Cost of travel in Americas for longer trip

hugheskevi

Just posting here primarily for future reference for others searching, as the costs of travel have changed so much in recent years. When I was researching my current trip it was hard to find cost estimates, so hopefully, this might help someone searching for similar information at some future point.

Trip: Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, overland
Start Date: Sep 2022
Duration: Approx 16 months
Travel type: Independent, using public transport (hire car in USA/Canada)
Travel style: Budget in USA/Canada, mid-range through Central and South America
Number of people: 2, married couple, aged 45

All costs are logged at this link, the trip maps are at this link and at this link. The daily cost of travel by country so far has been:

USA/Canada: £171 (Staying in AirBnb rooms, driving a rental car, cooking our own food - public transport just isn't viable for visiting all the National Parks and other sights)
Mexico: £111 (Staying in apartments or hotel rooms, taking public transport or tourist shuttles, and eating out for most meals - same for the rest of Central America)
Belize: £128
Guatemala: £103
El Salvador: £81
Honduras: £105
Nicaragua: £96

The above covers all in-country costs, so includes accommodation, transport, tours, etc, for both of us. The big costs not included in these are flights (£775), new passports (£264), insurance (£823), and vaccinations (£488 - mainly rabies).

I don't think we could have traveled the west coast of the USA much more cheaply except by buying junk food (eg frozen pizzas) rather than buying our own ingredients for cooking healthy food, although we were there during the Trussonomics experiment, so the value of the pound was very low (typically about £1.10 to $1) - in central America it has been about 10% stronger, so the USA costs would be closer to £150 per day using the latest exchange rate.

Our expenditure for Central America is quite generous. Although by no means luxurious, it would be possible to spend a lot less in these places. These costs are based on mid-range accommodation, ie, decent hotel rooms or an apartment, with air-con in hotter places. Staying in dormitory accommodation would save around £10 - £15 per day. We also eat out for most meals - usually in cheaper restaurants, but even so food costs could be reduced by about £15 - £20 per day if we cooked all our own food.

We have done all the tours/trips we want to do, even if some were a bit more expensive. There would be some scope to reduce costs here too if you wanted to do more independently (eg travel on public transport to some locations rather than taking organised tours). However, I doubt this would save very much in the overall cost really, probably only about £5 per day.

Few key points to note or which may be helpful for anyone planning something similar:

• We took an 8-day Royal Caribbean cruise between Anchorage and Vancouver - this was bizarrely the cheapest and easiest method of travel between the two places, other than flying. Flying would be an easy way to cut costs, although the daily cost of the cruise was lower than our daily cost of travel elsewhere in the USA, so it wasn't expensive.
• For the USA online cost comparisons were difficult due to hidden costs only being disclosed at the end of the booking processes. In general, I found Turo and AirBnb were usually the cheapest and certainly the easiest and most transparent companies to use for accommodation and transport. 
• Turo hire cars were the cheapest we could find in USA and Canada, but obviously have to be returned to pick-up point. Hire car companies charged a prohibitive one-way rental charge. Hence we drove a large circle around western USA, heading from Seattle to Phoenix and then heading to Los Angeles and driving back north. After leaving the car back in Seattle we flew back to Phoenix to resume the overland trip. This was fine, as there are great sights both inland and on the coast. However, I would never recommend Turo - they are a shocking company that I had no end of trouble with (no fault of mine, all caused by the host amending the booking), so be warned - cheap but very nasty!
• Tour costs in the USA were very low, due to the America the Beautiful annual pass and the number of National parks visited
• Using Booking.com in Central America is a bit of a lottery - we even booked and arrived at one hotel which didn't exist! Don't use cheaper hotels on the site, it is a false economy - we were very disappointed by the standard of the 'hotels'. However, there are a lot of good places available on the site so definitely use it, but you need to research carefully. Hostelworld is also well worth looking at, and using Google Maps to look at reviews of places under consideration is helpful too.
• In central America, cheaper double rooms usually cost little more than 2 dorm beds. If you are traveling in a group of 4 or more, you will probably be able to get apartments for less money than dorm beds.
• How to cross the Darian Gap in Panama is something you should consider - you can either fly, or take a boat through the San Blas islands, either 3/4 days just around the gap, or 5 days across to Cartagena. The boats are quite expensive though, and by the time you get there you will have already seen a lot of Caribbean Sea islands. We originally planned to take a boat, but I think flying will be a lot cheaper and easier (flights used to be expensive but are now quite cheap) - not quite in the overland tradition, but a pragmatic decision.

