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You are here: Home / Archives for summary

Reflections on our Budget

February 24, 2011 By Danny

We recently participatedinacolumn where several travelers compared their budgets head-to-head.  We were surprised to see that we spent less per month than any other traveler featured on the page.  This got us pondering why and how this happened and reflecting on if there had been anything we regret skipping on account of our budget.

More to the point though; did keeping to our budget leave us with any lingering regrets?  We have a few, but as we discussed them last night a certain peace came over us as we realized there weren’t too many, and they weren’t huge things that we feel cheated from enjoying.

  • IMGP3045Patagonia – We spent a lot of time busing down to the tipofArgentina and back up again.  In hindsight we wished we’d take the ferry down the Chilean coast of Patagonia to where we hikedtheW and then worked our way back up.  We would have seen far more (courtesy of the ‘cruise-like’ ferry) and broken up the return journey north a bit better.  We also might have had slightly nicer weather in Bariloche, Argentina.  Cost was the principle driver in not taking the ferry but timings, a desire to hit some whitewaterinPucon, and a hope of getting to Antarctica all combined to help us make the wrong decision.
  • After hikingKilmanjaro, enjoying a Safari, whitewaterboogieboarding in Jinja, and paying the bill for GorillatrackinginUganda…we were feeling like we’d completely destroyed our bank accounts in a matter of days.  This led us to bus across Kenya from Uganda to coastal Lamu.  We soon wished we’d flown.  The flights didn’t work out perfectly but it would have been better than that hectic 24 hours of bus after bus after bus.  At that point in time we also had no idea how we were going to be heading northtoEthiopia and were expecting to fork over some major cash for big, last-minute African airfares in the coming weeks.

It seems that there were two very big keys to keeping our costs down.  First, overland travel meant sleepingonbuses and trains rather than paying for constant airfares.  We decided early on that we enjoyed traveling this way and don’t regret that decision.  Second, we spent only one month in Europe and skipped on Australia and New Zealand.   Although we’d hoped to make it to the South Pacific, we were simply too tired and homesick when the time came.  Our route also kept us traveling most of the time in shoulder seasons where the climate wasn’t quite perfect (not a lot of vacationers driving prices up) but still good enough for us to enjoy ourselves.  The only time the whole trip we had to deal with high season was while we were traveling through Turkey.

While in the Americas we generally erred on the side of keeping to our budgets and passing on the big items (e.g. Galapagos Islands) because we are from United States and those sites are much easier to enjoy to later in life than say, Uzbekistan. For the rest of the planet, we adopted a mental policy of treating ourselves to the big ticket items if we wanted to do them.  Faced with $100-$200 bungee jumping and adventure swings in South Africa and Zimbabwe, we decided to skip and don’t regret those decisions….We also don’t regret the big bucks we spent for game viewing, visas, and climbing mountains.

Although many travel with philosophies that differ from ours, we all have budgets and all make decisions…both good and bad.

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Filed Under: Headline, Travel & Planning, Travel Reflections Tagged With: budget, budgeting, summary, travel budget

Best of 2010

December 31, 2010 By Jillian

It’s been a crazy year. We kicked off 2010 at Kruger National Park in South Africa and we’re sending it away on the beach in Florida. From Africa, to the Middle East & Europe, across Asia and finally home we searched through our pictures, memories and posts to bring you our favorites from 2010. So without further ado….

Kalahari Transnational Park
This was our favorite national park in South Africa and one of the most memorable experiences of the trip. Danny barbequed as lions wandered around the camp’s electric fence and we fell asleep to the sweet lullaby of a lion’s roar. It was scary but it was awesome. There were so many lions by the time we left we were practically bored of seeing them. Oh yea, and there were cheetahs!
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Sufi Dancing in Khartoum

Mystical, mystifying and (well what’s another “M”, magical?) the Sufi dancing in Khartoum defied our expectations. It was absolutely enchanting and in a world where so much seems familiar it was a distinctly different ritual. The whirling was incredibly hypnotizing, even from outside the ritual area. We stood out like sore thumbs in the crowd of religious muslim men and chai sellers and as the ritual continued the head religious man made eye contact with Danny. With a knowing smile the man posed for a photograph – his intense gaze, even from across the field will be something I can never forget. We were completely fascinated and to this day when I see our pictures I have to pinch myself to remind my brain that it was real.

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School Children in Lesotho
One of my favorite parts of this trip were the kids. Without a doubt we met some of the most amazing kids, many of who didn’t have the opportunity to go to school, read a book and may never see a movie in a theater. Walking back to our lodging from a hike through the canyons in Lesotho we came across a group of primary school kids on their way home. Seeing us from afar the children mobbed us, introducing themselves, asking us to play with them, showing us their text books, their drawings and writing out their lessons. They were curious about our cameras and for the first time many of them saw themselves on video. They were a complete joy and we had an enjoyable hour or so joking, playing and laughing with them. Their joy and laughter was infectious and whenever I’m feeling upset I think of them.

