Life on the Road Part 2: The Budget

Bunches of new pictures up, and here's a nice looooong post especially for the Math Nerds in our families.

While on our journey we have met a lot of new people who inevitably realize that we are traveling for an extended period of time, and in turn we have encountered a good mix of reactions. Some people recall the time they went on a year long trip; others will joke about how jealous they are. However, one reaction which we have experienced regularly is “You must be rich!” or the even better cousin reaction of “ Your parents must be rich!” We count ourselves very fortunate to be able to able to travel this way; however, we have never really considered ourselves, or our families, RICH. We thought this would be a good time to lift the veil as to how we are still out here after 10 months and, as our parents can testify, have not visited Western Union once.

Before anything else is said, this trip has forced us to acknowledge how lucky we really are. Seeing the poverty of some of these countries has put our lives into perspective. We are rich, not only with our bank accounts, but the fact that we were able to attend higher education and have had good employment history. That said, you don't need to be Donald Trump or anywhere close to travel long term. The biggest factor in traveling long-term is to recognize that it's not a vacation. We had to adjust our expectations from what most Americans consider vacation to be. We're not here splurging on all-inclusive packages or drinking expensive poolside cocktails (though we have our moments), we're here to live a traveling lifestyle that affords us a great deal of freedom, but one that is not unlimited, and that is very different than a typical week at Disney World.

Pre-trip Planning and Saving

Our financial planning for this trip began years ago when we came up with our first budget. Choosing the destination was the first major step. There are travel sites on the web that give good price estimates for visiting various countries. For example, you might see a range for Guatemala of $20-40 per day. Your actual expenses will depend on whether you stay at the cheapest place in town, cook every meal for yourself, and never do organized activities; or if you stay at a slightly nicer place, go out to eat occasionally, and take a few tours. We quickly realized that we would not been able to afford certain regions or countries this time around. You can get a night's accommodation in Nicaragua for the cost of one beer in England. We had to put many of our travel fantasizes on hold...bye bye Italy. We then took the estimates for parts of Central and South America, factored in our tastes/desires, and multiplied by the number of days that we wanted to travel for, and we had our first budget. However, we soon realized that we needed money to buy gear for the trip, for flights, for travel health insurance, for replacement gear, for gifts, for unforeseen expenditures (and how there has been a lot of those), and to come back and live on for a while. All said and done our budged tripled.

It took us a few years and a lot of hard work to be able to save up enough for us to feel comfortable. To meet our goals we not only had to change our perception of “vacation,” but we also changed our lifestyle at home as well. We chose to do without many of the things our friends and coworkers were doing. We cooked cheaply at home for most meals, brought our lunch to work, we became frequenters of thrift stores, we didn't buy a new car, and most importantly we decided not to buy property and instead rented an inexpensive apartment way below our income level. We did make a commitment to enjoy our time in Chicago and went out with friends or occasionally for dinner and a movie. This may have possibly delayed our departure a few months but it was completely worth it.

Keeping Track of It All

As soon as we started actively saving for our trip, we decided to keep matriculate details of our expenditures. Once we left, we continued with this habit. This has turned out to be one of the most valuable tools to keep us on track financially. Before we left we had a target Cost-Per-Day average that we hoped to reach by the end of the trip. We also had a range for that target number that we felt comfortable with, including an idea of what we could possibly do if we came back with a bare bones return fund.

While traveling we keep track of every credit card charge or ATM withdrawal and add it into our spreadsheets. We calculate how much we are spending per day for each month as well as our overall trip daily average. Now that we are far into our trip we've been calculating more detailed target averages for different return scenarios. Sounds exciting eh? We told you not everything we do out here is for fun.

When you are planning to spend $X per day over the course of the entire trip, you learn that this is a large average. One day you will be way over and the next way under. Forget about days, some months we are way over and some months we are under. We have also learned that large excursions only add pocket change to our daily average over the long haul, and that small expenditures can really add up! A fact that's become very important to our daily lives on the road.

