From Rupees to Rupiah: Financing Asia

All through our travels, people told us how cheap Asia would be...and, looking forward to bringing down our average daily budget, we hoped that they were right. Luckily, they were!

Here are the numbers by country. In case you forgot how we do this, these numbers are for two people, including visa costs and all costs on the ground (and in the air if we took internal flights). Sometimes we also include the cost of a flight into the country if that was the only way to get there.

India: $53 per day. Visas cost $74 each at the embassy in Istanbul. India is one of the cheapest countries we've been to, so staying there for five weeks did wonders for our financial (if not gastrointestinal) health. Hotel rooms ranged from $10-$25 depending on level of comfort (except in Mumbai, where it's hard to find a double for less than $50); restaurant meals could usually be had for a buck or two, and street food for pennies; and train transport in sleeper class cost less than a hotel. Not getting ripped off on cabs and tourist excursions required some negotiating.

Sri Lanka: $80 per day (including flight from Chennai, India, which costs about $120 per ticket; $53 per day without flight). No visa fees. Sri Lanka's hotels and food were a little more expensive than India's, but it made up for it with what is possibly the world's cheapest public transport on a $-per-hour basis. If you plan to visit more than two historic sites in the "Cultural Triangle" area, getting a pass can save you $25 or more.

Malaysia: $47 per day. No visas. Some travelers complain about Malaysia being pricey, but as it turns out, the only traveler item that is really expensive in (Muslim-majority) Malaysia is beer! As long as you don't drink much, the country is terrific value, especially considering how developed it is. Air-con double rooms with shared (but very clean, hot-water) bathrooms cost $10-$15, and delicious, cheap street food abounds. Transport is a little pricier than some Asian countries, but you usually get comfortable, AC buses on smooth roads. We stuck to the peninsula this time and didn't do any fancy tourist excursions, but our memories of our previous trip to Borneo are that prices were very reasonable there, too.

Singapore: $111 per day. No visas. We only spent two days in Singapore, so this is kind of skewed, but it's certainly one of the most developed and expensive countries in Southeast Asia. Most of the cheaper hotels are in the red light district, where we found a decent private room for $35 a night. Public transport, museums, and restaurants are comparable to Western prices, but taxis (which are metered, hallelujah!) and street or food court foods are relatively cheap.

Indonesia: $102 per day. One-month visas on arrival at the airport cost $25 each. Indonesia was surprisingly expensive, though that's largely because we did a lot of pricey activities like SCUBA diving, chartering a boat to Krakatau volcano, and a few other organized tours. No-frills internal flights between the islands were a pretty good deal, usually less than $50 one-way and could be booked just a day or two before. Buses and trains on the ground varied a lot in price and quality. Hotel rooms for $10-$15 could be found, but were usually pretty disgusting; if we wanted cleanliness and AC, we usually had to pay at least $25. Cheap street food could be found in most places, though not so much in touristy Bali, where we usually had to shell out for real restaurants.

Thailand: $83 per day. No visa fees. Considering how many touristy activities we did in Thailand (diving, elephant training camp, etc.), this is a great average. Hotel and transport standards are pretty high, but competition for the tourist buck keeps prices low. Markets selling cheap local food are pretty easy to find, and even fancy restaurants are probably cheaper than the Thai restaurants you find at home. Just try not to get robbed, which could certainly send your costs soaring!

Myanmar: $77 per day. Visas cost $27 each in Bangkok. This average includes flights into and out of Yangon from Bangkok ($130 each roundtrip), which accounted for one-third of our expenditures there. Once you're on the ground, Myanmar (Burma) is super cheap in all categories, though its rough roads, ancient vehicles, and power cuts often made it feel more like traveling in sub-Saharan Africa than Southeast Asia.

Cambodia: $53 per day. Visas cost $20 each at the border. Cambodia is excellent value. $11 a night got us rooms with bathroom, AC, and sat TV in both Siem Riep and Phnom Penn, the two most touristed cities in the country. Markets and restaurants offer cheap food; bus transport and tourist site admissions are pretty reasonable. If we had stayed longer, or ventured out to less touristy places, it probably would have been even cheaper, but even so, Cambodia was one of the cheapest destinations on our trip.