Very happy to answer any questions anyone has about the trip.

CKhalvashi

For booking rooms, find one of the cheapest that meets your requirements with good reviews. This has worked very well over many years for me and I've found places I wouldn't have looked at 10-15 years ago by doing so.

For a trip like this, I'd recommend watching the Youtube series by Itchy Boots (project Alaska). She did the same in the opposite direction on a Dutch-registered motorcycle.

If you book using a UK VPN you should get an all including price for everything however. The US looks to have become crazily expensive recently (I also watch Nate at Nanobytesinc on occasion), with even reduced foods in US supermarkets being 2-3x the cost of regular food prices in Europe.

Everything else looks perfectly reasonable here.

hugheskevi

CKhalvashi said:

For booking rooms, find one of the cheapest that meets your requirements with good reviews. This has worked very well over many years for me and I've found places I wouldn't have looked at 10-15 years ago by doing so.

Yep, agree with this, and the key is understanding what your requirements actually are, which is easier said than done. Being flexible and choosing lower quality rooms if arriving late and leaving early will reduce costs, but in some places an additional £5-£10 per night will make a big difference to the standard of accommodation and is very little in the wider scheme of things. Some people will value some things over others and different things at different times on a trip, eg, cooking facilities, washing facilities, etc.

I'd suggest mixing things up, as sharing with local families, hotels, apartments, hostels, etc, all have pros and cons. I don't think any one thing is inherently better than another, and not ruling anything in or out and mixing things up has been best for us. I do find that if there has been a run in the same sort of place it is great to just get into a different type of accommodation. 

For a trip like this, I'd recommend watching the Youtube series by Itchy Boots (project Alaska). She did the same in the opposite direction on a Dutch-registered motorcycle.

There are quite a few YouTube channels. But there is a pretty well-trodden route broadly down the Pan American highway and whilst a longer trip will give you more time at locations, the actual route itself doesn't vary a great deal.

Personally, I don't use YouTube much and have found the blogs written by a small number of serious travelers very helpful, although YouTube is great for getting an idea of what things like volcano boarding will actually be like. The hardest places to research are bizarrely the most popular destinations, as it can be hard to find material from serious travelers in amongst the huge amount of material from every man and his dog raving about very expensive yet very average attractions.

blindman

hugheskevi said:

For a trip like this, I'd recommend watching the Youtube series by Itchy Boots (project Alaska). She did the same in the opposite direction on a Dutch-registered motorcycle.

have found the blogs written by a small number of serious travelers very helpful, althoug

I'd be more interested in HOW you got from A-B and what blogs you actually found useful.
I find a lot of blogs are either paid for by advertsisers or skip loads of important details.


Travelling
E.g Alaska up to Fairbanks-Drive by the looks of it-Easy to do? Assume September is a good time to do this.
Mexico and Central America I assume bus_how did you book it? etc.On-line or turn up on the day?
I see from the maps where you went and there are Bus stations!

I'm looking at Mexico\Central America next year. Did Vancouver to Anchorage by ship. Did not venture into Alaska much though. Would like to get to Barrow or at least more of Alaska
Have covered all of the 50 USA states and the majority of South America, though not South Chile\Argentina

hugheskevi

I'd be more interested in HOW you got from A-B and what blogs you actually found useful.

