Financial Updates: Central (and some of South) America

Time to share our last batch of country expenditure averages! Mostly, Central America was very cheap, and the last few countries in South America were pretty easy on the wallet as well. We left off last time with Peru, so here goes with…

Ecuador: $78.50/day. Not bad at all, though our average was definitely lowered by Andy spending 24 hours in bed with food poisoning in Quito, which meant we had to skip a possibly expensive birding excursion…and, of course, we didn’t go to the Galapagos, which would have blown our budget sky-high. Bus quality was not the highest in Ecuador, but hotel rooms (in the $15-$25 range with private bath) were very decent, and both street food and restaurant food was cheap.

Colombia: $56/day without flight to Panama; $83/day with. Our flight from Colombia to Panama was more expensive than we anticipated—about $250 each with taxes, etc., and we weren’t sure which country to count it against, so in the end we just split it between Colombia and Panama. But even with the flight, Colombia ended up cheaper on paper than we’d anticipated. It doesn’t feel so cheap when you’re there! But Andy and I have noticed that sometimes in countries that seem expensive to us, we compensate by eating out less and doing fewer packaged tours, so it ends up being cheap.

Anyway, accommodation ranged from $10 a night in Santa Marta to $40 a night in Cartagena; and we recommend that you visit Bogota on a Tuesday (half-price movie night) and Wednesday (half-price day at the Salt Cathedral) and stay at the Hostal Platypus (where we got a whole apartment with kitchen for $25 a night) in the old city.

Panama: $98/day without flight from Colombia; $144/day with flight. Yeah, Panama, not so cheap, mainly because excursions are really expensive. And that’s because you usually end up hiring a private guide to take you around. But our trip would not have been the same without birding at Pipeline Road, the train trip along the Panama Canal, and our tour of the Gatun Locks—all worth the money. Hotel room with bath was $20 a night, and restaurants were affordable enough.

Costa Rica: $50/day. This is really skewed, because we only spent two days in CR, and did no excursions except for one trip to the beach (which cost us $13 because it was a national park—we didn’t know about the free beach up the road). We avoided restaurants and stayed in the very cheapest rooms we could find ($20 a night). So that average is really just for rooms, bus, and groceries…if you take a real trip to Costa Rica, expect to pay a lot more (as we did in 2007!).

Nicaragua: $60/day. Nicaragua is the poorest country in Latin America, and definitely one of the cheapest to be a tourist in. We never paid more than $12 a night for a room (but don’t expect high quality at those prices), and tours and Internet were very affordable. We found food to be a little expensive compared to everything else, but, clearly, we got by.

El Salvador: $60/day. El Salvador is definitely wealthier than Nicaragua, but somehow we ended up spending the same amount of money there. Probably because, once again, we did no packaged tours, but just figured out the bus system and went places on our own. Also managed to hit the capital on half-price movie night (it’s Wednesdays in ES). Food is pretty cheap (and tasty!), and our $20/night room in San Salvador was decent. El Salvador is high value.

Honduras: $64/day. We only spent one night in Honduras, so this is pretty skewed, but we hear it’s a pretty cheap country to travel in overall. We stayed in Copan, near the big Mayan ruins ($10 a night for hotel room with bath—cheap; $15 each to visit the ruins—kind of expensive, but very nice ruins). I wouldn’t mind going back sometime and exploring when it’s more stable politically.

Guatemala: $57/day. I think that this makes Guatemala officially the cheapest country we spent any real length of time in. Lodging was around $10 a night (and nicer than the rooms in Nicaragua), and some excursions were quite cheap ($3 each to climb Pacaya Volcano). We thought restaurants were overpriced in some places (like touristy Antigua), so we just ate street food or made sandwiches or cooked. Annoyingly, Guatemala practices “tourist pricing” on some boat and bus routes, meaning that foreigners officially have to pay three times the rate that the locals pay for the same transportation.

Belize: $124/day, strongly skewed by SCUBA diving. (It would have been $78/day without the dives.) Basically, diving is expensive, but the rest of Belize—even touristy Caye Caulker Island—doesn’t have to be. Our rooms ranged from $12.50 to $25 a night, bus transport wasn’t too bad, and with a little sleuthing, we managed to find cheap places to eat out in most towns. The ATM caving tour was a little expensive ($75 per person) but totally worth it. And diving off the Cayes was quite expensive, but also worth it. (There is apparently much cheaper diving off the Bay Islands in Honduras—maybe next time!)

