I just finished up a week of biking around the Alentejo region of Portugal, on a tour with Bike Tours Direct of the USA and Turaventur of Portugal. (Watch for a story later in Perceptive Travel.)

Sometimes you can’t hit a country at the exact right time because of school or work schedules, but when you do, it’s a glorious thing. I’ll let the photos do the talking, but to say I saw a few million flowers would be a gross underestimate. This was an especially rainy winter in Portugal and that translated to plenty of wildflowers in the spring. As in a record number of them.

So not only was I biking along country roads at the perfect time weather wise (pleasant warm weather, not too hot, no rain), but I got a big floral bonus on top. Clean air perfumed by roses. And orange blossoms. And dozens of different fragrant flowers.

In the Alentejo region of Portugal, there’s not much traffic either, especially mid-week in the spring. So much of the time the only sounds were chirping birds. When a rare car was coming, I heard it well in advance.

Later I’ll do a post on prices in Portugal. It’s a good deal all around for mid-range travelers, especially compared to the rest of Western Europe. Backpackers have a lot of advantages here, but have to work at it a bit on finding cheap places to eat out.

We were on the Castles and Wine tour in Alentejo, so I can tell you the wine here is a real steal. One of the best values I’ve seen anywhere in the world. And a lot of the castles are free. More on that later…

It’s time for another collection of the best travel stories on the web, from the award-winning webzine Perceptive Travel.

One of the features is mine this time, a piece on getting to the roots of good coffee by visiting farms where the beans are grown. Come along for the ride to Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia in Alert in the Americas.

On Ontario’s remote Moose Factory Island, where the Cree First Nation is cautiously courting tourism, Carolyn Heller learns that there’s more to see than the “sights.” See Going Where No Roads Go in Ontario.

Lea Aschkenas heads into the Amazon jungle of Ecuador and fights discomfort and insects to appreciate the teeming life around her.

Graham Reid checks out some new and noteworthy world music. Afro-soul, Indo-jazz, desert blues, and “Autotune goes to Africa.”

Travel book reviews from William Caverlee include Encounters from a Kayak, Food Lover’s Guide to the World, and On This Earth, A Shadow Falls.

As usual, we’re giving away some cool travel gear as well. Last month someone scored a new pair of hiking shoes from Wolverine. This month we’re giving away a whole Travelling Light package from Sea to Summit. The winner will take home a daypack that compresses down into a tiny pouch, a mesh laundry bag, Travelling Light See Pouches, and a travel wallet. If you’re on our newsletter list already, check your inbox or bulk folder. If not, sign up here to get in on the action next time. You can also follow Perceptive Travel on Facebook and watch for the contest questions.

Southern Bolivia

A few years back I wrote an article for Transitions Abroad that I updated this month: Budget Travel in South America.

It’s not meant to be a comprehensive country-by-country rundown, but rather a strategy guide to where your money will stretch and what you can expect to pay in general terms. Then at the end there are some resources to turn to for more specifics.

Traveling on a budget in this region has gotten a lot more complicated since I did the first version of that article five years ago. Argentina has become a fiscal basket case again and on top of that they added a reciprocal visa fee that’s payback for what we charge them to enter our own countries. A family of four would now pay around $560 before exiting the airport. This same fee is in place in Chile, Bolivia, and Brazil, which is probably part of the reason those countries get far fewer visitors than Peru, Ecuador, and now Colombia.

Cartagena, Colombia

If you watch financial news regularly, you’ll know that the resource-based economies around the world have been on a roll. Those that have lots of things to extract from the ground have seen their economies boom. In the developed world that means places like Canada and Australia. In South America it means Peru, Chile, and Brazil. Those latter two have gotten far more expensive when their currencies appreciate and Brazilians are now the free-spending travelers of the Americas, buying up a storm wherever they go. (And saving Argentina’s tourism industry in the process.) Colombia has been on a roll—too much of one actually. The government is frantically buying dollars to slow down the appreciation of its currency.

So where would I say you should go if you wanted to backpack through South America for a few months or more? I’d say you should fly to Central America first, because you can do it more cheaply with money or miles, then make your way through Panama and either fly or take a boat to Colombia. Spend a few weeks in semi-expensive Colombia, then go overland to Ecuador and watch your money instantly buy twice as much. (Except liquor and wine, which just doubled in price there this year.)