When to Spend and When to Save

If you are taking a 2 week vacation, you want to enjoy yourself with as much as possible. Go to a nice resort, eat out, stay at nice hotels. However, when you are traveling long term on a tighter budget, the number one factor that can make or break your budget is the type of lifestyle you lead. We won't lie, it has been hard trying to figure our what works for us. When we started out on this trip we watched every single dollar. We tried to stay in the cheapest places, cook cheap meals, and walk everywhere. We have come to learn enough to be a bit more flexible and have personally found that we don't really want to do things as cheap as possible. We will pay an extra dollar to stay at a slightly better hostel or we will pay a few bucks to take a cab from the bus station if it is a mile walk. At the same time, we still have managed to live very cheaply by making smart sacrifices that fit what our travel goals are. Here are the details of many of the things that we do to keep the costs down, keep us out on the road longer, and make the trip a Permacation instead of a Vacation.

1. Cooking. Depending on the country we are in and what is available, we have consistently only spent between $1-$3 per person per meal on the entire trip by cooking our own meals instead of eating out at restaurants. In some countries we have found this to be more helpful than others. In Guatemala you can get a good dinner for only $4, while in Argentina you will be paying $12. Thus, in some countries we have gone out to eat more than others. We also take advantage of cheap deals when we can, like splitting obscenely cheap, very hearty set lunches offered in many Latin American countries.

2. Housing. Hostels have cost us between $4 and $20 per person per night depending on the quality and location. As mentioned before, we tend not to stay in the cheapest place, but we are still very conscious of the choices we make. In some areas we can share a private room for the same cost of two dorm room beds; however, in other countries, a private room might cost us both double that of a dorm room. Even in those cases; however, we will usually pay the extra $1 per night to stay in a dorm room with 4 beds instead of one with 10 beds.

3. Tours/Activities. One of the largest considerations for doing activities while on a trip of this length is what areas you will be traveling in the future. We purposefully put off white water rafting until we got to Honduras where it is known to be cheaper. We absolutely loved it and want to go again, but we are bypassing the activity in Argentina and waiting again until Peru when it will be a fraction of the cost. We have also chosen to go without some activities that were simply out of our price range (who really NEEDS to go skydiving). Most importantly, we have taken the time to research the cost of the activities we have chosen to do. Sometimes you can get a discount going with your hostel group, other times the price is almost double just to have them drive you there and buy your entrance ticket. Sometimes we get guides, sometimes we go it on our own. Regardless, we try to eventually experience all the activities we have been looking forward to, we just have to wait until the right time, place, and method.

4. Transport. This one is tricky because we have to get from point A to point B and sometimes we don't have much of a choice for the cost unless we want to hitchhike. There have been some countries were transport will make a difference. In Guatemala you can choose to take an expensive shared private shuttle ($10-$20) or take a public chicken bus with several transfers, longer travel times, and possible tight space ($1-$5). In Colombia we found that the long distance bus fares are negotiable. We would get a dollar or two off every ride and it would really add up. In Argentina, the bus costs are a large chunk of our budget. To minimize the effects we take the cheapest bus available, which generally means that our seats do not recline back as far as in the more expensive options and we are served basic meals, but then again we are not sitting next to livestock so we can't complain.

5. Simple Living. This is general but true. We keep shopping to a minimum: if it isn't in chocolate form, we don't have room for it. We constantly fix our clothes and supplies until they are falling apart and we are forced to replace. Most importantly, we tend to have low key evenings at the hostel hanging out with others instead of spending every night out at the clubs.

There are other ways to save a bundle if they fit your taste: camp instead of hostel, work or volunteer along the way, couchsurf, hitchhike or rideshare (safer in these countries than you think), or travel to fewer locations and stay in each for longer periods of time. We've met bunches of travelers who use one or more of these methods to save cash and stay on the road as long as possible... some people have been out for years (don't worry Mom, we're still coming home in May!).

