On the Road Expenses and Statistics, Month Eight

Is it expensive to travel around the world? How much would you spend while traveling? This series of posts is aimed at helping travelers plan their budgets before hitting the road. When we started traveling we were always worrying about how much money we would need, so we decided to share our expenses, as this might help other travelers.

Our eighth month of travel was for sure one of the best months we have had in our ongoing journey around the world. During the first 10 days of the month we were still in the gorgeous islands of the Galapagos, and just before leaving we decided to visit a different island. Therefore, we left for San Cristobal—the land of the smiley and stinky sea lions, as we like to call it.

A small bird on the beach in Galapagos

We spend two nights on the island, and we had the opportunity to explore some of its gorgeous sites, to observe the blue footed boobies up close—we were less than two meters away from them—and to watch the sea lions roaming freely everywhere, even in town.

We also took a day tour to visit the Kickers Rocks, where we could swim side by side with sea lions, big stingrays, reef sharks and sea turtles. Surprisingly, we even spotted the great hammer-head shark!

A marine turtle

It was just perfect!

Then we left to Guayaquil to spend a night before heading to Baños, a very laid back little town where we found a great hostel and decided to spend the rest of the month.

During our stay in Baños, we first did the waterfall road to see some awesome Ecuadorian scenery. This tour ended with a 600-meter trek to one of Baños’ greatest waterfalls, “El Diablo.” We also did some horseback riding in the mountains and enjoyed beautiful landscapes.

Hostal D’Mathias in Baños

We enjoyed our stay in Baños, a very relaxing and laid back town. We had decided to extend our stay in this little town for a couple of weeks to engage in the water sport activities Baños is famous for, such as white-water rafting and canyoning.

Horse riding in Baños

It was an awesome month, and below you’ll find the details in numbers.

Travel Statistics:

Cities visited: We were still in the Ecuador, visited 3 cities (Galapagos, Banos, and Guayaquil)
Accommodation:

Paid Accommodation: 30 days

Transportation:

Number of buses: 1 (Guayaquil to Banos).
Number of planes: 1 (Galapagos to Guayaquil).
Number of boats: 1 (Santa Cruz to San Cristobal in the Galapagos).

Activities:

We did 7 out-door activities while in Banos and Galapagos, stated by visiting Rancho Manzanillo for the second time and then on the same day we did the Gemelos on Santa Cruz. Los Lobaria and Puerto Chino while in San Cristobal and before leaving we did the Kickers Rock in a day tour. In Banos we did horse riding, waterfalls and ending the month with the White-water Rafting tour.

Spending by City:

• Galapagos: 16 days on an average of $27.5/day excluding flights to the Galapagos.
• Guayaquil: 2 days on an average of $47/day.
• Banos: 13 days on an average of $30/day.

Money Spent: We ended up spending $915.

Our major spending for this month went to food & outings at 35% of our spending, followed by Outdoor Activities (at 30% of our spending) and finally accommodation at 24% .