How to travel with little money
Indice
He will be with his girlfriend, Francesca, an Italian he met along the way, in Panama. A road that began in his native Mar del Plata, with his friend Diego, although they separated in Puerto Viejo (Costa Rica) ‘and he is now in El Salvador’.
That they travel with few clothes, that they don’t carry a backpack. For example, here in Guatemala, you can buy a pair of used pants -which you wash and they are new- for a quetzal in the market. In Bolivia, in La Paz, you can get them for one Boliviano in a market called El Alto. A dollar is about seven bolivianos.
No, it’s a very quiet little town, there’s nobody there. It’s called Pavones. It’s a surfer town. There is the second longest wave in the world that goes from right to left. Actually we were five friends in Panama City, but Diego, with whom I travel, had gone to work in Bocas de Toro, in the Caribbean. I didn’t because I didn’t want to work for 400 dollars a month. In Panama I made 80 dollars a day selling bracelets. In four hours. And I regret it very much, I was there for five months and I didn’t save anything.
How to travel the world for free
What budget do I need for backpacking in South America? Is transportation too expensive? Is it possible to camp? How do I travel so cheaply? These and many other questions are the most frequently asked when planning a trip for the first time.
There are as many answers as there are travelers. In this kind of guide I will try to share the keys that made Juan and me be able to travel for 18 months with U$D 7 per day between the two of us. The more gas-guzzling/scratchy/broken version of me (and not for that reason unhappy, much less dirty) is about to be revealed.
So if you’re thinking of taking a trip and don’t have a lot of money, put the water for tea (I don’t drink mate), bring your notebook, and stay put. Coming soon is a guide on how to put together a backpacking budget for traveling in South America.
Normally, and regardless of the type of trip, the budget is divided into three basic elements: transportation, food and lodging. The first part (except within the cities) is solved by hitchhiking. Even in countries like Bolivia, where buses are very cheap, we choose to extend the thumb: we do not do it only for economic reasons.
How to travel for free to europe
Traveling is something that I find most people want to do. It’s one of the main reasons we hate our job or school, because it’s an impediment to us being able to travel.
You will probably answer that they do it because they are rich or because they are pilots. The truth is, you don’t have to be in order to make a living traveling. The fact is, if you really want to, you will find a way to pay for your travel expenses, and in these 8 points I will show you how it is possible to do it without being a millionaire to do it.
Airlines know their customers, they know that we all want to fly on weekends, that we always want to carry as much as possible so we don’t have to buy a lot of things on our trip and that we prefer early flights so we can take advantage of our whole day. So if you want to save a lot on flights, do the opposite: try to fly during the week, especially on Tuesdays, don’t mind flying too early or too late, take only the essentials in your suitcase and you will see that you can get flights for less than $1000 pesos.
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Every time I meet someone and tell them that I’m into traveling, they tell me that they would like to do the same but a) they don’t have the time, b) they don’t have the money, c) they don’t feel like it. All three options are false, but in this post I will focus on b and try to show you that it is possible to travel with little budget (or none at all).
I discovered it when I started traveling: living on the move can be much cheaper than living fixed. I say “can be” because it all depends on what each person understands by “travel”. There are people (and I have heard this phrase a thousand times) who say that if they are going to travel they want to be as comfortable as at home or more. Perfect: in that case that person will spend more in two weeks of travel than he/she spends in six months in his/her city.
* Ask local people for references: they know where to eat well and cheaply. In certain parts of the world, such as Asia, the best (and cheapest) food is in street stalls, so if you see local people congregating to eat there, encourage them to do so too. Find out the prices beforehand so you don’t get overcharged for being a foreigner.