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.

• Patagonia – We spent a lot of time busing down to the tip of Argentina and back up again.  In hindsight we wished we’d take the ferry down the Chilean coast of Patagonia to where we hiked the W 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 whitewater in Pucon, and a hope of getting to Antarctica all combined to help us make the wrong decision.
• After hiking Kilmanjaro, enjoying a Safari, whitewater boogie boarding in Jinja, and paying the bill for Gorilla tracking in Uganda…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 north to Ethiopia 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 sleeping on buses 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.