Our average rose to $30 a day as we bolted through the rest of Central America during our fourth week on the road. While we were able to keep food costs down, our travel and lodging costs rose significantly with numerous coach bus rides to get through five countries, quickly and in comfort. (more…)

The prices baffled us in Guatemala - we found food costs high, but our lodging costs went down to a mere $6 a day at points. Quetzaltenango is seemingly designed for extended stays, with numerous guest houses to provide a home for the booming language school scene in town. We took advantage of one of these guest houses, and stayed at one place for five nights for $30 each - and we had our own rooms.

Keeping costs pretty much on an even keel, we’ve managed to raise our average daily costs only by a couple dollars despite some expensive bus tickets and jaunting across 620 miles this week, to $28 a day. Tomorrow we’ll make our second border crossing, entering Guatemala, where over the next six days, we expect to be paying less than our current average. And now, on for the rest of The Count for the week between 1/8/2008 and 1/14/2008, where a the patron saint of travel should have been involved… (more…)

While planning this trip, we constantly kept asking ourselves – how much are we going to bloody spend? Guide books have general spending estimates, and others who’ve chronicled similar treks give rough numbers. With this regularly occurring feature that we’re calling “The Count” we’ll give you a peek at some of the numbers that we’re keeping track of on a daily basis, including spending habits broken down by food, lodging, travel and a couple offbeat metrics. Hopefully, you’ll be able to get some insight about how much or little things cost around the world if you plan on trekking to any of the destinations we’ve visited.

After seven days on the road, we’re pretty happy with how little we’ve spent, with total expenses averaging just over $20 a day. (more…)