We’ll do another financial update soon, in which we calculate our average daily expenditure for the whole South and Central American trip, working in extra costs like flights, insurance, and camera repair and replacement that we didn’t count against any one country. Until then, adios!

Obsessed: Central America (and the rest of South America)!

If you check out the labels, or tags, on this blog, you will see that Andy has written 52 entries so far and I have only done 45. Maybe that’s because he writes all the obsessions and finance posts. Well, no more—it’s my turn to tell you with what things the countries we visited on the last leg of our trip were obsessed!

South America:

Peru – Coca leaves. Old men chewing them, breakfaster-eaters brewing them…the dried leaves of the coca plant (which, after a whole lot of processing, can become cocaine) are everywhere in Peru (and Bolivia) and illegal to grow or possess in most other South American countries. In their “natural” state, they’re supposed to be stimulating and help fight altitude sickness. I did try a cup of coca tea one morning—not bad, it tasted like green tea, but it had no noticeable effects on me.

Ecuador – The Galapagos. Based on the number of posters you see at travel agencies for Galapagos trips, you’d think that Ecuador has nothing else cool to visit. That is definitely not true—we didn’t make it to the Galapagos, and Ecuador was still one of my favorite countries!

Colombia – Cheese bread! Or maybe that’s just my obsession when in Colombia. Still, there were many different varieties, and you could find it just about anywhere. There were even people baking it in a hut in the middle of Tayrona National Park!

Central America:

Panama – The United States. With US dollars, English-speakers, and Dairy Queens galore, Panama felt more like America than anywhere else we went on the trip. The canal may be in their hands now, but let’s just say that our cultural presence is still felt.

Costa Rica – Not being like the rest of Central America. The government? Stable. The volcanoes? Quiet. The hotels? Expensive. The public buses? Not school buses, and definitely not blasting salsa music, either. Does this place even still qualify as part of Central America?

Nicaragua – The Virgin Mary. Nicaraguans actually invented a whole new holiday that consists of carrying a giant doll of Maria around town and lining up to sing songs to her. Need we say more?

El Salvador – Malls. San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, has more fancy shopping malls than we have ever seen before in one place. We have no idea how they all stay in business, because the last time we checked, El Salvador wasn’t such a big country, it’s populace wasn’t exactly the richest in the world, and it didn’t have a whole lot of tourists! Still trying to figure this one out…

Guatemala – Volcanoes. They’re everywhere, and they’re erupting RIGHT NOW.

Honduras – Throwing trash out the window of a moving bus (arrrgh!). OK, that’s kind of unfair—I think that every country in Central America is obsessed with doing this. It gave me and Andy little strokes each time we saw it happen (and, even worse, when we saw people encouraging their young children to treat the road like it was a garbage can). But I feel like people did it even more than usual on the buses we took across southern Honduras, and I can’t really think of anything else that country seemed obsessed with (no one was talking about the whole election/coup thing in the more rural areas where we were), so Honduras gets the rap for this one.

Belize – Cruise ships. Apparently, cruise ships have started docking in Belize, and no one can decide whether this is good or bad for the country. Belize City seems pro, as it has set up a whole tourist village in which to sell expensive souvenirs to cruisers, while the people who run the awesome ATM caving tour in the west of the country are con, since they think that cruise excursions there would ruin the delicate artifacts in the cave. The folks at the jaguar reserve seemed conflicted—they’d like the extra revenues, but will more people disturb the jaguars? No, because there aren’t actually any jaguars in the part of the park where people can go!

That’s it for obsessions! If you’ve been to any of these countries, what do you think of our choices?

El Salvador: Not the savior of our waistlines

El Salvador is such a small country, and it has been so heavily influenced by American fast food, that it was hard to believe that it has maintained such a diversity of food. We ate quite well there as we simultaneously had to eat the local food and all the food we missed from the US.