Vietnam: $66 per day. Visas cost $45 each in Phnom Penn, Cambodia. Vietnam's one of those countries that feels more expensive than it is, probably because people are trying to rip you off almost continuously. But we did manage to stay in some pretty nice hotel rooms and eat decent food for not a lot of money. Trains cost more than buses but are much nicer (which isn't the same as saying that they're actually nice!), especially for overnight travel. Halong Bay overnight cruises can be an especially good deal for a decently swanky experience...provided your boat doesn't sink in the night, of course.

Laos: $57 per day. Visas cost $40 each at the border. Laos is pretty poor, so the roads and buses aren't always the nicest, but hotels were quite comfortable, food was inexpensive, activities like kayaking were very reasonable, and prices overall about as cheap as could be.

China: $92 per day. Visas cost $160 each in Vientiane, Laos--the most expensive of our entire trip. (They are about $100 less expensive for non-Americans, though.) Yunnan province, in southwestern China, was incredibly inexpensive; with $10 hotel rooms and cheap bus rides, it cost no more than Laos, where we had just come from. As we moved east and to the bigger cities, things got more expensive, though you could always find cheap and tasty food, even in Beijing. In general, China didn't feel overpriced considering the good quality of rooms, trains, and food that we got, and some tourist attractions, like the Forbidden City, were surprisingly reasonable.

Mongolia: $121 per day. No visas needed for Americans, though most nationalities need one. This number is high because we spent 6 of our 8 days in the country on a private jeep tour of the Gobi. If we'd managed to find a couple of other travelers to share the tour with, costs would have been halved. Otherwise, the country's pretty budget-friendly: In Ulaan Bataar, the capital, a hostel room with breakfast, Internet, and shared bath cost $15; there were expensive restaurants and cheap local-food canteens to choose from; and the 15-hour train from the China border cost around $9 for seats, or $25 for sleeper berths.

So, Asia had a few expensive countries, but was mostly pretty cheap for us. Hope that this post was slightly helpful to you if you're planning to backpack through Asia. If you have any questions, leave a comment and we'll do our best to get back to you!

Financial Update: Eastern Africa

It's time once again for what may be our most boring blog entry for regular readers, our Financial Update. Boring, but very useful to anyone who is thinking about traveling for a long time. As a reminder, prices are the total for both of us for everything that we need while there. It does not include general trip expenses such as insurance. So, here we go.

Tanzania- $163 per day over 18.5 days. Visas were $100 each at the border (these are much cheaper if you are not American). This is an expensive one. Without my $1100 climb of Kilimanjaro or our $400 safari, the average is only $97 per day. Then again, why go to Tanzania if you aren't going to do anything interesting? Hotels and food are not very expensive if you go to the places that locals go (and locals often stay in rather nice hotels in Tanzania, it seems), but anything even remotely connected to tourism will cost a fortune. National Parks often charge $50 for entrance.

Rwanda- $223 per day over 6 days. No visa required for Americans, but many nationalities need a visa before entry. Entirely because we paid $500 each to see the gorillas. Of course, that is essentially all there is to do in the country other than look at the beautiful countryside or read more about the depressing genocide. Without gorillas, it was only $46 per day. Hotels are a bit more expensive in Rwanda and transport is more expensive than surrounding countries, but not bad.

Uganda- $149 per day over 6 days. Visas were $50 each at the border. Another expensive one. We took an expensive three day organized tour to Murchison Falls that accounts for most of the expense. Outside of Kampala, life is cheap. If you had more time and did everything yourself, it would be much cheaper.

Kenya- $71 per day over 5 days. Visas were $25 each at the border. This is actually made cheaper because we only visited one national park and we stayed with a family in Nairobi. We did the safari part in Tanzania. If you wanted to do a safari in Kenya, the price for Tanzania above is probably more realistic.