Chivay, Peru

You’d then continue down to Peru, hitting the highlights in a leisurely fashion from north to south, then enter Bolivia via Lake Titicaca. You’d make your way overland down to the Salar de Uyuni, spend some time around there, then bus it over to Salta in Argentina. Go overland to Iguazu Falls and then Buenos Aires, taking a detour to Uruguay somewhere along the way by land or ferry. Then take a series of very long bus rides down to Bariloche. Explore Patagonia there and in Chile, then fly up to Santiago. From there if you still have money left, you could spend some time in wine country and Valparaiso in Chile or fly to Brazil for some coastal time. Or head home, or back to Central America, or Mexico.

They key in all of this is to take your time! Distances between many of these locations are vast. Chile end-to-end is the distance of the west coast of the U.S. to the east coast, to give you an idea. These bus trips are so long you get a sleeping berth. You can cut off a lot of time flying, but domestic flights are no bargain except for a few routes like La Paz to Sucre. Trying to be a box-checking, bucket-listing, country-counting flashpacker is going to cost you far more money and part of your sanity.

For a country-by-country breakdown of these destinations and others around the globe, pick up a copy of the new 4th edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations.

I’m currently in Santa Catalina, Panama, a surfer magnet on the Pacific Coast. I’ve got Panama listed as an “honorable mention” in my book because some things are a bargain, especially outside the capital, but this is a country with a booming economy—as in 10.5 percent growth last year. Most people aren’t rich here, especially outside the capital business district, but the middle class is large and getting bigger each year. Plus half the wealth of pre-Chavez Venezuela has seemingly landed in Panama City.

You could come to Panama and do nothing but kick back and party on the cheap. This is, after all, one of the cheapest places in the world to knock down some drinks. Almost nothing is taxed heavily here, including booze. But if you want to do the things most leisure travelers come here to do, you have to splurge a little now and then.

Back to Santa Catalina, where you can get a hostel bunk for $10 or less a block from the beach or get a private room for $15-$25. The thing is, if you want to get out to Coiba Island, where all these photos were taken, you’ll pay $50 a person for a boat of six people. It’s not that they’re ripping you off: it’s 37 miles to the island and gasoline is a tad more here than it is in the U.S. You need a few guys along as well, including at least one who can speak English. Plus park permits.

So if you want to get the full experience, you need to pay more than the proverbial $50 a day that Nomadic Matt lays out in his book I reviewed a while back. As he admits, sometimes you’ll go over for a good reason, so you need to make up for it later (or, I would add, have a splurge budget in addition to start with).

Being here brought me back to an experience I had as a round-the-world backpacker in the late 1990s. My wife and I had spent nearly six disappointing, sometimes grueling weeks in the Philippines, with only flashes of good memories to show for it. Overall, we were dejected and ready to high-tail it out of there to somewhere more attractive. When we finally got to El Nido in Palawan though, our moods brightened considerably. Beauty, better food, a decent cheap hotel. But the price for a boat tour of the islands and lagoons—$40 each in late 90′s dollars—was really going to thrash our budget for the week.

We debated, we hesitated, but in the end we threw down the cash and went out on our boat tour. It was by far the highlight of our last month in the country. A day of unsurpassed beauty and one postcard-perfect stop after another. Thankfully we had the sense to step up and go.

You won’t remember what you did with the $40 or $50 you saved once by skipping something when you’re 80 and looking back on your life. Or probably even what you spent for the splurge. You will remember the great times you had.

Take a hit of the April issue of Perceptive Travel and you might reach enlightenment. Or at least be entertained.

We’ve got weirdness all around this time, starting with a story about an archaeological site in Panama where the caretakers believes it’s really a place the aliens visited way back when. See What to Do About Barriles?

James Dorsey is back with another tale of stumbling into a village in Africa and finding himself the instant elder. He wants to buy a souvenir pipe. They just want him to smoke khat with them. So it’s time for Passing the Pipe in Ethiopia.

Anja Mutic makes her debut with a tale about her first trip to India—and therefore her first impressions—being part of a luxury travel press trip designed to only show the edited version of the country. See India of Light and Darkness.

Naturally we’ve got the scoop on new books and music worth checking out, so see the April travel book reviews from Susan Griffith and the April world music reviews from Laurence Mitchell.

Win some travel gear!

Each month we give away something cool to someone who follows the webzine via the monthly e-mail newsletter or the Facebook page. See links for both on the home page and enter. Last month two readers won a nice new Armitron watch and this month we’re giving away some $100+ hiking shoes from Wolverine. What are you waiting for?