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.

Last week I was in Bolivia and it was dirt cheap. (See this post with prices.) This week I’ve been in Chile and I’m paying more than I would at home. As soon as I crossed the border, most prices went up by a factor of four.

It’s kind of hard to get your head around this fact sometimes, but countries that are right next to each other can charge drastically different prices for travelers. Right now I’m talking about southern Bolivia and San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. But you can see this strange effect play out in the U.S and Mexico, Austria and Hungary, Singapore and Malaysia, Jordan and Israel, Belize and Guatemala. Step across a line and you go from poor to rich in a hurry. Or vice-versa.

I’ll go on record as saying there’s no such thing as doing “Atacama on the cheap.” San Pedro de Atacama is a cool little tourist town in the middle of a whole bunch of interesting things to see. It’s a great place to come on vacation, especially if you can stay in one of the fantastic all-inclusive places I did for a while (on a writing assignment) where everything is bundled together and you don’t have to think about it. If you’re on a long-term backpacking trip, however, and are watching the budget, look out!

This is an area where it makes no sense to come here if you can’t go on adventure excursions. Those cost $15 to $50 per person, so even doing two or three is going to cost you bigtime. On top of that you’ll pay as much for a coffee as you would at a Starbucks at home, you’ll pay as much for a fruit shake as you would at Smoothie King, and you’ll pay more for a beer than you would in your local pub.

Even at happy hour, a cocktail is more than 9 dollars.

When I went from Bolivia to Chile, ice cream went up by a factor of five, meals by a factor of four, taxi rides by a factor or four, drinks by a factor of four, and hostel/hotels by a factor of three. Same with souvenirs. You could plausiby argue that the food is much better, but the other things are the same—they just cost more. One country is poor, the other is not. Prices reflect this—even the public toilet prices.

Here are the very few pieces of advice I could conjure for saving a few bucks in the Atacama Desert:

1) Rent a bike.
You can rent a bicycle here, with lock and helmet, for around $6.50 for a half day, $12 a full day. There are a few attractions you can reach by bike on your own if you get good directions, including the Cejar salt lagoon. Plus if you follow the main Caracoles street a few blocks to the west you’ll find an awesome area for mountain biking.

2) Take a local bus to Calama.
Lots of agencies sell expensive transfers to the airport in Calama. But the local bus is a shade over $5 and is comfortable. You’ll have to catch a cab on the other end though, which will cost more than the bus.

3) Bring a water purifier.
Bottled water is more expensive than in your home country and you’ll go through gallons of it in this dry, high-altitude weather. Locals drink the tap water and though that’s probably not a great idea for you, a UV filter will render it fine for even the most sensitive stomachs.

4) Pick your excursions carefully.
It costs $15 to $40 per person to do most any excursion from San Pedro, so obviously you can’t do everything on the long list of menu items. If you’ve been to geysers elsewhere, the ones here probably won’t give you much of a thrill, especially when sharing them with 200 other tourists. Same for the flamingos. If you live in Arizona, a cactus hike is probably a huge waste of money. If you live in Utah or Israel, salt lagoons are probably not a big thrill. Decide which options truly get you excited and sign up for those.

5) Go see the stars.
It’s free to see more constellations that you may have ever seen in your life. And from a different southern viewpoint. The middle of town won’t cut it though, so head out to a darker place, then look up to see a thousand twinkling suns.

For those who want to get straight to the superlatives, Bolivia is still the cheapest country to visit in South America—if you’re staying long enough to offset the exorbitant visa fee for some nationalities.

Bolivia is my last stop in updating the upcoming 4th edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, out the first week of January. I’m not going to do a full-blown “Travel prices in…” post here because after a few days on my own in Sucre and Potosi, I joined up with an organized tour that went off the grid for five days. That was in the area around the alien Salar de Uyuni salt flat and in the little-visited region between there and Chile.

But to give you an idea of prices, I’ve put some examples below for illustration. Here’s the catch though: like a few other countries in South America, Bolivia makes itself feel better by following a tit-for-tat policy on visa fees. If the USA charges Bolivians $135 to apply for a visa, with all the security checks and interviews that entails, then by God Bolivia is going to charge Americans the same, even though there are no background check expenses. The money is just pocketed, amounting to a tourist tax. So factor that into your budget if you’re from the U.S., Canada, Australia, and some others. Check your own state department website.

I have been seeing loads of backpackers here, especially from the countries that don’t have to pay a high fee to visit. So the infrastructure for budget travelers is good, with plenty of cheap hotels, backpacker tour companies arranging adventure excursions, and restaurants/bars aimed at travelers. You might not want to make this your first stop though: La Paz is the highest capital in the world and Potosi is more than 12,000 feet. Brutal if you’re coming from sea level.

Sample travel prices in Bolivia, converted from Bolivianas to U.S. dollars:

My private room was $8.50 in Sucre (at Wasi Masi, booked through Hostelbookers). It had Wi-Fi, a private hot water bath, a desk, comfy bed, and breakfast. There was a TV/reading room as well, with a huge book exchange.

In Potosi there are only three hotels that charge more than $50 a night and in Uyuni, launching point for the salt flat, it’s hard to find a place that charges more than $40. Dorm beds in Bolivia are frequently $4 or less and many places have kitchens.