Ethiopia- $89 per day over 16.5 days. Visas were $20 each at the airport. Ethiopia is both dirt poor and dirt cheap. We include the entire cost of our flights ($300 each) in this average because Ethiopia refuses to issue overland visas, forcing us to fly. Without that, the average would be closer to $50 per day. Food is especially cheap (and good).

Egypt- $77 per day over 13.5 days. Visas were $15 each at the airport. Everything in Egypt is cheap except entry to all the ruins. Probably a third of our budget was spent on entry fees. Hotels, food, and transport are all cheap and have a high standard.

That's it. Hope you found it helpful. Feel free to contact us with any questions.

Financial Update: Going Broke in Southern Africa

Andy updated you on the obsessions of Southern Africa, so it's my turn to relate our financial status. Even though we didn't have to buy visas in most of these countries, the whole region was quite expensive, thanks to a combination of Western-priced supermarkets, developed-world hotel standards, and pricey national parks and safaris. But there were still a few good deals. Here are the details.

Madagascar: $184/day. Madagascar is actually really, really cheap once you get there, but flying there cost us each about $900 roundtrip from Johannesburg. (If you're coming from America or Europe, double that.) Since we were in Madagascar for 18 days, this added $100 a day to our average. The only other really expensive thing there was a last-minute internal flight that cost us about $170 pp (adding another $20/day). Road travel, street and restaurant food, hotels, and national parks are a fantastic deal, however, so if you can manage to swim to Madagascar, it's a very budget-friendly place to travel...

Zimbabwe: $144/day. Surprisingly expensive for a country whose economy collapsed just a short time ago, Zimbabwe doesn't have particularly cheap rooms, food, or national parks ($30 per person for Victoria Falls felt especially outrageous). It would be a good place to have a tent of your own, and/or a car that you could sleep in...

Botswana: $131/day. Another country where we could have really used a tent! Game drives and boat trips in Chobe National Park are good value, but you can't get a room outside of the park in Kasane for less than $50. We managed to find cheap food and decently-priced tours in most places, but there are just no budget hotels in Botswana.

Namibia: $100/day. Don't let that average fool you--Namibia may be the most expensive country in Africa. We only got it down to $100 by renting the cheapest car possible and a tent with a friend and camping our way around the country. Public transit is particularly outrageously expensive...when you can even find it. We had to hitch a lot to get to Windhoek from the north.

Lesotho: $108/day. We only spent two nights in Lesotho, so take this average with a grain of salt. We were driving our own rental car from South Africa at this point, so gas and rental costs jack things up, while sleeping in our car brought them back down for one of the two nights.

Swaziland: $260/day. This average is also skewed since we only spent two nights in Swaziland, one of which was at a fancy game reserve (other one, in the car). Gas is slightly cheaper in Swaziland and Lesotho than South Africa, in case you were curious.

South Africa: $114/day. We visited South Africa in two sections--first for three days in Johannesburg, where we didn't have a car, then for about two weeks driving in a rental car from Cape Town to Nelspruit (detouring into Lesotho and Swaziland). Things were definitely cheaper when we stayed put in one city, since once we got the car, we covered a lot of ground quickly (and paid for a lot of gas). We were paying around $50/day for the automatic car rental (sticks are cheaper) and $25/day for gas. We slept in the car about half the time in South Africa...the other half the time we were usually in double rooms at backpackers hostels, which cost around $30-$35 a night. We also cooked our own food a lot. Activities in South Africa, such as national park visits and shark diving, made up most of the rest of our expenditures.

Mozambique: $80/day. Finally, a country under the $100/day mark! Mozambique is great value. It's not as developed as South Africa, but it's not quite as poor or disorganized as many other countries in Africa. We traveled by bus, stayed in decent hotels and hostels, did snorkeling boat trips, and celebrated the return of street food for very reasonable prices.

