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Big Trip Summary & Statistics: Month #6
Half a year. Woah. It’s hard to believe it, but Mac & I have been traveling for over six months now. I’ll be doing a full recap soon, but for now, here’s our stats for month #6.
Numbers Breakdown
Number of Countries: 2 – Peru & Bolivia
Number of Cities/Regions: 7 – Arequipa, Puno, Copacabana, Isla del Sol, La Paz, Sucre, Uyuni & the Salt Flats
Number of Beds Slept In: 9, plus one overnight bus
Number of Border Crossings: 1 – Puno to Copacabana
Number of Free Beers at Adventure Brew Hostel: too many…
Highs & Lows
Highest Altitude: the summit of Mount Chacaltaya (5395m above sea level!)
Lowest Temperature: –14C on our Salar de Uyuni tour.
Highest bird sighting: the soaring Condors in the Colca Canyon.
Lowest Picture: lying on the ground in Salar de Uyuni to get the perfect perspective shot.
Highest Sleeping Altitude: the 2nd night on the Salar (4400m)
Lowest Emotion: realizing I lost my point & shoot (and waterproof!) camera 😦
Budget Totals
All figures in USD
Lodging: $172.85 (keeping in mind that we had 2 weeks of free accommodation!)
Food: $396.38
Entertainment: $10.34
Activities: $319.18
Transportation: $114.97
Miscellaneous: $83.92
Total: $1097.63
This works out to a total of $18.29 per person, per day.
Note: This budget breakdown does not include our storage unit monthly rental fee, travel insurance, or ATM & bank fees.
This was hands-down the lowest amount of money we’ve ever spent in one month. For comparison, our next cheapest month was Month #4 and we spent around $34 per person per day. The fact that we worked at the bar in La Paz for two weeks definitely lowered our spending a huge amount. It also helped that Bolivia was a fairly inexpensive country in which to travel. The Uyuni tour was extremely affordable, as well as was the Chacaltaya & Valle de la Luna day trip.
What’s Next
The start of Month #7 directly coincides with a brand new country (#8), Chile! From what we’ve heard from other travelers, Chile is quite the opposite of Bolivia and we can expect to see the precious dollars we saved go right down the drain with high food & accommodation prices. We’ve hopefully lined up another hostel volunteering gig which would be awesome for stretching the budget a bit further.
One huge thing that we’ll be doing (hopefully) soon is finally buying flights to New Zealand! The ideal city to fly from is Santiago, so we’ve signed up for airline newsletters and are stalking sites like Cheapoair, Skyscanner and FlightNetwork to try and find a deal on these crazy expensive flights! Mac did an exchange in 3rd year of university and studied in NZ for 6 months, and he’s been dying to go back ever since. While I’ve been easily lured to the country from his stories as well as the insanely beautiful pictures of NZ that fill the internet. It’s hard to believe that we’ve practically reached the end of our ‘official’ game plan since leaving Canada, but I’m so stoked for what’s coming up on the horizon!
P.S. Check out more of my monthly round ups!!:
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