You can go online at an internet cafe for two or three hours for $1. A dollar will get you a 10-minute call home as well if you don’t use Skype.

The regular bus I took from Sucre to Potosi (three hours) was around $2.50 and had assigned seats. Had I been able to get a nicer first class one, that would have been around $5.

Laundry washed and dried is a dollar a kilo.

Set menu lunches are frequently $2 or less at simple restaurants, with $1 ones found in local markets.

Indulging your sweet tooth is cheap here. Two scoops on a cone at a good ice cream shop is 65 cents. Many ice cream novelties in a convenience store are less than 50 cents. Bolivia makes great quality chocolates for half what you’d pay in Bariloche and a fifth of what you would pay in Switzerland.

An empanada or some variation on the street is usually 50 cents or less. Packets of peanuts and bags of popcorn are 30 cents.

Drinking here is less of a bargain. Typical bar prices are $1.50 to $3 for a beer of 300ml to a liter. Cocktails are $2 to $4. Wine from Chile or Argentina is about 1/3 less in the supermarket than you would pay in the U.S., but has less of a mark-up in restaurants. The sign above is for typical take-out prices, with $1 equal to 7 bolivianos.

Museum admissions seldom, top $1 unless there’s a guided tour included and many are free.

Stepping inside here will cost you dearly.

Every few years I put out a new edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations book. Number three came out in 2009 and for the most part is still pretty accurate in terms of prices, but I’m looking at making some roster changes for edition number four in 2012.

Bye-bye Turkey

I was hesitant to include Turkey in this last edition because both the exchange rate and prices had gotten steadily worse. But then their currency took a dive in 2008 and half that equation got better. I’m going to have to drop the country this time though for sure. As Lara Dunston noted in this great GranTourismo post on grocery prices where they stayed over the course of a year, “We were astounded at how expensive Istanbul has become.”

What will replace it in Europe? Probably Poland—it depends on what I find out in the course of first-person research. For Krakow, Lara said, “We never expected it would turn out to be the cheapest destination on our trip.”

Save it for a vacation/holiday

Leaving Out Morocco

Morocco is still a terrific value for the mid-range traveler on vacation, especially if you’re booking a package tour from Europe that includes airfare. For long-term travelers on a budget however, especially backpackers, it’s no longer the great deal it was five or ten years ago. It has simply gotten too popular with Europeans, who have flooded the main tourist cities and driven up prices—which are now often quoted in euros.

What will replace it? Probably Syria, but again I need to get some feet on the ground for price checks and see if the former trickle of western visitors has gotten any larger.

Not as cheery in Buenos Aires

Iffy Cheap Destinations

A few countries I’ve highlighted have gotten more iffy, but the main one I’m keeping an eye on is Argentina. Inflation has been quite bad there due to some inept government policies. Plus their decision to slap a reciprocal visa fee onto visitors arriving by air means a couple could pay more than $262 extra before they even step out of the airport. (Related post: Argentina says screw you to foreign visitors.)

I was a little worried about Hungary, but prices seem to be staying in check there due to economic problems there and in Europe in general. Thailand has gotten more expensive as the baht has risen in value, but it’s still a great deal, especially come lunch time.

What have you found in your travels? Any surprises to the upside or downside with your travel budget?

I get asked a lot of the same questions from the media, but I liked one particular question in this interview that went up last week on a budget travel site:

Does the average backpacker slumming it in the hostel have a more authentic experience than the elderly couple staying in hotels as they visit Europe for the first time?

If you’ve been a backpacker already and kept your eyes open, you probably already know the answer to this is “no way.” Backpackers have a tendency to look down their nose at tourists dressed in nicer clothes, staying in nicer hotels, and taking the best transportation from place to place. Going slowly is great, but there is a very real danger of missing a whole lot by being too cheap. Here are 8 signs you’re probably getting a less authentic experience than those short-term vacationers.

1. You haggle with a shopkeeper or taxi/tuk-tuk driver for 10 minutes over what would be the cost of a pack of gum at home.

2. You take the hellish basement room with dirty sheets and leaky plumbing over the sunny clean one with a balcony because that will save you one dollar.

3. You don’t know what well-made local food with the best ingredients tastes like because you’ve only eaten at cheap market stalls and backpacker cafes.

4. You went to Jordan and skipped Petra because the entrance fee was too expensive. (Substitute Cambodia/Ankor Wat, Peru/Machu Picchu, India/Taj Mahal, France/Louvre, Mexico City/Teotihuacan, etc. etc.)

5. You passed up the souvenir you really loved and would have cherished forever because that $10 would have put you over your budget. (Meanwhile, what’s your bar-hopping budget?)

6. You’ve had the runs for three weeks straight because you don’t want to spend the money to go see a doctor.

7. You spend more daylight hours in your hostel/guesthouse than you do visiting museums or attractions that cost money.

8. You’ve never hired a guide, visited a local history museum, or bought a book about the country you’re visiting.

* Feel free to insert your own numbers 9 and on below in the comments…

[Bangkok Flickr photo by Allie_Caulfield]