Budget for 3 Months in South America

OK, so our overall budget blew out to about double what I originally projected. For the two of us we spent $10 800 (not including expensive tours like Galapagos or Pantanal) which is about $1800/person/month and $60/person/day. Including those two expensive tours the total for us two was $16 700.Travelling South America was certainly not as cheap as I thought it would be and certain things would be just as expensive as in Australia if not more. We mostly stayed in hostels and splurged a bit on good food and some cool activities but the expensive tours aren't included in the total as they don't reflect day to day expenditure. 

Breakdown per country

Brazil

$90/person/day

We spent the 3 weeks in Brazil and spent $3785 for the two of us by far the most expensive country we visited. Transportation encompassed 57% of this as we had were booking flights relatively late.

Accommodation: $640, $15/person/night.

Transport: $2184, mostly flights and some buses. It's such a big country flying was a necessary expense.

Food: $500, $12/person/day. Cheap but not good food.

Activities: $382

Extra (not included in total): Pantanal 3 day tour, $1100 per person. Not worth the amount of money we spent on it and would have been better in the dry season.

Argentina

$50/person/day

We splurged a bit in the 10 days we spent in Buenos Aires, enjoy fantastic food and going out every day. Our quality of life was far higher than in Brazil and for much less.

Accommodation: $224, $11/person/night.

Transport: $303. Cheap public transport around the city, most of this cost was the bus ride for the both of us from Buenoas Aires to Santiago.

Food: $236, $12/person/day, awesome food for a bargain price.

Activities: $28, did lots of things like rollerblading around the park and went to a tango dance hall.

Chile

$69/person/day

We got very lucky in Chile and got free accommodation and home cooked meals with our wonderful friends so this cut down on the budget for the first half but San Pedro, Atacama desert was expensive due to the high amount of daily tours we did. The outlined budget below is just for our San Pedro portion.

Accommodation: $108, $18/person/night.

Transport: $180, bus for two from Santiago to San Pedro.

Food: $135, $22/person/day.

Activities: $213, did 4 half day tours.

Bolivia

$42/person/day

Bolivia was cheaper than other countries but e didn't find any three course meals for $1 like someone was telling us. Sadly I was really sick at this time and couldn't make it to a computer to budget properly but food and accommodation was relatively cheap.

Peru

$60/person/day

Peru was a good combination of fun and affordable. We were living it large and thought we were splashing the cash big time but the figures end up being very reasonable. 
Accommodation: $188, $12/person/night.

Transport: $429, a few bus rides a lots of cheap taxi rides - about $2-5 per trip.

Food: $381, $13/person/day. We absolutely splurged on food in Peru and went to a few fine dining places which were still cheap for what we were used to.

Activities: $427, we did a lot in Peru and bought a few things like alpaca jumpers which added to this. Still a cheap place to do fun things.

Extra (not included in total): G Adventures 5 day Inca Trail for $934 per person, worth it considering the staff they bring along to support you and the service you get.

Ecuador

$58/person/day
Relatively cheap place to travel around but honestly besides the Galapagos non of it felt like value for money after Peru.

Accommodation: $256, $16/person/night.

Transport: $104, mostly taxi rides including $25-35 taxi rides to and from Quito airport

Food: $282, $17/person/day. Cost more than Peru yet definitely nowhere near the quality. Disappointing.

Activities: $54, went to see the dolphins in El Morro and visit the middle of the Earth.

Extra: 5 day Galapagos Cruise + 1 day land tour on Isabella Island. Total for two people was $3484. Also spent an extra $436 on extras like entry fees, tips and snorkelling hire. 

Itinerary for 3 months in South America

Now that we're on our North America leg I've really come to miss South America. I miss it for all it's uniqueness and vibrancy. We spent three months there in total but this isn't really that long when you consider we visited 6 countries which equates to only about 2 weeks per country. How can you possibly say you've come to understand a place in 2 weeks? I do feel that we managed to cover the most important places to us but there are certainly places we felt we cheated and plan to visit on the next trip. 