Hope this helps clear things up. No, we did not win the lottery. No, we did not invest in Apple when we were 4 years old. And yes, it is possible for many of you to hit the road if you want to.

How to Earn a Big Steak Dinner

It's been a big adventure since coming to Patagonia. The towns are remote, the bus rides are long and bumpy, the scenery spectacular. We've had our hands full with outdoors activities and have really soaked up the amazing landscapes. We've arrived in the "Lake District" of Patagonia and it's pine trees and blue lakes and very beautiful.

It's hard to imagine that the scenery gets more dramatic but to put it plainly, it does. Our latest venture was a three day trek through National Park Nahuel Huapi outside the lakeside city of Bariloche. After a couple of chilled out days in the city preparing, we packed our big bags with camping food and sleeping bags and hit the trails.

Being without a tent or camping stove, Nahuel Huapi is a perfect park for us because there are several mountain refuges that house hikers, providing simple beds and cooking facilities. We hiked 26 miles over three days and slept both nights at different "Refugios." The scenery was incredible with jagged rock formations, lagoons formed by mountain runoff, turquoise rivers, and spectacular vistas. Many of the views we've seen on our hikes have been amazing, but here the mountains just felt more dramatic, the colors more vibrant, the hillsides steeper, and the water crisper. The weather was brilliant to boot.

The hikes themselves were fairly easy on days 1 and 3, but our 2nd day's hike was the hardest walk of our trip. For 7 hours we climbed and descended steep ridges, many times scrambling over rocks using our hands and feet, all with our heavy packs. As much hatred as this produced in Kendra's soul, and as much as our quads burned we were rewarded at each peak with incredible views out over the mountain range. The refuges themselves were also fun with hordes of hikers crammed into bunks, tables inside and out for resting the weary, and just great outdoorsy vibes.

When we got back to Bariloche, which is touristy but pleasant and lined with breweries and chocolate shops, we were ravaged and needed proper sustinence. What better time to get our first taste of traditional Argentine "Parrilla?"

Argentina is famous for wine and giant, high quality steaks and it was just what our tired bodies needed. We headed out to the best "Parrilla," ("grill") in town, and ordered two massive steaks and a big plate of fries in addition to our tasty bottle of wine. We were first served a bowl of freshly baked bread with Argentinian "Chimichurri" (olive oil and herbs). Our steaks were then cut fresh and prepared on the huge, traditional open grill and could not have been cooked more perfectly. There's no steak sauce, just a little salt to bring out the natural flavor of the meat which was indescribably good. We gorged and soaked up this essential Argentinian experience and one which we intend to repeat.

Then we went out for ice cream. Not a bad day at the office.

Life on the Road Part I: Living in Hostels

When you read our blog or look at our pictures, it seems like all we do is sight-see. It looks like we never cease having fun and every moment is perpetual neverending vacation-induced bliss. The truth is that we love our life on the road and we've obviously had and continue to have incredible experiences, but when you travel for so long there's a "real life" aspect that is largely behind the scenes of our blog, our pictures, and our emails to friends and family. After almost 10 months our life has become a routine that's quite different from our life back home, but it's still a routine.

We decided it would be fun and interesting to show you some of the less glamorous, though sometimes equally entertaining aspects of the way we live our life out here as long-term travelers over a couple of posts. We'll start with the issue of meeting our most basic need that we confront each day: where to sleep.

What's a Hostel?

The majority of the time we sleep in hostels. Hostels are not fancy hotels; they are designed with budget-travel in mind. They typically stand apart from hotels in that the vast majority of spaces are shared; many rooms are dormitory style with between 4 and 12 beds (bathrooms are usually communal as well), they have common living areas often with TV rooms, game tables, or bars, and most good ones will have a communal kitchen where guests can prepare their own food. They're a far cry from Caesar's Palace or even the Super 8. We spend most of our nights in hostels, although we have on occasion stayed at slightly nicer "hospedajes" (really cheap hotels) when we have traveled in very inexpensive countries.