Zambia: $200/day. We only spent three days in Zambia, visiting South Luangwa National Park. It's not exactly a budget destination, but by traveling there on our own by bus and cooking our own meals, we managed to save about 30% off the packaged tour we were considering out of Lilongwe. This would be another good place to have a tent--we paid $60 a night for a room at a camp outside the park, but camping would have only cost about $10.

Malawi: $65/day. Malawi is cheap. A two-day private kayaking trip on the lake, including meals, snorkeling, and camping equipment, cost us $40 per person per day. I feel like a similar trip in South Africa would have cost over $100 pp/day, at least. Hotels, food, and buses are also cheap. There isn't much to do in Blantyre or Lilongwe, so if you go, head straight for the lake if you can.

There you have it, Southern Africa by the numbers. As a general rule, the countries that start with "M" are pretty cheap to travel in (once you get there, at least)...and the ones that start with "S" or "Z," not so much!

Financing West Africa

Our journeys in Africa until now have been pleasantly affordable, if not always pleasantly comfortable. We wanted to do the entire region at once, so here is what we can tell you about finances in West Africa. As a reminder, these prices generally include our visas (and visa prices may vary depending on where they are issued) and all expenses for the two of us. They are obviously a rough guide, but should be helpful to other traveling in the area.

Morocco- $47 per day over 15 days. Thanks to Morocco not requiring visas, cheap lodging and transport, and easy do-it-yourself tour options, this is one of the cheapest countries we have visited. We stayed in a few terrible hotels, but also a few rather nice ones, but you could easily stay in nice ones the whole time and not add more than $10/night.

Mauritania- $68 per day over 8 days. This reflects the $45 visa, but is lessened by us staying with a family for a few days. Hotels are a bit pricey in Mauritania for the quality, and most of the food is imported, so it can also be pricey if you want Western-standards. However, transport is cheap, with the iron ore train being almost free.

Senegal- $61 per day over 7 days. Senegal is the other country in this part of the world that does not require visas for Americans (or most Europeans), which reduces the cost. Hotels are reasonable except in Dakar, where you should definitely stay in the very nice Catholic Guesthouse or couchsurf if you are on a budget.

The Gambia- $106 per day over 4 days. This is skewed by the $50 visas and only being there for four days, but in The Gambia, you have to take tours (often costly boat tours) to see much. Guides can be hired very cheaply if you can find them, but boats cannot. We do have some good suggestions for bird and wildlife guides if you decide to go.

Mali- $76 per day over 8.5 days. Visas are $25 each. Mali has more tourists, so everything is a bit more expensive, especially tours of Dogon Country, which are costly, but interesting. If you are really on a budget, you can often get a mattress on someone's roof for very little money, which is actually your only chance to be cool enough to sleep if you are there in hot season unless you pay the outrageous additional amounts (normally $20/night) for air conditioning.

Burkina Faso- $66 per day over 7.5 days. Visas were $20 each at the border, but only good for 7 days. Transport is fairly cheap and often nicer than surrounding countries (even sometimes air conditioned on the main east-west road). Without your own car, you do have to hire a guide and car to see some of the interesting spots in the west of the country, which was not crazy expensive, but raised the average.

Ghana- $46 per day over 14 days. Visas were $30 each. Ghana feels more expensive than it is because at a few touristy places, you feel like you are being overcharged. Food on the street is good (if you can find it without fish sauce) and really cheap. Hotel rooms are very reasonable, though you may want to look at a few in Accra to find the right cleanliness/cost balance.

Togo- $49 per day over 4.5 days. Visas were $30 each. This is completely skewed by us staying entirely with Peace Corps volunteers while in the country. The average would have been about $30 per day more without that. Take the Post Bus, which is nice and reliable (and air conditioned) when traveling.

Benin- $65 per day over 5.5 days. Visas were $20 each. Good value since we had to pay $50 each for the car/tour to Pendjari tour and paid for hotels throughout the country. Take InterCity bus when possible--it was cheaper than most and air conditioned.