Brazil (March 2013)

In total we spent 3 weeks here where we mostly flew from city to city. I think that this was a good amount of time here consider how large the country is. It was the most expensive country we visited so staying too long can really squeeze your budget. We started in Rio and spent 4 days there. It was a great place to start the journey and there was so much to do there. We saw Christ the Redeemer and visited the famous Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. We then made our way by bus to Paraty which was nice but the beach wasn't that great and I would have preferred to have gone to Ilha Grande which we heard many good things from other travellers about the beautiful beaches there. Another bus to the historical town of Ouro Preto where we spent two days, mostly taking photos of churches and walking up hills. We then visited Sao Paulo for four days. This a frenetic and over populated city where we had a great experience meeting some lovely locals but otherwise didn't find much to love about the acutal city. We then took a bus to Bella Horizonte then a flight to Salvador in the Northeast of Brazil. Salvador was one of my favourite cities and we spent 5 days there exploring the Afro-Brazilian culture and spent an extra two days in the small nearby beach towns of Imbassai and Praia do Forte. I'd skip the former but loved the latter, even though it was super touristy. We then flew all the way across to the Cuiaba where we started our 3 day tour into the Pantanal, large wetlands area known for wildlife. Due to it being the wet season (March), this was a dissapointment as there are more chances of seeing Jaguars and other cool animals in the dry season. I wished we'd saved our money instead and went to Bonito instead to see the wild macaws and do the fish swim instead. We then flew to Iguassu Falls and spent one full day on the Brazilian side and the next on the Argentinian side. Do both sides and do the boat ride as well. It's really really fun! Note: We applied for our Brazillian visa's in Australia a month before leaving.

Argentina (March/April)

We spent 8 days only in Buenos Aires which was a good amount of time. We planned on spending some of that time in Mendoza, wine country. But since we absolutely fell in love with the food and culture of BA and don't love wine we ended up going straight from BA to Santiago. This was a 24 hour bus ride but going over the Andes along the way made it feel like more of a scenic tour and definitely recommended even if going through Chilean customs takes ages. We would love to come back one day and see more of Argentina and do Salta and Mendoza as well. We hear they are both lovely. But I would still go back to BA for some more amazing steak. Note: You have to pay a $100 reciprocacy fee and print out the receipt before entering the country.

Chile (April)

We spent 12 days in Chile, 5 of those in Pucon. Stunning volcanoes and lakes with amazing friends, we had such a good time and I just wish we had more time to go further South to Patagonia and do the W trail in Torres del Paine but I hear that is a trip in itself and by April it would have been way to cold for unprepared travelers that  we are. We also spent four days in the northern tip in San Pedro doing daily tours in the Atacama desert. Our favourites were the salt lagoons and the Space tour. From there we started our four day tour to the Bolivian salt flats.

Bolivia (April)

I couldn't really enjoy Bolivia due to altitude sickness but the tour to the salt flats had some stunning scenery and of course the salt flats themselves are so special. We also then spent 2 days in La Paz and 2 days in Lake Titicaca. This was enough and I really can't say I overly enjoyed htis part of the trip.

Peru (May)

We spent just under 3 weeks in Peru and honestly I could have spent more. Such a stunning country with so much to do and great on the budget too. We spent two days acclimatising in Cusco before doing a 5 days Inca Trail trek with G adventures which was hard but infinitely rewarding. Another two days in Cusco afterwads recuperating and then two days in Lima, exploring the ceviche in Miraflores. We spent two days in Ica visiting the oasis town of Huacachina and sandboarding (exhilirating) and one day in Paracas looking at sea lions and penguins. Then another two days back in Lima, this time in Barranco district which is a bit less touristy and more interesting then Miraflores. 