The Good

While traveling in hostels is not for everyone, they possess an incredible number of advantages over typical hotels. The first and most obvious is the price. A dorm-bed on our trip has ranged from $4US - $17US per person, per night. Often for only a dollar or two more we splurge for a private room with a shared bathroom. Even a Motel 6 in the USA costs at least $40, and many vacationers easily spend hundreds of dollars a night just on their hotel. Some long-term travelers choose to camp a lot, but for those who like a warm bed with a mattress hostels are a great option.

In addition, common areas like living rooms, TV and game areas offer the opportunity to meet other travelers and make friends, essential when on the road for months at a time. If you are lucky, your hostel may have perks like hammocks, pools, gardens, or even pets. Many hostels have book exchanges where you can trade books you've finished for new ones (Kendra goes through about 4 books an hour, Rich is on his 4th book of the trip). Communal kitchens allow you to cook your own meals which not only saves you an incredible amount of money, but allows you to eat healthy. Traveler's leave leftovers in “free” baskets for others to use and we carry quite a bit of food with us from place to place. We eat the vast majority of our meals at our hostels, not out as we would on a typical vacation, and we have come to realize that a well-equipped kitchen is one of our major pre-requisites when choosing a hostel.

Finally, given that hostels are geared towards independent-minded travelers, they usually offer tons of valuable information. They provide info and directions for activities in their area, can help you book tours and onwards bus tickets and many will direct you to other good hostels in nearby popular cities and towns.

The Bad and The Ugly

While hostels have their pro's there are definitely bad and downright ugly characteristics as well. Cleanliness can be a major issue when you share space with dozens of strangers. We've seen some spotless hostels but also others that should be condemned even if they were situated in the furthest circles of Hell. A good example was our hostel in Tulum, Mexico that didn't have running water, toilet paper, or employees who cared to fix the problem. The hostel made up for these deficiencies, however, with a plethora of broken bikes and cockroaches.

After months on the road it's often tiring to not have your own personal space. Sharing bedrooms and a kitchen gets old after a while and isn't fun when you're frankly just not in the mood for it. Sometimes you just want your own couch, your own bed, and your own pots and pans. We counter this by getting private rooms when we can, mostly so we can throw our stuff everywhere, but in some places (like here in Patagonia), it's simply not affordable for us.

The social scenes at hostels are usually an advantage and we've met lots of good friends, but you also have to share space with people that just flat out annoy you. Some people bug you with their political views or their views about how every other traveler should "eat at 'XXX' restaurant" or "not miss 'YYY' town." The unsolicited advice gets old after a while, as does the same old "where ya from, where ya goin, how long ya been traveling" conversation. You also have the adults who haven't seemed to grow up enough to do their dishes or pick up their dirty laundry.

Other common problems we have in hostels are indifferent to flat out rude staff members, ill-equipped or dirty kitchens, false advertising and incorrect info. Fun times!

Even at the best hostels, we still face a host of small challenges that you would never think about at home. For example, when you are sharing a 10 bed dorm and 3 people are trying to catch a 4am bus, you are probably going to be woken up no matter how quietly they pull their toothbrushes out of their ziplocs. Or how you have to bag and label all your food in the hostel refrigerator; when you are in a busy hostel you have to play “find my white plastic bag” amongst 20 other white plastic bags to be able to eat your food – and sometimes it's simply disappeared.

How We Find and Pick Hostels

So how do you go about finding and picking a hostel? There are tons of websites that are literally hostel search engines, just like Orbitz or Expedia are for hotels. They contain reviews, pictures, and you can make reservations. We also frequent online message boards for independent travelers, but by far the most useful tactic is simply to talk to other travelers at your hostel who have been to where you're going.

We almost never book a hostel in advance. We find that pictures and reviews can be deceiving, so whenever possible we just show up in a city with a few in mind and take a look around. Here's our list of important criteria we always look for when finding a hostel:

- Clean!
- A well-equipped kitchen
- Good sociable atmosphere
- Internet access
- Friendly staff and good information

Our next "Life on the Road" post will focus on how we afford this craziness. Look for it in the next few weeks. Later kids!

