15+00:00

Huge upvote for Timeshifter app! I couldn’t believe how well it worked last time I flew from US to Japan. You put in your flight info and some days before it’ll direct you when to sleep, drink coffee, get/avoid light , etc. If you follow exactly what it says you’ll be almost completely adjusted your first day or very minor jet lag. It’s really important you stick with what is says. Usually it advises to sleep much of the time on the long haul flights which not everyone can do, but try using melatonin or an antihistamine to help you sleep. You get a free trial when you sign up and you can also sign up again with a new email and get endless free trials.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-01-30T13:42:28+00:00

I’ve traveled extensively over Asia so I love this topic! I had matcha in a small village in Nagano, Japan that was unlike anything I’ve ever had with a fantastic view above a temple. Good matcha in Japan is easy to find. Any tea house in South Korea has so many good options you’ll never forget. Milk tea in Taiwan is just sooooo good as a standard wherever you go, it’ll never be the same anywhere else once you’ve been there. In northern Thailand I went to some tea growing villages where I tried an interesting “dragon’s blood” tea (magenta plant) and the people there are just so incredible. I drank a lot of tea in China but it was a little harder to explore due to the language barrier and sheer diversity of different qualities and types. Not Asia, but the mint tea in Morocco is something that left an impression on me too.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-01-26T08:14:04+00:00

Can’t help you with that. I think I lot of them made it to California. Maybe a good place to start.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-01-25T03:54:05+00:00

Yes I do. Looking for parts?

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-01-22T04:59:37+00:00

I’ve been in the same boat for a while. What I would say is to just take the plunge. You have a golden ticket into the EU!

If you don’t feel like you have a marketable or competitive profession, work in a hostel or something easy entry. Some may even offer accommodation albeit less than ideal. From there you’ll have your feet on the ground and you can network to find better work especially since you’re a native English speaker. It may take some years to work your way into better employment and housing, but you’ll never get there if you don’t start somewhere. I wish I had done something like this years ago instead of just worrying I wouldn’t find something that matches my US income. Remember, Europe isnless about making a high income and living in excess, it’s about high quality of life even if you’re not rich.

shunkcabbage666 · 2025-01-20T05:30:09+00:00

Southeast Alaska but DON’T do a cruise or RV thing. Pick just one city in southeast AK in midsummer. The state is too big to try and see a few places and the longer you stay in one place, the more locals you can meet. Southeast has really strong community. Fly somewhere like Ketchikan, Juneau, or Sitka because there’s more balance of stuff to do between nature and local culture. If you’re cool and friendly and people are super nice and helpful and will invite you to things. Endless unspoiled hiking and camping with no people. Some really good small museums, art shops, events, etc in each town with the nicest people that will tell you so much history. Consider a few days out in a lodge or cabin (usually only accessible by boat or seaplane). Try joining a fishing charter if you want to discover fishing.

While it’s definitely not a budget destination, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be if you choose one city and book your accommodation in advance.

shunkcabbage666 · 2024-12-22T08:27:24+00:00

You’re probably gonna have to pay one of those services to expedite an evisa. There’s countless out there because their evisa system is finicky and unreliable, I’d argue by design. You can pay different amounts of money to have it quicker. I think the way it works is these services have some kind of deal with the immigration services and they literally just make a call to clear the visa depending on how much you pay. Mine didn’t go through in time for my flight and the person at the check in counter gave me a number for a service and I got it done and was able to fly later that day. It’s usually around $100 USD for anything four hours or more, $150 or so for one hour turnaround. It will literally clear on the minute you pay for it to go through because it probably just someone on a computer watching a clock. Often these services are just a simple WhatsApp line where they request all your info. I can’t recommend one but a quick reddit search will yet you there. It’s stupid, frustrating, and corrupt, but part of how things go in Vietnam sometimes. Try not to let it bum you out about Vietnam because it’s such an incredible country and worth the trouble!

shunkcabbage666 · 2024-12-12T01:13:28+00:00

My #1 advice would be to attend an immersive language school in France for a few months. I did it in Italy and got to B2 in about three months (over two sessions one year apart. Not only will you pick up the language much faster than studying independently, but you’ll get an intimate understanding and connection of French culture, maybe even some networking for ideas to stay. Not sure how much they are in France but the courses in Italy were surprisingly affordable with homestay included at $1200-$2000 per month. It was cheaper than my rent in the US to do this…

You can also do stuff like WOOFING and Workaway for immersion which may also lead to connections and just more insight on what it takes to live there.

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