I find a lot of blogs are either paid for by advertsisers or skip loads of important details.

Yes, this is often the case, and especially for more popular destinations.

One blog "Along Dusty Roads" was consistently very useful through most of Central America, but mostly it was just googling for specific things I wanted, and sometimes YouTube clips. A lot has changed post COVID, so searching for anything written in the last year was useful.

Before I left, I went through each country and marked on Google Maps all the main things I was interested in seeing. For that, I used Tripadvisor and at least one other more local source of information. I kept adding to that, eg, if someone mentioned something, and that determined the route. Then as I progress along the route I do more detailed research about individual places as we approach them.

Travelling
E.g Alaska up to Fairbanks-Drive by the looks of it-Easy to do? Assume September is a good time to do this.
Mexico and Central America I assume bus_how did you book it? etc.On-line or turn up on the day?
I see from the maps where you went and there are Bus stations!

In the USA we almost exclusively used AirBnb for accommodation and Turo for transport, so everything was easy. In Alaska we picked up a Turo car in Anchorage and drove up the Richardson Highway to Fairbanks, which was all very easy in the summer months - but going on to Prudhoe Bay or driving after September would become much more difficult.

In Mexico we used buses - at first we booked in advance but that was more trouble than it was worth as in many places it is unclear where buses go from as they leave from the operators premises rather than a bus station. So we rapidly changed to just turning up at either main bus station or the company that ran most buses in an area. That works just fine, we never waited long.

From Creel to El Fuerte we took the El Chepe train. We just turned up to Creel rail station and bought tickets - I'd suggest getting tickets on local train rather than the tourist train as they are far cheaper and you see the same things, although departure times are important - if you take an afternoon train it will become dark before the end of the trip and you won't be able to see anything

From around Mexico City onwards we started only using ADO, which is a major busline. They have a very good app, and by booking in advance you can choose seats, whereas if you just turn up you will get on but probably be next to the toilets for the journey. Their buses are great - they even have plug sockets at seats which had enough power to charge a laptop.

In Belize we used local buses - all the locals knew the times they leave and it is a small place so all very easy. Belize has bus stations so no confusion. The hardest journey was between Playa del Carmen and Caye Caulker, as the last ferry leaves Belize City at 1630 which is difficult to manage on local buses - we gambled we would be able to get something faster at the border, and managed to join a private shuttle which had spare seats (fairly expensive, but fast). In hindsight, it would have been better to just go to Orange Walk.

In Guatemala and El Salvador we used tourist shuttles - a lot more expensive than local buses, but safer and crucially faster, as Guatemalan roads take a long time to traverse with several long travel days. These pick you up wherever you are staying and usually drop you off at your next place. The downside is that you can spend a long time waiting for them to arrive and/or collecting other people before you set off. They are convenient for luggage however.

In Honduras and Nicaragua it was back to local buses and just turning up. This was fine in all except one case - we ended up waiting almost 4 hours (!) at Esteli, en route between Somoto and Leon in Nicaragua.

I'm looking at Mexico\Central America next year. 

The north of Mexico around El Dividadero is great, but hard to get to. The distances between destinations between Mexico City and the Yucatan peninsula are very big, and at least one overnight bus would be necessary. The Yucatan pensinsula is great, and flying into and out of Cancun and doing a circle down through Belize, Flores (Guatemala), Copan (Honduras), Antigua and Lake Atitlan (Guatemala), then back into Mexico and north back to Cancun would be a great trip of about 6 weeks. 

The easiest airports to arrive into are Mexico City and Cancun. Panama has good connections too, so may be a good choice to fly from. San Jose would work too.

Transport has been very straightforward in all places, especially in Mexico. An advantage in Mexico is Uber is available in most places (but not Yucatan). That just makes everything so much easier However, from Yucatan to Costa Rica Uber isn't available so you rely on local taxis - this is a pain if you are staying on outskirts of a town and there are no cabs passing, but that doesn't happen too much - usually if you stand at side of road a taxi or tuktuk turns up very quickly.

blindman

Thanks for the reply.

