On the Road Expenses and Statistics, Month Seven

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.

Lying on the white sands, sunbathing with marine iguanas after a swim with reef sharks, and being surrounded by blue-footed boobies and lots of other different birds.

Yes baby, we are still in the Galapagos!

A Pelican

We spent our seventh month of travel on the island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos. We had originally planned to stay in the archipelago for at least for a month, but when we found out that Santa Cruz was quite affordable we decided to extend our stay and continue enjoying this very unique place.

Thus, we continued our exploration of the island and visited all the sites we hadn’t seen yet (Garrapatero Beach, Los Gemelos and Las Grietas) and revisited the ones we had enjoyed the most (Tortuga Bay, El Rancho Manzanillo and Charles Darwin Beach).

A giant tortoise at the Rancho Manzanillo

We also had the chance to visit Isabela Island. We climbed aboard a speedboat for the two-hour ride from Puerto Ayora in Santa Cruz Island (this was a day tour) and visited some of the beautiful sites on Isabela, the largest island formation in the Galapagos.

Flamingos at Isabela island

We changed our accommodations from Hotel Germania to a very nice and comfortable studio, not too far from downtown but also close to the beach!

The studio is equipped with an oven, cable TV, Wi-Fi Internet, a/c and a small fridge that allowed us to cook our meals and enjoy the privacy and serenity of the neighborhood. It’s also two blocks away from the main market where we do our grocery shopping and get our fresh vegetables and fruits.

We spent most of the month lying on the beach or roaming around Puerto Ayora, as well as taking as many photos as possible—because we are in the Galapagos, THE PLACE to take photos! Right?

Tortuga Bay lagoon

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

Travel Statistics:

Accommodation:

• Studio rental: $450/month

Tours:

• We did 2 paid tours and cost us a total f $185. 1 for Isabela Island through an agency, and the other included hiring a private taxi to Garrapatero Beach

Money Spent: We ended up spending $1,013.

Our major spending for this month went to accommodation at 44% of our spending, followed by food & outings (at 31% of our spending). Most of tours and activities were done on our own without a guide or through agencies.

Next month…

We will stay (in accordance with our travel plans) in the Galapagos for another couple of weeks, where we intend to visit another island or two before flying back to Guayaquil. If we are lucky, we will go to Banos and maybe another city or two in Ecuador before we fly to Europe.