El Calafate and El Chalten: Glaciers, Patagonian Deserts, and Jagged Peaks

We've been around so many beautiful areas it's hard not to snap a lot of photos, but they'll have to wait because it's a very slow connection here in the middle of the Patagonian internet void! But they're great so feel free to look forward to them...

Our next stop in Patagonia after Ushuaia was a short 18-hour ride away to the town of El Calafate. We had to cross in and out of Chile so the 4 border checkpoints were not fun. Despite all our recent pictures of snow-capped mountains, most of Patagonia is desert and it's barren, flat, and grassy and incredibly sparse of life except for the occasional herds of llamas, sheep, and what appear to be small ostrich (maybe they're emu's??).

El Calafate is a bunch of hotels and shops plopped into the middle of this desert, mainly here for tourists to access the major attraction of the area, the Perito Moreno Glacier. The glacier is absolutely massive and is one of the few glaciers in the world that is not currently receding. We took the bus out one afternoon to see the glacier, taking a boat trip to see it up close and then spending several chilly hours walking along the viewing platforms that have been built on the land opposite the edge. From the platforms you can see the glacier from all sorts of different angles, and the blue hues of the ice formations are amazing. The highlight though are the gigantic pieces of ice that break off a couple times an hour and plunge into the icy lake with crashes that sound like thunder, amazing. The water from the glacial lakes and rivers is also incredibly clear and is drinkable without any filtration or processing, we refill our water bottles right in the river during hikes.

El Calafate also sits alongside Lago Argentina, a giant emerald-green lake. Next to the lake is a bird sanctuary where we spent an afternoon just walking among the flowers, lagoons, and crazy birds flying around (including Flamingo's!). Other than it's proximity to the glacier, there isn't much happening in El Calafate besides an over-priced tourist drag and the sublimely beautiful surroundings of the desolate southern desert.

After a couple of days we headed 4 hours north to the hiking respite of El Chalten. El Chalten didn't even exist until 1985 making it the newest municipality in all of Argentina, but it was built as a hiking, trekking, and rock-climbing Mecca. It sits right in the shadow of several incredible jagged peaks, the most famous of which are Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, which we were lucky enough to have clear views of our first day here. Tired from the bus, we took a short walk out to a lookout point and soaked in the amazing mountains and warm breeze.

Our hostel is full of professional rockclimbers who bide their time waiting for weather good enough to scale these incredible rock formations, and El Chalten is one of the best places in the world to rock climb. It's also one of the most challenging, so we spent our time taking it easy with a couple of 8-hour hikes! Our first day we walked out to a lagoon at the base of a glacier, through wind battered forest. We arrived at the lagoon and were lucky not to be completely blow off the edge of the Earth, the patagonian winds here are just unbelievable! And that's coming from two people who spent several hours walking through a tropical storm in Guatemala.

The incredible wind never ceases but we wouldn't be deterred, we took another walk yesterday to a freezing cold, windy, rainy lookout point but had amazing views of Fitz Roy and the other peaks as well as a crystal blue glacial lake. The walk was one of the most spectacular we've done as far as the number of vistas we were able to take in, with lookouts over valleys and of mountains and wide river beds. We walked through the woods and over crystal clear rivers... simply beautiful.

Giving our legs a rest for a day or two before tackling some more and continuing to chip away at the distance between here and Lima... long way to go!

Patagonian Penguins

Our time in Ushuaia has unfortunately come to an end as we are heading north tomorrow to El Calafate to see a killer glacier. The last two days here have been wonderful, as we have made the most of this opportunity at the bottom of the continent. Yesterday we splurged and took the penguin island tour, which was one of the most unique experiences of our trip. We started off at 8am with a group of about 20 other tourists. The van drove about 1.5 hours through beautiful country roads. Towering mountains and lush forest scenes the entire way. Once we arrived to the ranch where our boat would be picking us up, we met our marine biologist guide and took a quick tour through their “museum” or what appeared to us to be a marine animal graveyard... with good lighting.