Nigeria- $80 per day over 11 days. Visas were $130 each. The visas make it expensive, but our couchsurfing in Lagos offsets that since hotel prices there are very high. Transport costs vary a lot from place to place in the country, sometimes with little reason. Street food availability also varies a lot, and restaurants are expensive. Make sure your hotel has a generator (almost all do) since the country is without power most of the time.

Cameroon- $59 per day over 15 days. Visas were $100 each. Hotels aren't that expensive, though the water and electricity in Cameroon is spotty, so you could find yourself without one or both even at decent hotels (good hotels have generators for power, but the backup for water is to give you a couple of buckets). Travel prices also vary a lot here in different parts, so just bargain hard and hope for the best.

Gabon- $78 per day over 7.5 days. Visas were $100 each. Gabon is expensive. Transport is two or three times more expensive than any other country in the region. Hotels are not cheap, though of a high standard (couchsurfing in Libreville greatly helps our expenses). If you venture to the national parks rather than Lope, they start at $300 per night per person. Yet, we have had a decent time here.

That wraps up expenses. As always, ask if you have any questions.

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!

Financial Updates

We've been delinquent in posting Financial Updates, but here we go.

Uruguay: $110/day. Tough to call this a good average since we were only there for two days. In general, though, there isn't much to do in Uruguay. Food is more expensive than many South American countries, and you have to look around to find good deals on lodging, but there aren't a lot of tours or other expenses even if you were looking to spend money. A lot of hotels seemed to have raised prices dramatically, but we ended up finding a very nice room for less than $30/night in Montevideo.

Argentina: $115/day. Transport in Argentina is a good deal cheaper than Brazil, which helped to keep costs down. Lodging continued to average $20-30 per day. Food is a bit more expensive, but still cheaper than the US. We took a few different tours in Argentina, which were reasonable, but not super cheap.

Chile: $108/day. This one actually surprised us. It seemed more expensive while we were actually there, especially considering that we took the somewhat pricey boat for three days from southern Chile to slightly less southern Chile. Transport was much cheaper in Chile, though. And we didn't eat out much. Overall, a really good value.

Bolivia: $63/day. This is not including the cost of being robbed, which would have added close to $1000 (about $50/day) to the cost of the country. It does include the $270 for visas, though, so it would have only been about $45/day without the visas. It is by far the cheapest country in South America. Tours and lodging are both very cheap and transport is fairly cheap as well.

Peru: $87/day. Peru ranks high on the value scale. It is cheap, but you can normally find decent quality buses, hotels, and tours. We took some really nice buses for just a few dollars more than the poor local buses. Machu Picchu is expensive (and worth it), but the rest of the country is cheap.

Financial Updates

Now that we are out of Brazil, we thought we'd post some financial information.

Brazil: With visas ($130 each), and including the time that we spent in the rainforest in Manaus, the average was $118 per day. The visas account for about $10 each day. The average would have been less had we travelled more slowly since buses are expensive in Brazil. However, the total amount spent would have been more. If you aren't stuck on seeing quite as much, it might be well worth it to take a couple flights. They aren't cheap, but are about the same as a couple of overnight bus trips.

Also, a tip on food in Brazil. Pay by weight restaurants are very common, but don't actually seem that cheap unless you just get a plate of meat. Many places also offer a plate of the day (prato feito) that is really cheap with rice, beans, salad, and whatever meat you select. They may also offer a single plate option for the buffet that is as much as you can get on the plate for a set price. These are both better than actually paying by weight. Also, if you turn down the side street or go one block from the main square, food is often half the price or less. The restaurants may not look as nice, but the food was nearly as good in our experience.

Paraguay: $158 per day, but this is rather unfair to Paraguay since we were only there for 1.5 days and had to pay $90 for the visas. The country is about half the price of Brazil and is small so transport is cheap. You could definitely live decently for $50 per day once there. Note that in an effort to completely discourage tourism, a mandatory fee of $5 exists anytime you take money from an ATM if it is a foreign card. $5 is about the same price as the average person in Paraguay makes in a day, I think (not kidding). So, you are better to take cash if you can. Foreign exchange places exist everywhere and seemed to take any major currency since every currency is more major than the Paraguay Gurani.

