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.

That’s been a common question in Peru and on message boards for the past year, often voiced in frustration after finding out the the answer is…yes.

You see, ever since I wrote this Saving Machu Picchu article in Transitions Abroad’s print magazine back in 2005, local officials and the private sector have been trying to nail down a limit on the daily number of visitors to South America’s most famous attraction. It was the typical “responsible tourism” vs. “profit above all else” interests battle and after six years, the former finally won. The number thrown out in the beginning—2,500 visitors a day—is what stuck.

Despite all the time to plan, the implementation was a mess and a year later it’s still a mess. In a sensible world you’d be able to go online, buy a limited number of tickets with a credit card, and print them out or show a UPC on a smart phone to pick them up. Alas, they forgot to set up a fraud prevention system and got burned. So you need a whole article on how to actually get these tickets. Thanks to the BBC for laying it all out here:

Securing Tickets to Machu Picchu

If you’re going on an organized tour, including an Inca Trek hike, you probably don’t have to worry about this as it’ll be folded into the cost. If you’re an independent traveler arriving in high season (May through September) however, stop 1 should be the Instituto de Cultural Nacional de Cusco located off the Plaza de Armas in Cusco or the Machu Picchu Cultural Center in Aguas Calientes. See the article for links.

In the low season, there are many days they don’t hit that 2,500 limit, so you can relax a bit and even get them the day of sometimes. Otherwise, plan ahead.

This bucket list wonder of the world is going to cost you, so set aside the bucks. It’s 128 soles, which at current exchange rates is around $49.

It’s not even Spring yet, but you have to set your clock forward an hour on Sunday if you live in most of the USA. This early start (and late finish in Autumn) is a remnant from the G.W. Bush era. It was pushed as an energy saver (hasn’t worked), but was almost surely lobbied through by the golf and tourism industries. To the detriment of parents with school-aged kids everywhere…

But this post is not a rant. Just a collection of useful and entertaining stuff to read over the weekend in case it’s not warm enough to be outside enjoying life where you live.

If you want to get somewhere else on the cheap, Budget Travel has a great rundown on the six best budget bus lines in the United States. These serve a defined area of population centers, so think New York to Boston, not Kansas City to Boise.

Here’s another reason to be annoyed with cruise ships: not one of the lines thought of as American companies pays a cent in U.S. corporate taxes.

I’ve written before about the dangers of being cheap to the point of ridiculous when traveling and BootsnAll generated a hot debate on the subject with this article on cheap vs. budget travel. I like the elegant follow-up on the Vagabonding blog though, from a long-term traveler who gets by on $10 a day by going slower and integrating more with the locals.

Barbara at Hole in the Doughnut has a good rundown on Cusco, Peru at different budget levels, including a $10 a night hotel and two vegetarian restaurants. More importantly, there’s current information on Machu Picchu and Peru Rail that’s probably more reliable than what most guidebooks have in them right now. There have been some changes at both in how/why you get advance tickets.

Want to know what it’s like to climb a volcano in Sumatra, Indonesia? You can see the story and photos on the Vagabonding Life blog by following that link. I actually did this hike many years ago and it’s not a very hard one—so a good place to do your first one to see if you like the experience.

Here’s an article I did for ExpertFlyer on places where the dollar exchange rate is constant.

Should a cough drop be lecturing you to suck it up and quit your whining just because you’re sick? Halls apparently thinks so with the motivational text on their wrappers.

[Photo from the Vagabonding Life blog]

I don’t do as much freelance writing as I used to since I’m busy enough running my online media company’s own blogs and websites, so I’ve gotten kind of slack about putting up links to travel stories I’ve written for other publications. Catch-up time now for ones from Peru and Mexico.

A few years back I won a voucher from tour company Viator that I eventually used for an excursion in Puerto Vallarta. That initial correspondence led to me doing a bunch of stories for their blog over the years though and here are two that came out recently.

Out-of-the-ordinary Peru: Ballestas Islands and the Nazca Lines

Watery Mexico City on the Canals of Xochimilco

The one print magazine I still write for on a regular basis is Global Traveler. Here’s the destination feature of mine they published recently on Mexico City:

Mexican Gusto

The print version is much prettier of course, but you need to be a subscriber or pick it up on a newsstand or in an airport lounge for that.

Next up? I’m doing the book reviews in the next issue of Perceptive Travel, coming out this Sunday.

This in-room ad from Evian is a common one in chain hotels. Some supply a couple of plastic water bottles for free, even when the tap water is fine. Others charge you for it. Some do both, which was the case with this hotel in Lima, Peru. There was a bottle of the local brand for free, or this Evian one for 24 soles: that’s more than $8 U.S.

To put things in perspective, within a few blocks you could buy a whole lot of things for $8: a 3-course meal, going online at an internet cafe for 12 hours straight, a good bottle of wine, a bottle of rum, a good cigar, a taxi to central Lima from Miraflores, a hostel bed, more than 20 bus rides, or an Inca Kola t-shirt.

Here’s the kicker though. The note on the ad, in both English and Spanish, says you don’t even need this product. “Our hotel’s water is 100% drinkable but we also recommend you to enjoy the healthy taste of evian natural spring water.”

Or course that’s a lie. Evian water is not healthier than any other purified water and if you add in the environmental impact of processing it and transporting it across the Atlantic Ocean, using fossil fuel at every step it’s very very unhealthy. And that’s before the plastic goes into a landfill, to stay for centuries or more.

This is so wrong.

If you want to be healthy, and more wealthy, don’t spend money on bottled water in single-use plastic bottles. It’s indulgent madness. Carry a water purifier and your own bottle.