How Much Does It REALLY COST To Travel Around SOUTH AMERICA?! +budgeting tips for each country

so you might be wondering how much did these two spend on this massive trip and that's what we're going to talk about right now I travel to eight South American countries in five months and we are ready to share our secrets [Music] in this video we will break down exactly how much we spent what we spend it on and at the end of the video we'll give you our grand big we'll give you our grand total at the end of the video but first we have some country specific tips to help you along if you do decide to embark on a journey such as ours beginning with money saving points for Brazil use your card to pay in shops restaurants Etc because withdrawing cash from an ATM can be expensive in Brazil like 10 percent paying for something select that you have a credit card even if your card is debit otherwise it will not work it took us a week to figure it out and then I just credit credit was working even though it's a debit card and another tip go easy on caipirinhas even though they're so cheap so cheap like two years if you drink a lot like I can still imagine the headache I got after having a few money saving points for Argentina when we'll tell you how much you spend in Argentina you'll think oh my God like blue dollar rate helps a lot so just buy your cash at blue dollar rate we know it takes time for you to go every date maybe not every day every couple of days to Western Union but like you have to know that it's like you'll save so much and we'll explain exactly how to do it now here in this video earlier in the video we talked about how you could pretty much double your money when you come to Argentina so to do this you have to use Western Union transfer money to Western Union for yourself to collect here at a Western Union in Argentina is an absolute must do if you go to an ATM with your regular bank card and try to figure out let's say for example a thousand Euros worth you will get maybe a hundred and eighty thousand Argentinian Pesos if you do the transfer through Western Union you get almost double the exchange rate so if you try to get a thousand Euros worth at Western Union you'd be coming out with about 350 000 Argentinian Pesos instead of the 180 000 pesos it's 45 more so that means that you could be going for a meal that might cost you 10 euro and because you bought the cash for 55 of that it's only costing you five euro 50. it's an absolute Game Changer in Argentina if you didn't do that you might think Argentina is one of the more expensive countries in South America but doing this half the price of everyone and really makes your experience so much cheaper one thing to keep in mind when doing the train transfer is that it seems to be about 500 euro that will be your maximum daily limit and even if you go to other rural parts of Argentina we think that limit could be lower and Buenos Aires not so much but in other places in Argentina they will ask you for a copy of your passport your passport itself you get a number that you have to show them and that's it from here's your cash leading on from that tip when you're booking flights in Argentina and you want to pay with Argentinian Pesos use the cash that you just got with your blue dollar rate at Western Union to pay for them at the Argentina's aerial Linus offices around the country we've booked our flights from Buenos Aires to schwaia in the office in Buenos Aires and we saved a fortune by doing that about like 200 Heroes just for playing with cash and the same for the hotels we use less airbnbs in Argentina trying to book everything with booking.com because there you can pay with cash cash cash in Argentina once you've used the blue dollar rate simple as that you can get really good quality bread cheese and ham in Argentina everywhere local bakeries local cheese shops local ham shops why not stock up on those and make breakfast and maybe even lunch every day for yourself because the stuff there is really delicious saved us a lot of money and time next up is money saving points for Uruguay this is an interesting one in Uruguay if you use your bank card to pay for restaurants or hotel stays you will automatically receive an 18 tax rebate back onto your card a couple of hours maybe a day later but it comes back onto your card so it's cheaper to use your card instead of paying with cash but only for hotels and restaurants essentially you're only paying 82 percent of your bill if you use your card or if you use cash obviously you can't get a tax rebate or cash so no good next up we have some money saving points for chili and trust us you need it you need these yeah it's the most expensive expensive USD 10 euros charge from withdrawing your cash so for this reason we suggest using cambios it pretty much just does change uh money exchange places so just if you are coming from Europe or America maybe bring some extra Euro and exchange it at the cambios because we saved some money do that maybe not at the airport but in Santiago City Center it's worked really well for us and bring cash here is D or maybe Heroes even to pay for tours because you'll be taking tours in that account for example and if you overcome cheaper comparing to paying with Chilean pesos or with card book airbnbs with kitchens next to the bus stations where you're going because Chile is very expensive and it helps to be able to cook and it also helps not to have to take taxis to and from bus stations so that would be our recommendation when booking accommodation in Chile don't get us wrong you still will be trying local food but just don't do it for all your meals and you'll save a lot of money and buy six liter bottles of water because they tend to be the same price as the small ones if you're like us and you like alcohol you will be able to find some chili and wine in supermarkets so instead of going out and buying beers or bottles wine restaurants you can get some really cheap chili wine actually the wine and chili a cheap bottle is cheaper than water so why not don't spend idle days in Chile chili is a really beautiful country and there's so much to do there but when you go there especially if you're going on a part of a big trip like we did go there do what you have to do see what you have to see and get out of there because if you're on a big trip you will blow through your budget like you wouldn't believe in the next one money saving points for Bolivian Bolivia is cheap Bolivia is cheap so I wouldn't worry too much about budgeting there because you're pretty much budgeting by just going there one thing we can say is that we find a really nice cheap local Bolivian wine cool kohlberg so that was cheap and tasty and please don't judge us for not alcoholics money saving points for Ecuador use Encore International ATM because you'll get no fees for withdrawing your cash US dollar is the official currency here but we want to warn you not to carry anything over 20 bills no 50s no hundreds they just simply won't be accepted even using twenty dollars to pay for something you'll likely get a big double handful of coins in cash they just don't like big notes at all and if after Ecuador you're heading to Chile and then Chile we told you to bring USD you can withdraw your cash in Ecuador and just exchange it in Chile and lastly money saving points for Colombia so a bit like Ecuador with Banco International in Colombia you can get free ATM withdrawals with a bank called davivienda and another tip is don't drink as many My Heroes as we did they're cheap