Financing the Guianas (and travel tips)

You have seen the great photos from Guyana, Suriname, and French Guyane (collectively called the Guianas down here), but there is a darker side to these places: the cost. They are some of the most expensive countries to visit in South America. Here is a bit more of the breakdown:

Suriname: $190/day. We covered most of this one already. Food is reasonable and cheapish accomodation can be found, but transport is really expensive to the interior. Might have been possible to get their cheaper, but we had heard some bad stories. The $100 for visas is also ridiculous, and really brings up the average since we were only there for 6 days, but they are quick to remind you that the US levies similar visa fees on them. Oh, and on the visa side, if you are getting your Suriname Visa in Georgetown, it isn't hard, but you must pay them in US dollars and they only accept newer $10, $20, and $50 bills. This is true no matter what country you are from. They absolutely will not accept local currency, their own currency, or $100 bills. We can recommend Blue Frog Travels for arranging trips to the interior. They were really great for us, though the A/C was unfortunately broke on their vehicle at the time. Jodensavanne and Brownsberg National Park are both nice places.

French Guyane: $165/day. Had it not been for the kindness of Dan the American and Manuela and Max the Italians, this would have been much, much higher. French Guyane really does cost more than France. Dan was nice enough not only to drive us half way across the country, but to take us to dinner as well. Manuela and Max were kind enough to put us up for about the price of the cheapest hotel rooms, which were all booked, and they helped us get around. Hotel rooms cost a minimum of 50 euros ($70 at present) for less than great places, though they do all have A/C. Try to find people with whom you can stay. Definitely try couch surfing here if you can lock in your dates (we couldn't). A lot of people apparently hitchhike. Consider it. If you don't speak any French (Tara does), it will be difficult. I was excited to go to Cayenne because it is the city for which Cayenne pepper is named and that seemed to give it a fun aura. It turns out that Cayenne is a boring town, especially in the summer. Go to the prison camp in St. Laurent (try to find a guide who speaks English), go to the space launch tours in Kourou (free, but in French--probably interesting even if you don't have Tara translating), and go to Glacier for ice cream in Kourou.

Financial Update

Time to update our financial picture. Here is the breakdown and summary by country:

Trinindad & Tobago: $109/day average. TnT is fairly expensive, with lodging really tough to find for less than $35-$40/night. We also spent money on the flight to/from Tobago and on renting a car for a couple days. Overall, our spending here was fairly even, though, so I think that's about the right amount. Note that food is overpriced in Tobago because they are an isolated island. We ate several peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to keep the cost down.

Venezuela: $90/day average. $50/day without the trip to Angel Falls. We think the trip was worth it, though. You have to use the blackmarket or these numbers would be 3 times as high. We normally paid $10-15 for a room and about $3-$4 each for a decent dinner. Transportation is nearly free because gas is nearly free (we paid $11 each for an overnight bus for 13 hours and the buses are way nicer than American buses). Angel Falls costs $250/person, though we wish we would have found an operator that would throw in a free hotel the night before and after, as many of them do. In Santa Elena, we suggest Francisco at Touristica Alvarez at the bus station. He did a good job getting us a tour in the Gran Sabana, though you have to be flexible with everything.

Guyana: $70/day average. Skewed by us hitchhiking the length of the country rather than paying the high bus fares. We sort of wish we had visited more of the interior, but we couldn't afford the very high transportation costs. We met people who often spent $300/person just to get to some of the inland places. Mostly, I wanted to see giant anteaters, but maybe somewhere else. Lodging was consistently $30-40/night and you should bring your own food to the rainforest or be prepared to pay higher prices for it. Food in Guyana, especially local food, seemed almost free. One morning, we bought every bit of street food and drink that seemed at all interesting until we could barely move. It amounted to about $4. We did have a bad experience going to a Rodizio suggested by our book. It ended up costing about $30 and was not very good. Don't go to rodizios outside Brazil, I guess. Oh, and lastly we decided to skip Kaiteur Falls. They looked very nice and I would have loved to do the overland hike to them, but it was $800/person, which seemed crazy for 4 days.