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Italiani
Maybe I have a thing about jolly people, but the Russian mini-van driver we met in Georgia is probably one of my favorite interactions of this whole trip. From our comical attempt to find a common language (Italian) to our fateful encounter near the Russian border this guy was overwhelmingly friendly and amicable. We could hardly communicate, but in the words of Anne of Green Gables, he was a kindred spirit. I know if we were to ever see him again we’d just have to tell him we are his italiani amici and he’d greet us with one of his vice grip hand shakes.

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Smugglers

It’s not every day you meet smugglers on a train. Well, actually that’s more common than you think…let me revise that. It’s not every day you meet a train conductor who is also a smuggler. Crossing from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan the conductor and his wife took us under their wing. With very little common language between us, we used our picture dictionary, maps and charades to pass away the time. After helping us negotiate the customs form (only in Russian), the customs officials (who didn’t harass us too much) and the currency changers (they got us the best rate of our entire time in Uzbekistan!), we were close friends and the conductors wife shared with us her little secret- boxes and boxes of contraband. Turns out contraband is pretty similar in Russian!

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Filed Under: Headline, Travel & Planning Tagged With: best of, summary

South American Report Card

December 17, 2009 By Danny

With a few weeks back in the states to “relax” a bit before continuing to Africa we’ve had a bit of time to take stock of how we’ve done and, almost as importantly, how our budget has done.

A reminder of how all this works.  Every dollar amount represents how much the two of us, combined, spent on the average day in a given country.  Airfare to and from the continent is included in transportation in the totals line and aren’t applied to any specific continent.  Even with the airfare this is less than we used to spend living in the US.  For more information visit our spending page.

Colombia:  Coming out of Central America, this beautiful and friendly country was a breath of fresh air.  Modern yet still off the tourist track it was overall very friendly to our budget.  That being said, we skipped on most of the country (fewer buses means less $$$) because of its proximity to the USA.

Ecuador:  From our budget’s standpoint Ecuador was very similar to Colombia, both economical and close to the USA so we saved our time and money for later excursions.  High season (summer on the US academic calendar) meant that last minute rates on the Galapagos Islands were no special price so we decided to skip.

Peru:  We spent a lot of time in Peru, partly because there was a lot to do and partly because we had a comfy place to stay to stay in Lima. Staying put helped to keep both our transportation and lodging costs down despite traveling through most of the country.  The big money we spent here were for the big ticket items like Machu Picchu and trekking in Huaraz, experiences we were more than happy to fork over a few bucks for when the incredible food was so cheap to begin with.

Bolivia:  This is the cheapest country we visited in South America, despite the expensive visa.  The reason it cost us so much money is that we had a multi-day tour of the Amazon, another multi-day tour of the salt flats, and then we topped that with a bike ride down the death road and a rural airplane ride from the jungle to La Paz.  Activities did our budget in, and that’s more than OK with us.  Food didn’t cost so much because it came free with the activities and other than the airplane the buses were cheap because they were missing windshields…and road-safe roads as well.

Brazil:  This was our most expensive country by far.  The pricey visa and the exchange rate didn’t do us any favors (to the nickel a subway ride within Rio was the same as a subway ride in Washington, DC) and the huge distances had us paying top dollar for an internal flight.  The amazing part is that between wonderful couch surfing friends and winning a free tour of the Pantanal we only had to pay for lodging for 3 nights.

Argentina:  For the “typical” traveler, Argentina represents the best value in our opinion; a fully first world country with a favorable exchange rate and just tons to do.  While in Argentina we biked, hiked, toured, couchsurfed, whale-watched, penguin hunted , enjoyed 30 of 32 consecutive hours in a bus, and who can forget wine touring.  Couchsurfing and spending a week with the Tobias padres helped to offset the expenses of Patagonia and treating ourselves nicely for our 3 year wedding anniversary in the southernmost city of the world.  Patagonia was expensive and if we did Argentina again, we’d probably skip it.  The Lake district was supposed to be very expensive but we managed to find incredible value doing our own thing and touring the north in the care of others was a pleasant change of pace.

Chile:  This is not a cheap country to travel in and unfortunately we left most of it for next time., partly on account of price and partly because we’d hit the seasons wrong.  We had a good time kayaking where we could and couchsurfing in Santiago.  Torres del Paine was also a big attraction that we didn’t skip despite the hefty prices just to go camping.

Filed Under: Headline, South America, Travel & Planning Tagged With: summary

Tobias Index

December 15, 2009 By Danny

Now that we’re off to Africa we figured it was about time to get our Latin America summary out there. Epic bus journeys in the south and more than a month of nights sleeping on buses…its been a real adventure.
Here’s a summary of the most “fun” statistics for the last 9 or so months:

8.5 – Months spent on the road

33 – Nights spent on a bus (Jillian’s note: We should have calculated our total hours on the bus!)