but it still adds up so before we get into the overall cost of this trip just know that for every type of traveler the cost is going to be very different you should also know we haven't included flight in or out of South America because what was the point everybody is going to be flying in and out from a different place and two different places so we've left that out of the total cost so we're going to break it down into some categories and then at the end we'll put it all together and give you our tool and beginning with accommodation the most important part and we spent 3170 Euros for two of us in the period of five months which is only 21 years of Grenade on average as we were traveling as a couple Airbnb was our main type of accommodation we did stay in some cheap hotels and once we stayed in a dorm room because of accommodation in that area was just way too expensive but as there were two of us the cost was split and Airbnb was 9 99 of the time the best choice for us so surprisingly Brazil was the most expensive country for us but it's also maybe because it was the beginning of a trip and retreated a little bit like a holiday which we spent on average 27 years per night there Ecuador was Dirt Cheap we spent 15 Euro on average per night and we were there for over a month and even though Chile is the most expensive country at that point where it travels are already kinda knew what kind of accommodation we should aim for and we ended up spending on the 21 year open night on average our next category is food and alcohol on food and alcohol we spent 2940 Euro that is an average of 20 euro per day for the two of us this is a category that will definitely vary from traveler to traveler when it came to drinking believe it or not we were quite disciplined and didn't do it that often at all apart from the odd bottle of wine in Bolivia and Chile and a Mojito or two too many in Colombia but apart from that we were quite disciplined and didn't really drink that much over the past five months we are definitely not the kind of Travelers that would be out drinking in hostels bars or nightclubs if you are that kind of traveler and that's the kind of trip you're looking for you can expect to probably double that number we also tried to cook a lot and believe it not to save that not only money but time because when you're going out for food first you have to find a restaurant then you're waiting on food then you're walking back to your accommodation so cooking really saved us time and money but at times the kitchens were hit and miss in the airbnbs so there were definitely times we had to eat out to be completely honest we weren't overly impressed with the food in in South America apart from maybe Argentina so we were happy enough to cook our own simple meals whenever we could and also remember that you will be on the tours or there will be one night when you don't have anything in your fridge you don't think that if you have if you'll be cooking you will miss out on local experiences so the next category is travel and they spend 2773 Euros for each of us this includes trips from one place to another within South America international flight to other countries even in South America can be pricey especially if you're like us and you have to check in baggage that can really really add to your expenditure double a lot we also found Intercity bus Journeys to be particularly expensive in the likes of Patagonia and Chile so watch out for that it's still a lot cheaper than playing next up is Local transportation for which we spend 634 Euro this includes taxis Ubers all the buses and a rental truck in the Atacama Desert that's why it was a little bit more expensive than we thought it would be next up is a chat about all the fun we had so we're going to talk about how much all the activities we got up to inside America cost on activities we spent 1 451 Euro this includes anything from admission fees to National Parks biking on death Road white water rafting and banyos and even feeding hummingbirds and the uni Salt Flat tour etc etc we didn't hold back when it came to activities and we really tried to squeeze in as much as possible so we think that 1400 euro is actually good for all the things we did so the next category is clothing which 142 years it's not like we were on a shopping spring or something but you know sometimes you just have to buy something on a local market next up is health and hygiene which is a sneaky little expense that you don't really take into consideration before you go we spend 135 Euro and 50 Cent on health and hygiene this includes all those annoying things you have to buy when traveling like sun cream not moisturizers period pads toothpaste shower gel shampoo contact solution razors not that I use that very often all that kind of annoying stuff and there is one category that includes a lot of small things and they spend it 162 years for the two of us and so it includes some ATM fees which we had to pay but now you don't because he followed our advice some SIM cards and souvenirs and you know sometimes some small feet like bathrooms so overall we find the most expensive country to be really without a doubt just an example of how expensive chili is we were only there for 12 days 13 13 days we spent 2 000 Euro in Chile and to compare that with Argentina we were in Argentina for over a month and we only spent 2 000 Euros there so you can see the difference which is also blue dollar rate yes use our tips use blue dollar red and the cheapest country is Ecuador we love this so much we did pretty much everything there and we spent there over a month as well and we spend only 1400 years for the two of us which is pretty good grand total time five months in South America and if you put all of that together we came to 11 408 Euro between us for the two of us not each which is exactly 5704 Euro each we had the time of our lives one of the best experiences you'll ever have and we personally think it's not that expensive we aim to spend a bit more and honestly at the beginning of trip we're spending a little bit more than we expected but then we okay we need to get things together and start spending with less and that's our total after we did it smart so what do you think when you're watching video did you expect the number to be higher or lower or do you think it's very expensive or quite cheap you have to remember it's five months so when you consider how much when you spend if you didn't go traveling in five months eating a drink and paying rent pay for your car paying for accommodation all this kind of stuff so when you think about like that for example we spent 600 euros per month on accommodation and how much would you spend in Europe or the state be sure to let us know what you think in the comments and uh don't be too mean don't be judging us on our alcohol habits or any of that kind of stuff um but on a serious note if you do decide that that is a good price and worth it and you do decide to go to South America and have a trip like we did we're sure you're gonna have something to remember just like we did thank you

Channel: Something To Remember

Views: 18,831

Keywords: South America trip, South America travel, planning south america, how much does it cost, South America cost, Latin America travel cost, budgeting for South America, budget for South America, travel tips, travel tricks, travel guide, travel itinerary, South America travel plan, South America money, travel vlog

Id: uwGZj8GXewc

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023