Good info re buses, I'd looked into it and came to the same conclusion. Turn up and see what happens!

CKhalvashi

blindman said:

Thanks for the reply.

Good info re buses, I'd looked into it and came to the same conclusion. Turn up and see what happens!

From experience in 'remote' places, you're probably best trying to find who the bus operator is and booking the day before.

We offered to drive anyone who needed to Chisinau in October (there are some Ukrainians who genuinely don't have money but do have onward transport), but when there I translated for a German guy who only understood 'zavtra, dvatse dva' (tomorrow, 22) at the Odesa bus station, of course I made sure he had the correct ticket when leaving, but even basics like this can be important.

Spanish naturally in that case is more important than Russian.

harpermel

I admire your meticulous record keeping.

hugheskevi

To add a few things to this for the future reference of anyone planning something similar and finding this in the future...

We reached Ushuaia 1 year, 2 months and 6 days after arriving in Alaska. We traveled a total of 30,000 miles by road and spent just over £50,000 in the process, which includes flights out and back home and is all of our costs for 2 people (which works out at an annualised cost of £43,000, so about £60 per person, per day). The route we took is at this link.



All costs and the exact day-by-day route are logged at this link. A Google Map of our route is at this link.

Our trip was very mid-range cost - we avoided dorms and stayed in AirBnb rooms in USA then usually apartments from Mexico onwards. I think the trip could quite easily be done with an annualised cost of £35,000 but much less than that would require some quite stringent budgeting. A budget of £50,000 p/a would be quite generous, and £60,000 p/a would enable everything and quite a few luxuries as well.

We did this trip taking unpaid leave from work in the UK. Although at first glance the cost of the trip may appear high, once you deduct rent received (£1,876 p/m net of estate agent charges in our case) and bills you no longer have to pay in UK (£350 p/m), as well as the amount received from paid leave after departure and paid leave taken in advance upon return, as well as PAYE tax refund in the year you leave, this trip cost us virtually nothing and certainly a lot less than it would cost us just to live our normal lives in the UK.

I calculated that this form of travel works out at about 20% of the cost of a conventional 2-week holiday from the UK, once you factor in rent received, etc.

Although very subjective, I would say the best places on the trip were (listed from north to south):

1 Yellowstone (USA)

2 Copper Canyon (Mexico)

3 Caye Caulker snorkeling (Belize)

4 ATM cave (Belize)

5 Tikal (Guatemala)

6 Acatenango (Guatemala)

7 Lake Atitlan (Guatemala)

8 Condor feeding from Popayan (Colombia)

9 Galapagos (Ecuador)

10 Temple of the Moon, Trujillo (Peru)

11 Huaraz hiking (Peru)

12 Flight over Nazca lines (Peru)

13 Macchu Picchu (Peru)

14 Condor viewing at Chivay (Peru)

15 El Chalten hiking and El Calafate glaciers (boat and Perito Moreno) (Argentina)

Other places that almost made the list were Denali (USA), Bryce Canyon (USA), Chichen Itza and cenotes (Mexico), Museo Larco (Lima), Salt Flats of Bolivia, and Marble Caves (Chile).

For shorter trips (2-8 weeks) I think the best trip would be flying into and out of Cancun and doing a circular trip down through Belize and Guatemala, then heading west into Mexico and back up to Cancun. Overland trips from Mexico City to Panama are quite popular too.

If wanting to reduce costs, I'd suggest:

(1) Skip USA and Canada - they are very expensive and there are much better things to see further south at a much lower cost
(2) The Galapagos Islands are quite expensive to visit - it cost us £1,846 in total (including air fares) for 10 nights there. They are excellent however, and it would cost dramatically more to visit them from the UK rather than going as you pass through Ecuador.
(3) We spent £2,000 on a 10 day trip deep into the Amazon from Iquitos, Peru. You would get many of the benefits of this trip going from other more convenient places such as Banos in Ecuador or Cusco in Peru. 

