I'm in the beginning stages of planning my trip to S. America. Me and a friend are planning to spend about 4-6 weeks in Peru, Bolivia, and possibly either Ecuador or Brazil.
Before you shout out a random number, let me tell you a bit about the way we like to travel and what we plan to do:
- - We definitely want to spend probably more than half of our time being gringos and doing touristy things and going to touristy cities. (Machu Piccu trek, Nazca Lines, Cusco, Lake Titicaca, Colca Canyon, Valle de la Luna, etc)
- - The rest of the time (about 1/3 of the 4-6weeks we're there) we will being relaxing, being sedentary. Basically food and lodging will be our only expenses.
- - We're not looking to buy a ton of souvenirs, but we'll probably pick up a small remembrance here or there. Pictures of our adventures are the main way we like to take souvenirs.
- - We will be two females travelling by ourselves. We don't want to spend money on deluxe luxury hotels, but we are looking for SAFE places to stay. Basically, we want to be able to walk about and find restaurants around the place we are staying without feeling like someone is waiting to pickpocket us around every corner or like we need pepper spray in hand to protect ourselves. To us, safety means staying in hostels in a private room with a shared bathroom or the cheapest hotel we can find in a safe area of town.
We've both done a fair amount of travelling, but never in S. America! We're looking for insight and budgeting advice. We are in the first stages of planning our trip by researching the things we plan to do and bulking up our savings accounts.
Hopefully a fellow travel enthusiast will be able to give us an estimate on how much we can expect to spend, given we way we want to travel!
Experienced Travelers: How much do you think I should budget?
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Here is a link to our blog which covers some of the places you intend visiting. We spent a total of 5 months in South America in 2008, although one month was taken up in Buenos Aires alone. Peru was the cheapest palce we visited followed by Argentina. Chile was probably the most expensive but not horrendously so (certainly a hell of a lot cheaper than the UK where we live.
For booking hotels/hostel we used the follwoing websites extensively and found them to be reliablefor booking and the reviews pretty accurate:
www.hostelworld.com
www.hihostel.com
www.hostelbookers.com
NB. these are not just dorm rooms in hostels most places will have private rooms with private facilities. Standards of course varied, but generally were pretty good. We usually paid somewhere between $25 and $50 for a private ensuite double.
In view of the length of time you are travelling it might be worth joining one of the hostelling orgs for discounts on accomodation.
As far as food is concerned we generally found good food wherever we ate from upmarket restaraunts (rarely!) to market stalls. Quality was high and portions usually enormous.
We budgeted on around $100 per day for accomodation,food and drinks and local travel and lived well.
For lots of tips and info on travel in SA check out:
www.saexplorers.org (worth joining for the acc. and food discounts and use of the club houses) and http://www.andeantravelweb.com/ both are good for checking out the cost and quality of accomodations and tours and particularly for up to date info on safety and security issues.
For travel around the continent we used the excellent bus services, cheap, reliable and very comfortable. We found airfares to be very expensive with some countries/airlines operating a dual pricing system for locals and foreigners.
We had no problems with safety during our travels but you should certainly observe all the usual precautions particularly around airports and ATMs etc. Take a money belt and leave any flash jewellery at home.
Have fun and make sure you post a report on you trip when you return!
Good advice above just did a 10K road trip down there.
www.saexplorers.org worth it for best info doscounts best site
www.hostelbookers.com top hostels and local chow did fine
$25 pppd but put xport tours etc on top of that base so
$35-50 would probably cover everything.
www.insuremytrip.com always wise
www.travel.state.gov for a heads up on safety/entry onfo.
www.bootsnall.com out of Portland good budget info also
find www.moon.com and Footprint guides to be very good.
www.fodors.com best for moderate guides...
www.boliviabella.com
www.andeantravelweb.com
www.guanguiltagua.com
Good recent personal experience with these reputable locals
Careful many scammers/agents TROLL the boards
particularly where some pay to tout occulty as
"Destination Experts" to dishonestly scam the clueless
sadly sanctioned for the for profit Expedia mods.
Have fun and happy planning,
I think you will might cost out separately your tourist excursions, eg Machu Picchu entry fee, train and bus, Nazca flights. Then for your room and board expense, do you want to eat only in tourist restaurants or will you be okay with eating in a local's restaurant?
For Peru, the latter might average $5 per meal, and you can go about 3x for a tourist restaurant. For a modest mid-range hostal, perhaps $50-$100 per night, but certainly you can half or double that. Bolivia will be less.
I would suggest budgeting more than you plan for souveniers. You will regret not taking advantage, especially in Peru-Bolivia.
Suggested lodgings you might look into in Ollantaytambo (Sacred Valley) include Apu Lodge and KB Tambo. In Cusco I stayed at El Balcon on a low season rate, but there are lots of choices.
In Lima I suggest the Barranco neighborhood over Miraflores.