Food (includes groceries) – 2,143
Trip insurance (the best money we ever spent) – 756
Post-Loss – replacement passports, replacement American visas, new airfares as we had to reschedule old flights – 1,575
Miscellaneous – 437
Shopping – 347
Sightseeing – (also includes the cost for 14 nights of stay due to various trips and treks) – 1,637
Stay – (Does not include stays incorporated as a part of multi day trips with stay-included fares) – 1,974
Transportation (non-plane and includes several overnight buses and one overnight train) – 1,747
Visas – 390
Grand Total – 13,952
Chile – 2,703 in 30 days @ $90/day
Colombia – 1,630 in 26 days @ $63/day
Ecuador – 1,183 in 22 days @ $54/day
Peru – 1,886 in 31days @ $61/day
Total for basic travel expenses – 8095 in 133 days @ $61/day
How did we travel?
These numbers dont mean a lot unless they impart some sense of how we travel. For lodging, we usually chose hostels or small family run guesthouses. In expensive cities, we went with bunk beds and while mostly we had private rooms. In Bolivia and Peru, we almost always had a private room with a private/shared bathroom.
We cooked a lot at hostels, got groceries such as bread, fruit, vegetables, rice and pasta. However, whenever we spotted a vegetarian restaurant, we had at least one meal there. We heavily favored Hare Krishna restaurants in the cities for their reasonably priced, vegan friendly, set lunches. In Bolivia, we ate a lot at markets as you could coffee, bread, juice and api (corn meal porridge) at really low prices.
Transportation – almost always public buses/metros and collectivos. We took taxis when we had to go to bus stand or airport to go to a different city. Long distance buses were mostly semi cama or sometimes cama (fully reclined seats).
Sightseeing – apart from the jungle trips and treks, we mostly organized our own tours. We took public buses to places of attraction and did our own ‘sightseeing’. However, sometimes we’d book a tour from the hostel if its convenient and includes transport and fees.