Ecuador (May)

A 28 hour bus from Lima is the city of Guayaquil where we booked our Galapagos tour. This was such a stress point for me but worth it. We originally wanted to squeeze Columbia in before we went to Galapagos but realised that we wouldn't really be giving Columbia the days it deserved plus we weren't sure how long it would take to find a good Galapagos tour and didn't want to risk not having enough time to do it. So Columbia went on the 'next time' list. We spent two days organising the tour, one exploring the city and two days in Playas on the beach and checking our dolphins in the mangroves at El Morro. Honestly, with all the amazing wildlife and beaches that awaited at Galapagos we could have skipped Playas but we had time to kill. We spent 2 weeks in Ecuador but the best part was the Galapagos, the only major tour we did that not only met but far exceeded expectations. We spent 7 days at Galapagos with two of those in transit on flights. This was the perfect amount of time that allowed us to see everything without getting excessively expensive and repetitive. We only had one full day in Quito to visit the equator for a science lesson before we flew out to Los Angeles, USA. 

Being nocturnal in Buenos Aires

I love Buenos Aires. I´m just putting it out there and then I´ll tell you the reasons why. It´s often described in guidebooks as the Paris of the Southern Hemisphere. The first thing I noticed was how really European the buildings were, very old and grand. It´s a beautiful city just to stroll around. Secondly I noticed how delicious all the food looked from the patisserie windows, I just knew that the things were looking up for my sad stomach.

The other very distinctive characterisitic about BA is the incredible night life. People are out and about in the middle on the day carrying on with their normal business and then all the restaraunts shut down in the afternoon and don´t open again til about 8pm. And even then that´s considered an early dinner. I was dying of hunger the first night, wandering the streets looking for something that was open. The locals or portenos are night owls and don´t usually eat til 9 or 10pm and then they stay out til 5 or 6am. This is a completely foreign concept to Kevin and I and we were usually in bed by 11pm for our first week in BA whilst our most of our rooomates stumbled in at all hours throughout the night.

The Argentinan tango is a slow, senusous dance and is omnipresent in BA. Steak and tango. The two things you just have to experience in BA. There are a lot of tango shows on offer but they are expensive and often too touristy. Last night we went to a milonga, a half bar half dance hall where locals and a few experienced tourists would go to strut their stuff on the dance floor. We went to La Catedral and it had an awesome ambience, dark and a bit mysterious. They´re amateurs but some of them a REALLY good and there was this old couple their who were all dressed up, moving gracefully arond the dancefloor, eyes closed, just enjoying each other and the tango. I wished with all my being that Kevin and I could be that couple one day, it was so romantic.

We were determined to be true protenos for at least one night and party til the sun came up. We had some respectable thai food at 9pm, then headed to La Catedral til 2am and then danced the rest of the night away at a club. Mind you it was a Tuesday night but the club was packed and we danced the night away. So we stumbled home proudly at 5am and crashed for 3 hours til we had to wake up for our free breakfast. We were a bit messed up but then so was everyone else in the hostel. It´s nice to fit in.

How to buy money on the black market in Argentina

When we were in Brazil we were on a tour with a pair of Argentinian girls who had to buy souvenirs for their friends back home but needed a place that would take credit cards. In my ignorance I asked them why they didn't just take money out from an ATM as we were at a market and cash would be a lot easier to manage. They told me that due the economic crisis in Argentina (which started in 1999) it was very hard for Argentinian people to buy foreign currency. If you were to go on a holiday elsewhere and needed some of their currency you would have to lodge a form that would give you a certain amount. Even paying by credit card overseas is an instant 15% fee. It sounded like a really frustrating process for Argentinans.

Before we arrived in Brazil, there was a lot of talk at our hostel about the best way to obtain Argentinian Pesos. If you get it from outside the country or even inside at an ATM or a regular exchange office you will get the official rate whch is US$1:AR$5(ish). You shouldn't do this.