23 – Nights spent couchsurfing

20 – Hours of longest single bus ride

4 – Viewings of Transporter 3 on the bus

2 – Bathroom breaks from the bus where there was no bathroom present

15 – Countries visited

41 – Passport Stamps

2 – Hemispheres enjoyed

2 – Gastro-intestinal lab tests

4 – Ferry crossings

1 – Train

11 – Planes

6 – Most consecutive nights in the same bed

6 – Volcanoes hiked

2 – Active volcanoes hiked

6 – Rivers kayaked

4 – Guidebooks

4 – Countries where we bought and paid for a local telephone number

3 – Largest continuous amount of time, in hours, between March 13th and November 30th we spent apart…

Filed Under: Central America, Headline, South America, USA Tagged With: summary

It was the best of times…it was the worst of times.

November 29, 2009 By Danny

We’ve survived our first week of “intermission”. In between forkfuls of turkey we’ve been answering questions about the trip. Lots and lots of questions. What was your favorite (fill in the blank here)? What was the worst…? well you get the picture. So here it is folks, our best and our worst of the last 8 months.

  • Best Way to Start a 2 Year Trip – Baja, Mexico.  Grinning ear to ear as those grey whales just swam right on up to let you pet them…then jumping into the water to swim with some sea lions.
  • Worst Night On a Bus – Bolivia…going from La Paz down the death road to the Amazon where we weren’t sure if we’d wake up alive.
  • Stupidest Decision – Amazon, Bolivia.  Swimming in that river with caymen…
  • Best Hot Spring – Fuentes Georginas outside of Xela, Guatemala.  These were built into the side of the mountain with beautiful views and clouds that just rolled in and out and there was a water temperature to please literally everyone.
  • Place we wish we’d stayed longer – Ometepe, Nicaragua.  This beautiful island was covered in monkey filled rainforest where the food was good and the beaches were perfectly peaceful.
  • Strangest “Dish” – Grasshoppers.  Oaxaca, Mexico.  Does this really need explanation?
  • Most Fun in One Day – Death Road, Bolivia.  It’s called the Death Road…what else is there to say?!.
  • Craziest Monument – The Ecuator, Ecuador.  This place was just rediculous..
  • Most Overrated – Valle de la Luna, Argentina.  Nothing but a bunch of rocks.
  • Most Underrated – Copan, Honduras.  Best ruins we’ve seen, easy to access as well.
  • Best Food – Mexico.  No, not tex-mex…I mean real Mexican.  Cheap and always enough spice to make you cry.
  • Most Extreme Sport – Volcano Boarding, Nicaragua.  Snow is soft, lava rock isn’t.
  • Most Diverse – Brazil.  People from every corner of the globe…they even have Sushi.
  • Best Bed – Buenos Aires, Argentina.  That’s what happens when your parents come to take care of you for a week.
  • Best Volcano – Volcan Pacaya.  Antigua, Guatemala.  Easily accessible and cheap to climb, don’t forget to bring along some marshmellows to roast in the lava!.
  • Best Foreign Movie – Romeo and Juliet…the Brazillian version.  Two opposing futbol (soccer) teams makes for one great comedy…plus no one dies.
  • Best Festival – Okotberfest, Brazil.  The largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany.
  • Best Stars – We had a new moon when we were in the Amazon…it was brilliant.
  • Most Fun with a Camera – Salt Flats, Bolivia.  Rumor has it that we even messed up some NASA satellites that day!.
  • Best Sporting Event – Futbol.  Xela vs Guatemala.  Nothing better than flying, flaming toilet paper…in a country that never seems to have enough toilet paper!
  • Most Awesome Force of Nature – Iguazu, Argentina/Brazil.  The waterfall that puts all others to shame.
  • Best Luck – La Moskitia, Honduras.  We stumbled upon a mother turtle laying 99 eggs.  We were lucky to see it but the baby turtles were luckier b/c it meant being cared for in a lab rather than being eaten by the locals.
  • Best Trek – Huaraz, Peru. Despite suffering from diarrea at 4700m in elevation and being thrown from a horse…well maybe that’s what made it so wonderful 😉  We blame this illness on having previously eaten a complete 3 course meal that cost less than $1.
  • Scariest Moment – Belize.  7.1 Earthquake.  Very scary and so we made a video to make ourselves feel better.
  • Most Gringos per Capita – Cuzco, Peru.  If Disney ever created an “Inca” land…this would be it.
  • Most Invasive Customs Check – Panama.  They even searched us leaving the country.
  • Most Exciting Thing Coming Up – Africa.  All of it!

Filed Under: Central America, Headline, South America Tagged With: summary

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