As we were getting on the bus as soon as we got into Ecuador, I grabbed one of these tostada things. I ask my typical question (Does it have cheese?) and the woman said no, so I bought it. It was a tostada (really a fried tortilla) with yucca, cabbage, tomato, and some cream. They really like cream in El Salvador and serve it with several dishes.
Our first night there we got in late and didn't know how safe our neighborhood was (it turned out to be quite safe), so we went to the closest place we could find, which was Wendy's. I love Wendy's, but at least in part for the dollar menu, which didn't seem to exist. After walking through the drive-thru to see if that menu was different than inside, the man behind the counter came and got us and admitted that they have some off-menu items. This is common in South and Central America--they rarely tell you on the menu everything that they have. In any case, we got some bacon burgers (hold the cheese), fries and Frosties, making for a very tasty and not completely Salvadorian dinner.
The most popular food in El Salvador is called the pupusa, which is a thick tortilla with fillings inside. Traditionally, they have beans, cheese, pork, or any combination of the three. You can get them everywhere and they range in price from about 20 cents to a dollar depending on size and quality. Here are some 20 cent ones being baked on a traditional griddle on the street.
A traditional plate of pupusas might look like this, accompanied by a sweet plantain (which we love and bought several of by themselves) and a pickled cabbage salad that is not too bad.
We discovered that El Salvador loves ice cream and has tons of local chains. Several of these chains are 2x1, meaning that everything is two-for-one. Even better, one of the chains called Sarita was having a free scoop deal with the purchase of any waffle cone. So, everyday for three days we went and had waffle cones with two scoops for 85 cents each. The last day we were there, I had two.
Also popular in El Salvador are donuts. Donuts and ice cream. Two of my favorite things. The most popular place is Mister Donut, which has really good donuts. They serve a lot of other food (ala Tim Horton's) which looks bad, but actually seemed more popular than the donuts. Also of note is that the cinnamon rolls and apple fritters were much cheaper than the donuts, despite being better. We took advantage of this by eating some every morning.
Here are two of the donuts. A dulce de leche glazed cream filled on the left and an apple fritter on the right. I love apple fritters and this one lived up to everything that an apple fritter should be.
The local brand of yogurt is called YES. Tara found the novel flavor of grape. I assured her that she would hate it because she hates artificial grape flavoring. Against my advice, she bought it and took it to the movie theater with us. This is clearly taken before she tried it because then her smile changed to disgust.
In the market of San Salvador, she located some horchata, which she had been seeking for some time. Horchata, for those who don't know, is a sweet rice milk drink with cinnamon that is quite good.
In the same market, I opted for the brightest colored drink that I could find. Had it been dark out, it would have glowed. It turned out to be chicle, which is much like bubble gum. Not my favorite, but it was drinkable. And pink.
We met the cousin of an El Salvadorian friend from New York, who took us to a place called Abbi's Pupuseria. It was amazing. Best food in a long time. Here are some of the pupusas with more food in the background and more was brought later. Thanks to Ronald for taking us!
Ice cream vendors on the street are common, but this one had fun bowl shaped cones, so I got a sundae with strawberry and coconut ice cream and strawberry syrup. It won't win any taste awards, but pretty good for 50 cents on a sunny day. We need more people in the US who walk around with coolers of ice cream for sale.
They don't have a ton of empanadas in El Salvador, but in Suchitoto we found these cute vegetable filled empanadas that are then fried. They were very good. Tara also has a fried potato in that bag, which was not bad, but was literally just a whole potato that had been fried.
This is a "plato tipico", consisting of avocado, some local salty cheese that Tara says is like ricotta, and casamiento. Casamiento is a mix of beans, rice, and spices. It doesn't sound that exciting, but it is amazing if done well. Really, really good. I don't know why it doesn't exist in other countries.
The fruit and milk shake is a staple in Central and South America. This one was banana and they were nice enough to add cinnamon. Strangely, El Salvador has a different word than anywhere else for a banana.
These are some local sausages, served with casamiento and the cheese. The sausages tasted like normal sausage, but are made in this fun round shape. They could string them like Christmas ornaments.
Here is Tara with a flavor of YES yogurt that she really liked: aloe vera. I have to assume that it tasted like mosturizer, and that it made her esophagus smooth and supple.
That's it for El Salvador and its foods. A good mix of traditional and American. We really enjoyed eating the food and probably gained a few pounds. Thanks, El Salvador!

A little bit of everything: El Salvador

El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, but we were surprised at what an excellent variety of experiences it had to offer. It's got beaches, volcanoes, Mayan ruins, cute villages and modern city life, and unique, delicious food...basically, everything else you find in other Central American countries condensed into one small area, and I am surprised that tourists have not really caught on to this yet! We were there for three days, but I think that we could easily have stayed a week or longer and not run out of new places to visit...and I can't say that for everywhere. (Also, El Salvador--like Panama and Ecuador--is on the US dollar, making dealing with money incredibly easy.)