Rather, we followed the advice of a lot of other travellers and got Brazilian reals from an ATM, took it to a local exchange office or 'cambio' and swapped it for US dollars. Now the exhange rate was lower than what we get normally in Australia but even with this loss it was still worth it. 

Once you're in Argetina you sell your US dollars on the black (or blue) market. This is a lot easier than it sounds, you just find a guy who would be calling out "Cambio, cambio, cambio" and ask him what his rate is. The best rate we got was US$1:AR$8.25 which if you exchange $800 is a significant increase in your spending money compared to the official rate. He then takes you to a random building, up three flights of stairs into a tiny booth where someone else does the exchange.

It sounds a bit dodge (and it is!) but everyone does it and in downtown Buenos Aires on Florida Street (heaps of people, very safe) you will find that you can't walk two metres without someone calling out to you "Cambio, cambio, cambio, I give you a good rate! More so for us because we stick out like sore thumbs everywhere we go in South America.

Just make sure that you just start off with small amount of money to check that everything is ok and check the notes for a watermark so you don't get stuck with counterfeit money. The next time bring a larger amount of money like $500 and you will get a better rate. The first time we did it we got 8 pesos per dollar but the second time we got 8.25, and after negotiating with at least a dozen guys this was the highest it ever got.

So now I can exchange money like a pro and we are living the high life in Buenos Aires.Considering food here has been pretty cheap and the metro is 30c per ride,  our budget is looking a lot better than it did in Brazil. I think as head financial officer, my brain will explode once we reach Boliva where you get can meals for $1 or less.



All this deliciousness for $5.



Nature at its best - Iguassu Falls and the Pantanal

So after our relaxing time in Salvador (which at one point involved way too many free caprinhnas) we flew to Cuiaba in which our two day tour in the Pantanal began. Four hours later including half road half dirt roads and a boat trip were at our lodge in the middle of the Pantanal. 

The Pantanal is a very large wetlands area like the Everglades and is rich with plant, animal and birdlife. We were hoping to see Jaguars, monkeys, tapirs, anteaters and giant otters. However in the two days there we only saw a group of capochine monkeys, capybaras and caimans though there was a great variety of birds, the most impressive being the gigantic jabiru stork which is nearly as tall as me. It was a nice experience but I would recommend anyone going to go in the dry season where water is more scarce and hence animals concentrate in smaller areas making them easier to spot. We went in the height of the wet season where high waters made animals hard to find and limited the walking treks. Overall a bit dissapointing considering how obsecenely expensive the tour was - AU$2200 for 2 nights and $1000 to fly to and from Cuiaba. Next time we will definitely do more research when doing these eco trips.

What certainly was not a dissapointment was our next stop - Iguassu Falls. Twice as wide as Niagra and taller, these falls are the second largest in the world. There is the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side so it takes two days to cover them both. The Brazilian side only takes 2-3 hours and there you get a scope of just how wide they are with a trek taking at least half hour to see the whole thing. Then you stand on a platform overlooking the ledge and the deafening noise of the falls gives you an indication of just how powerful they are. If you  were to stand under one you surely would be pulverised to smithereens.

We took an organised tour to the Argentian side for AU$100 each  which means they organise going through customs for you. The Argentinian side has a lot of different views including one that is spectacularly close to the 'devils throat'. I'm pretty sure I saw Katrina Roundtree and her camera crew there as well. On this side we were also able to do a boat road which took us so close to the falls that everyone on the boat in excitement (and fear) and we all got soaked. So much fun! One guy had his glasses knocked right off his head.

We took a luxurious bus out of Brazil into Argentina. This bus included almost fully reclining seats, full meals and champagne. However I couldn't really enjoy any of this as I was really nauseous and eventually threw up in the bathroom and fell asleep. In the meantime Kevin was happily chugging down free whiskey and watching Taken 2 in  Spanish. Oh woe is me! More next on Buenos Aires.