Suriname: we're on track to average $190/day. Suriname, mostly because of transport into the interior, is really expensive. Paramaribo is also very expensive. Rooms for less than $35-40/night are really hard to find. Meals aren't as expensive as the US, but average about $7 for a standard restaurant. We're taking a cheap tour that doesn't go that far inland and it is $300/person for 3d/2n. The ones that really go to the more interesting parts start at about $700 for 4 days/3 nights and most are even more.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions. Our guidebook is woefully out of date for the Guyanas, so expect to pay a lot more than many books indicate. We've learned a lot and are happy to share our knowledge if useful to anyone.

Currencies and languages

One of our loyal readers asked about currencies and languages since Tara and I generally pretend like all of our conversations are in English and all of our money is in dollars. Those are definitely not the case. Each country in South and Central America has its own currency, except for Ecuador, which adopted the American dollar about 10 years ago. To make it more confusing, each of these currencies has a different value. So, Trinidad uses the Trinidad & Tobago dollar, with each TnT dollar worth about 15 US cents. So, if something there costs 10 "dollars", it is really about $1.60 in US money. However, Brazil uses a different currency called the real (pronounced ree-aal) and each real is worth about 50 US cents. So, if something cost 10 in Brazil, it is equivalent to about $5. This is often confusing when we travel between countries--Tara has a tendency to think about them all the same, so if something cost 10 in Trinidad, then 10 in Brazil is about the same. It takes a while to adjust.

Venezuela, the third country we have visited so far, uses the Bolivar fuerte as its currency. Bolivar is the currency and is named after Simon Bolivar, a famous leader. Fuerte means strong in Spanish, and that is because Venezuela replaced the regular Bolivar a few years ago with this new one to try to stop inflation. At that time, they also set an official exchange rate with the dollar at 2.15 Bolivars per US dollar. Unfortunately, it is not really worth that much and a huge black market exists. All of our money in Venezuela came from trading US dollars that we brought with us into Bolivars on the street or in small shops. It is technically illegal, but I have never heard of anyone being arrested. We would always start the conversation by saying,"Do you know where we might change some US dollars?" Only one person told us that was illegal and all the others either did it for us or took us to someone. On average, we got about 6 Bolivars per dollar. We met several people who did not know about this before coming, which means it cost them 3 times more to come to Venezuela than it cost us. We will add the currencies as we do future country posts.

On to languages. Trinidad was easy because they speak English. Most of them have an accent that sounds a bit Jamaican, so other than them using a bit of slang, it is very easy and funny to talk to them. In Venezuela, they speak Spanish, but they have a different accent than most people learn in Spanish class. They tend to leave out all the 's' sounds, which makes it hard to understand. They also speak fast. However, our Spanish was improving rapidly, and Tara has been really good speaking it. I understand a surprising amount, but am not so good at speaking. Brazil speaks Portuguese. To me, Portuguese sounds like Spanish spoken with a French accent. Many people understand individual Spanish words here, but rarely full Spanish sentences. It has been a bit tough, but many people also speak some English in Brazil. Almost no one speaks English in Venezuela.

Next, we are off to Guyana, another English speaking country. Then to Suriname, where they speak Dutch, which we do not speak at all. In French Guiana, they speak French, which Tara speaks. Then back to Brazil for more Portuguese. After that, the rest of South America and Central America all speak Spanish except for Belize, which is the last country we will be in. As a result, our Spanish skills should be decent by the time we are done. Well, Tara's will be. My hand gesturing is already really good, but it will probably be even better.

You got rid of everything?

For the last week, the question all of our close friends have asked is how much stuff we have left. Many people have asked what we're doing with all of our stuff. The short answer is that we have sold or given away everything we own except for a few boxes of personal effects each of us is keeping with our parents. Don't get me wrong--even those personal items (mostly clothes, photos, and random gifts from over the years) amount to more than it seems like we need. However, as of a few hours ago, we have no furniture, no electronics (other than our cameras), no dishes, no appliances, and no home.