Because the country is small, we based ourselves in the capital of San Salvador and took day trips to places of interest. San Salvador has more malls than we have ever seen in one city before, and the one we stayed near was Metrocentro, which is the largest mall in Central America. What's kind of amusing is that after wandering through it for a while you feel like you are seeing the same 10 stores over and over again: Metrocentro must have at least four Mr. Donuts, for example, but that's OK because we love Mister Donut (see Andy's forthcoming food post for more details).

Anyway, our hostel owners also have a beach house, and on our first full day in town, the husband happened to be driving out there to do some maintenance. He took us along and we got to relax on a lovely, nearly deserted beach in the far western part of the country. The Pacific ate my goggles, but otherwise it was a very pleasant outing.

There was even wildlife to spot near the beach. Like these colorful blue-tailed lizards...
...and a whole slew of turkey vultures on fenceposts! Andy got this great close-up of one.

That night, we went to (where else?) the mall! Which had a cinema, and it just so happened to be half-price Wednesday, so we saw that worldwide blockbuster, "New Moon," for $2 apiece. We both agreed that "Twilight" (which we saw on a tour bus in Peru) was better.

On our second day in the country, Andy and I mastered the city and regional bus systems to get ourselves out to our next destination. All ex-American school buses, by the way. Smoking is banned on these buses (yay!)...but apparently so is ice cream (boo).

Our destination was the Mayan ruins of Joya de Ceren, aka the "Pompei of El Salvador." These ruins, preserved by a volcanic eruption in the 600s AD, are the only surviving example of everyday Mayan dwellings (rather than the great temples and public buildings you find elsewhere). Also, they are the southernmost Mayan ruins, marking the far reach of the Mayan empire.

Here you can see an average Mayan's dormitory--the raised platforms on the left were beds. Each family dwelling consisted of three structures: a dormitory, a kitchen, and a "bodega" (which apparently does not mean little shop, but cellar, or storage area).
And here is the back of the shaman's temple. The shaman had a living space and a working space with lots of nooks for his potions and such.

Joya de Ceren is a small site, and it only took us about half an hour to see. So we hopped back on the bus and were back in San Salvador by lunchtime. Easy!

We took this opportunity to visit the old city center, which is a loud, crowded place filled with street stalls and bus fumes. Much of the old architecture has been destroyed by successive earthquakes, but the churches are still nice to look at. I think that this one is the Sacred Heart of Jesus church, probably the fanciest one downtown.
A tree up in the main plaza of San Salvador. The season is definitely getting underway down here...we heard a lot of Christmas songs (in Spanish, of course) playing over the sound system at (where else?) the mall.

That afternoon, after much hunting for the correct city bus, we visited a park high above the city where the "Puerta del Diablo" (Devil's Door) offers great, if slightly smog-hindered, views of a good chunk of the country.
And that night, we visited another neighborhood high above the city to eat amazing pupusas with our Salvadorean hero, Ronald, the cousin of our New York friend Julia, who had never met us before but nevertheless picked us up at our hostel to take us to a traditional dinner and city tour--how awesome is that!

Anyway, at Pupuseria Abbi, the diners next to us were serenaded by a full-on mariachi band. Apparently, many such bands rove the restaurants at night to play to paying customers. It was the first time we had seen this in our travels, reminding us of how we creep ever closer to Mexico.

Our final day in El Salvador was spent mostly in Suchitoto, a village known for its colonial architecture and proximity to a beautiful lake and waterfalls.

The town itself was a little sleepier than we'd expected, but it did have a nice main square and church.
We hiked out to the Los Tercios waterfall, which falls over these crazy geometric rocks. The waterfall was not the biggest waterfall ever, but fun to see nevertheless.

And right near the waterfall was an incredible mirador looking out over the lake. One of the more beautiful and peaceful vistas I have seen on our whole trip.
In closing, if you have a week or 10 days or so and are thinking of taking a Central American vacation, I highly recommend El Salvador. There's plenty to see, it's not too expensive, the people are very friendly, the food is amazing, and you don't have to shlep around a lot on long bus rides. Put it on your itinerary!