If wanting to spend more, the two expensive things we skipped were Easter Island and a cruise to Antartica.

Remember that the seasons determine when you can do this trip - you want to avoid both Alaskan and Patagonian winters. We left at the end of autumn in Alaska (September - things close down after that) and got to Ushuaia in spring (November). 

There were 4 'cheats' on the overlanding of the traditional route:

(1) We did not do the section between Prudhoe Bay and Fairbanks in Alaska - it is a long way with little to see and expensive.
(2) We took an 8-day cruise with Royal Caribbean between Anchorage and Vancouver, as this was both more comfortable and much cheaper than traveling through the interior.
(3) We flew from Panama City to Cartagena, over the Darien Gap. You could take a boat but they are much more expensive and the open water crossing can be rough (or else you have a long bus-ride to Cartagena if you just get a boat to the first possible place in Colombia after the Darien Gap).
(4) We flew from Mendoza to Bariloche in Argentina - there was a long gap with nothing we wanted to see and which would take 25 hours of bus travel to traverse. Flights in Argentina are very cheap (about £30 per person, which includes hold luggage).

We still have a few months out here, returning in January, so we now go to see Buenos Aires, Iguazu, the area around Bonito in Brazil, Sao Paulo and Rio.

Some final tips which might be helpful (as at November 2023):

• The 3 PAYG SIM was amazing - the free roaming works in so many countries along the route
• I took an e-SIM phone and bitterly regretted it. Esims are prohibitively expensive compared to local SIMs and I would have much preferred to have two physical SIM slots to have my UK SIM and a local SIM - it is frustrating not have UK SIM inserted as so many companies insist on sending text message codes.
• Chase Mastercard debit card and Barclaycard Rewards VISA credit card were both great all through the trip. In Central America ATM limits are ridiculously low and limited to 1 per day, so it helped to have a lot of cards (we had 11 between us) for multiple withdrawals.
• Research the money situation in Argentina carefully - we met a lot of tourists paying far more than necessary due to not understanding the blue dollar. Argentina is currently extremely cheap to visit if managing money exchange correctly. It is super-helpful to have US dollars in Argentina (backed up by using a VISA credit card where possible, and Western Union transfers, of which the first transfer has no charges then you pay 3.5%+). We withdrew a lot of local currency in Peru to purchase US dollars as there were great exchange rates there. This avoids carrying a lot of US dollars all the from USA through Central America. You can also withdraw US dollars in Ecuador, but you will only get US$20 bills, whereas you would be better with US$100 bills for Argentina.
• Don't book tours in advance online (and avoid Viator at all costs, use Get Your Guide if you feel you must book in advance). In all cases, it was far cheaper to use travel agencies after arrival in a town.
• One company operates this trip commercially, so you can look at their itinerary for ideas - Madventure
• Learn some Spanish well before you reach northern Mexico - very little English is spoken in some of the areas you will go through. Duo Lingo (or similar) is good enough for the basics but you will need to spend several weeks practising before arrival. We only started to learn Spanish as we entered Mexico, which was a mistake. There are language schools you can go to in many places - Antigua in Guatemala is a good place to spend a week or two learning in more detail.

jimi_man

Thanks for that. Very interesting. We’re off to Mexico in a couple of weeks (flying to Mexico City and Chetumal) and going to Bacalar and Mahuhal and taking in Belize (Caye Caulker) for a week of diving too. 

We have a fluent Spanish speaker with us, and I can speak some as well. 

twopenny

Wow that is a wonderful experience Hugh! Very envious.

What I missed and is a need to know is how much was the travel insurance.

Also your house insurance as you were away for more than '3 weeks' so all sorts of things come into play here. How did you deal with all that?