We got rid of about 95% of everything we owned. We managed to sell most of it, but also gave a good amount away today. We tried a take what you want, give what you want house sale, which had mixed results. I cursed a few people as they left for their cheapness and I actually talked one girl down and told her she couldn't give us that much money for the amount she was taking. Tara posted weeks of Craigslist ads to sell tons of stuff. We donated somewhere around 15 trash bags of clothes. Overall, we think we made about $2000 from selling stuff, which will hopefully fund another month of travel.

So, we leave in 8 hours for Trinidad & Tobago with just the gear we talked about earlier. We'll hope that you'll come along with us for our trip.

Are You Rich?

Some of our closest friends and family members have ventured to ask outright what most everyone has subtly hinted: "How much is this trip costing you?" Sometimes it is accompanied by comments along the lines of that person not being able to afford a similar trip. Because finding good information about costs for round-the-world trips (often called RTWs) has been so hard to find, we're going to try to share a lot of financial information.

Some of you may not like the occasional focus on money, so feel free to skip them. I will try to contain them all in separate entries tagged "finances". We will try to break down spending by country and share the costs of important excursions where possible. This entry will focus on saving the money in the first place and on our expected budget.

No, we aren't rich, but we have worked hard for the last 8 years to save a reasonable amount of money. I have spent that time working in finance, where I wasn't paid anything like the people you see in the news, but was paid better than most Americans. Tara works in publishing, where she made enough to survive. We're luckier than most in the amount we have made, but anyone can save the money to travel. The key is to be cheap. Call it frugal, thrifty, economical, stingy, penny-pinching, or miserly--they all describe us.

I've spent a lot of time reading the stories of people who travel, and they are almost all the same. It's the little things that add up over time. Take your lunch instead of buying it out every day (or be really cheap like me and don't eat lunch), drink the free office coffee instead of the better Starbucks coffee (better yet, don't drink coffee), drink in people's apartments instead of bars (better yet, don't drink), cook at home instead of going out to eat, buy whatever brand is on sale at the store. You get the idea. Taken as any single event, it seems like it doesn't matter and will only be a couple dollars. Over several years, it amounts to many thousand dollars. Okay, enough with the personal budgeting tips. If you want to talk about it more, I really do love talking about saving money, so get in touch.

So, what does it cost to travel the world? We don't know, but we'll let you know as we find out. Here's what we're thinking at present. I break expenses into four basic categories: 1.) lodging; 2.) food; 3.) transportation; 4.) excursions. What we do know is that expenses will vary a lot from day to day.

Lodging and food are somewhat predictable, though they vary across the world. A good rule of thumb seems to be that lodging for two people and food for two people will cost roughly the same each day if you eat out a fair amount at affordable restaurants and sometimes cook yourself (or make peanut butter and jelly). In South America, we expect lodging and food to cost about $50-60 per day for the two of us. It will probably be less in most of Africa. It will vary a lot in Southeast Asia.

The cost that is hardest to control is transportation. For us, this will primarily be flights and buses. How we are booking flights will be another post, but no matter how you do it, they are likely to cost around $3,000 each over the course of the trip. Maybe more if you fly a lot. We plan to take overland routes wherever possible. If you plan to stay in major cities for a month at a time and just take short day trips, you may find this to be even less. In South America, bus prices differ a lot, but it probably amounts to about $0.20/mile on average. We'll likely travel around 7,000 miles just in South America.

Excursions are the fastest way to blow the budget. These could be anything from a day trip to a waterfall to a week in the Galapagos Islands. They tend to be with small groups and may cost a couple hundred dollars per day per person in some cases. We will try to keep expensive excursions to a minimum, but they are sometimes the only way to get places. We'll let you know what these cost.

To start, we have budgeted about $150/day for the two of us. That amounts to around $75,000 for the 18 months. We hope we can do it cheaper than this, but that's what we're prepared to spend. Feel free to let us know how we can travel cheaper...