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.

The general public is starting to come around to the idea that Colombia is no longer some scary place you should avoid in your travels. Most of them still don’t know though how really unbelievably great Cartagena is.

No, this is not one of the world’s cheapest destinations. Far from it actually since Cartagena has the bulk of Colombia’s true luxury hotels and an array of great restaurants. But if you compare it to some equally picturesque city in Europe, it’s definitely a terrific value. Plus the Brazilians are coming to Colombia by the planeload for their vacations, so it’s definitely a better deal than there.

Here are a few photos to check out from the streets at night, just because that’s when I’ve been there thus far. I’m checking out what’s happening at a trade show called TravelMart Latin America and the business part of that is a convention center outside of town. My hotel is on the beach though—a nice trade-off. That’s another cool thing about this city: it’s got a gorgeous colonial center, but you can go swimming in the warm Caribbean waters too.

There aren’t a whole lot of places in the Americas where you’ve got an old city behind a surviving walled fortress. Campeche in Mexico, a wall left in St. Augustine in Florida, and then this one that’s absolutely huge. It’s all still there, holding strong, and you can walk along much of it, day or night. Grab a beer from a vendor that you’re welcome to drink on the street and stroll the ramparts. It’s cute to see smooching couples in spots where the cannons used to be mounted.

I flew on dreaded Spirit Air to get here, but it was around $450 from Tampa with all the damned fees, a mere two hour flight from Ft. Lauderdale and it’s on Central Standard Time: no jet lag to face. I’m coming back for sure, for vacation next time.

I feel like I’ve been studying Spanish for a very long time. This year I finally got some real traction.

You see, I started studying almost-worthless French in high school because I liked the way it sounded. I stuck with it after year one because I liked the people in my class. In nearly two decades of regular travel though, I’ve used it once: in Morocco. So most of it has now evaporated from my mind.

Spanish is a different story. You can use it from the Caribbean to Mexico to Central America and on down to Tierra del Fuego. (Not to mention Spain itself.) Sure, there are regional differences and changes in slang, but for the most part you can get by in all those places is you get the basics down. So I’ve been motivated from the start, knowing I’d use it in the real world.

Getting a Foothold in Learning Spanish

I started studying on my own when I first started visiting Mexico regularly eight years ago, popping Pimsleur Method cassettes then CDs into my car stereo and later putting the recordings on an iPod. I also picked up a few books, including Spanish for Gringos. My family spent five days in an immersion course in Antigua, Guatemala a bit later, which would have worked better if my teacher actually knew how to elicit and drill instead of just lecture and give me grammar rules.

I muddled along with occasional classes in Mexico, movies in Spanish, various books, and some software programs like Rosetta Stone and TellMeMore. In some ways these were the most efficient learning mechanisms apart from the Pimsleur recordings, partly because of the visuals and partly because of the repetitive reinforcement, which is important if you’re not a kid.

The real leap forward came from actually living abroad for a year. Apart from having a significant other speaking the target language, this is surely the best way to learn. Every time you step out your door you’re using the language, reading the signs, hearing the music. Unfortunately I didn’t step out the door as much as my non-working wife and school-going daughter since I had to keep earning a living—in English. So while I progressed a lot, they did even better. I think my daughter now speaks faster in Spanish than she does in English.

As technology has advanced, more options have come out to help you learn while on the move. I especially liked using Lo Mas TV and will probably keep returning to that in order to at least stay level. It’s a collection of music videos, documentaries, and TV shows from Spanish-speaking countries, with subtitles you can customize and the ability to slow down the speech without it going down in pitch. It comes with a monthly subscription fee, but is very cool—and entertaining.

Spanish Learning Apps

I also tried out a dozen or so apps on my iPod Touch, some useful, some not so much. The ones I kept coming back to were these. You can find them all at the iTunes app store.

Conjugation Nation/CN Spanish – A great practice app for verb conjugation, anytime where you’ve got 10 minutes to kill.

Spanish Touch Trainer – After you run through this twice it’s pretty useless, but those run-throughs are really helpful, with flow-chart style practice with sentence structure and proper verb tenses. I’m hoping they expand this to more advanced levels as it’s pretty nifty.

SpanishD!ct – a basic 2-language dictionary, but it lets you save words you don’t know to study and has a “word of the day.”

You can pick up all of these for a few bucks at the iTunes App Store

Find What Works for You

Everyone learns best in different ways. My wife is a big talker and loves group classes. I learn the fastest when there’s plenty of drilling and practice, not by listening to someone give lessons. My daughter did just so-so until she started watching cartoons in Spanish regularly, combined with playing with neighborhood friends who spoke zero English. Others get very frustrated until they pop in a good software program and then a lightbulb goes off.

It’s important to keep trying different things, though spending real time abroad works for almost everyone, if there’s some effort put into it to talk to locals instead of just hanging out with other expats. (I’ve met people who have lived in Mexico for 10 or 20 years and their Spanish is far worse than mine.)

I still get lost in conversations that move too quickly and I still feel hopeless sometimes while watching a TV show or movie. I’m still grappling with the strange word associations in my Mexican Spanish Slang book. But spending a year abroad finally got me to the point where I can speak in the past, present, and future with reasonable confidence. When I move back the next time, I’ll get more proper and study the subjunctive tenses…