By Lorraine Caputo
This past Patagonian winter, guests were fixing their dinners around the hostel’s large kitchen table. Conversations wended from the our different day trips to the usual, “So, hey, where’re you from?” James* from NYC, lost his job on Wall Street. Sara from England, who became unemployed last year, decided to bike the Carretera Austral. She and her Spanish partner were the last to cross at Paso Dos Lagunas from Villa O’Higgins to El Chaltén before snows clamped the border shut. Chris, a recent university graduate, is exploring South America before striking into the tight work market. Many others, too, are refugees from the economic crisis gripping North America and Europe. Some have decided to just get away for a while and rest before going back to fight for the few jobs there are. Others have bought a six-month or one year ticket, or are just hitting the road with no return fare. They’ll try to wait the crisis out.
For years, these people were just aspiring travelers. If they were lucky, they had a few weeks of vacation a year, but never seemed to be able to take them. Or perhaps, with the employment uncertainty, they couldn’t dare ask for a vacation, even a short one. Others worked in whatever they could find, scraping pennies for the day when they could ditch that dead-end job and journey. Now with the economy the way it is, there’s the time–and a bit of savings. Now James, Sara and Chris have finally put aside the tale tomes of others and leaped out of the armchair. They’ve packed their bags, bought a ticket and headed off for their own adventures in another land.
Are these travelers fool-hardy, especially those delving into “exotic” Chile and Argentina, two of South America’s most expensive countries? Some of them may find they’ve gone through their money faster than they thought they would. They’ll have to end their trips early or rack up credit card debt to make it through to their fly date.
How can you travel, whether for a few weeks or a year, and yet have a bit of money to tide you over once you get back home? To travel on a budget, you have to be disciplined and ready to expand the boundaries of your comfort zone. You won’t be able to go to all the hot tourism spots, only a few of them. You’ll have the opportunity to break out of the so-called “gringo” trail and get a closer understanding of the countries you visit. That is the ultimate reward.
A few burnished veterans have kept the fine art of shoestring travel alive and are ready to teach a new generation of travelers. In V!VA Travel Guides’ new bi-monthly blog on budget travel, you’ll learn tips of how to travel with less money. Tell us any questions or topics you’d like us to cover. And until next time, Safe Journeys!
*Names have been changed.