It was only a short 10min boat trip out to the island. Before landing our guide warned us to keep our emotions in control. When we pulled up onto shore and saw hundreds of the most adorable creatures ever (although Rich still maintains they are a little awkward looking), we could understand how it would be easy to get a little out of control and come home with a penguin pet. The island itself is home to roughly 3,000 penguins of two different kinds. We started on the beach and eventually walked around the nesting areas further in. While you were only able to get within 10ft of the penguins on the beach, the penguins in the nesting areas were literally inches from the roped out path. Occasionally one would get interested in our group and wander into the path itself for a closer look. Check out our excessive amount of penguin pictures and keep an eye out for the cute fuzzy chicks which were almost as large as their parents when we arrived.

Today we decided to keep our activities a little low-key and have a picnic on the beach overlooking the Beagle Channel. We took a city bus out towards the edge of town and started walking along the road on the shore line looking for a cove we saw from our earlier boat trip. When we went past the cove on our tour a few days ago, we saw families barbequing on the rocky beach, next to lush grass. Somehow we missed the turnoff for the beach and ending up heading down a path into some woods. Accompanied by two sweet dogs that adopted us for the day, we emerged 20mins later onto an open field of deep green grass and short wild flowers. The views of the channel were spectacular and we had the entire area to ourselves. We picnicked and napped and returned refreshed for our 18hour bus ride tomorrow.

Welcome to Patagonia

First off, we've updated our pictures. The last week in Cuenca, our epic flight, and our first few days in Argentina are all up!

After a very much-needed rest in Cuenca, Ecuador for 5 weeks, we once again hit the road and with a grand change of pace. Patagonia is the southernmost region of both Argentina and Chile, and while we had high hopes for visiting this unique region we were never sure how far south we'd make it after starting in Mexico. Luckily, the travel gods smiled upon us an gave us a cheap flight to the southern edge of civilization, all the way to Ushuaia.

Ushuaia, Argentina is considered by most to be the southernmost city in the world. Further south than South Africa and Australia, we're only 740 miles from Antarctica. Luckily, it's summer here and the weather is a toasty 54 degrees on average. But we've been rewarded with incredible vistas of snowcapped mountains and a myriad of things to do and see. To get here, we took four flights over 48 hours, stopping in Guayaquil, Ecuador; Santiago, Chile; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. We passed our New Year's Eve in Buenos Aires, escaping the airport for a few hours to have a pizza and taste some of the famous Argentinian wine while locals tried to light the streets on fire with homemade fireworks displays: solid layover entertainment.

There's plenty of kickass things to do in Ushuaia. After a day of recovery from our long flight, we decided to jump right in and took one of the popular boat tours of the nearby Beagle Channel, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Channel is speckled with tiny islands, on some of which live colonies of sea lions, penguins, and various species of birds. The boat takes you up close and personal to the bird colonies and sea lions, whom we saw lying around being fat and lazy right up close! Bundling up to guard your body from the wind, you really start to feel like you're in the Antarctic (or at least close), though it was a gorgeous sunny day and the weather couldn't have been better. We'll be heading out to walk with the penguins tomorrow!

Today was a bit colder and cloudier, but after traveling Central America during the rainy season we're pretty much armed for anything. We took a hike just outside of town to the Martial Glacier along the rim of mountains that line the north side of town. The hike was easy but beautiful and even the clouds contributed to the atmosphere. The glacier wasn't much more than a pile of snow on the mountainside, but it's summer so the levels are low, and you could clearly see the paths the glacier has cut into the mountainside over thousands of years. The streams of water pouring down from the melting glacier in almost every direction were beautiful as well.

We've got a few more days on the edge of the continent before we start moving back north, this is the furthest we'll be from home and from here on out we'll just be heading back in your direction... which should make our Mommies very happy. But there's still plenty of Patagonia adventure left!