Advice on time scales please

Hi everyone.

Me and my friend are planning a round the world trip a year from now, so we are just in the planning and saving stage right now. Our route is:

South America (probably spend the most time here as want to see pretty much all of it!)
New Zealand
Austrailia (I have family in melbourne and sidney, so they are pretty much sorted, not looking to spend ages here just see a few main sites)
Thailand + a few other stops in asia not decided yet so ideas on good places to go around here is welcome!
Africa (want to hit south africa, madagasca and kenya for definite)
Home

If anyone could give me some advice on how long they think we need to spend in each country that would be great! Especially would like to hear from someone who has travelled south america!

Also i went to go see a man in Sta Travel today and he said we are looking at £2000 for our flights and to buget £1000 a month for spending money then obviously insurance etc on top. What do people think of this? Because we didnt think we'd need that much spending money a month!!

thanks,

Laura xx Reply to this

To be honest these questions are really hard to answer without at least knowing some things like how you want to travel (sleeping in hostel dorms or staying in a private room in a hotel; eating street food and cooking occasionally or eating out in diners/restaurants all the time) and what you are interested in doing (adventure sports like white-water rafting and bungee jumping and going on long treks etc, or seeing museums and exploring city neighbourhoods and experiencing local cultural festivities).

In my experience, if you're trying to suss out a trip and figure out how long you can go for the money you intend to have saved up, do a little bit of planning before you work out your budget. As for working out how long to spend in each place, well I would love to spend 2 months in Buenos Aires whereas you might want to spend 3 days there. Your travel agent's advice of just saying to budget 1000 quid a month is a little foolish in my opinion, seeing that you are going to very different continents. Australia and NZ will be fairly expensive places to travel through, whilst SE Asia will be more on the lower end, with Southern Africa and South America somewhere in the middle.

So, my advice to you would be this: Work out a dream itinerary first. Don't think too much about the cost just yet. Write down everywhere you want to go, do a little bit of preliminary research and figure out how long you want to spend in each place. Put a daily budget next to each destination - accommodation (check out average rates on hostelbookers.com or hostelworld.com), food, transport and miscellaneous (for tours, museum fees, etc). Then on top of that add inter-city transportation and activities that will be expensive (a galapagos island tour for example will set you back $2k USD minimum). Once you have your dream itinerary, you can start culling down once you realise (inevitably) how things start to add up (and don't forget to add your RTW ticket price, insurance, visas, vaccinations, travel gear like backpack and hiking boots and padlocks etc etc)

To give you a really really rough idea, I'm planning a similar trip to leave in a couple of months and traveling with my boyfriend, we'll be staying mostly in budget hostels, eating out once or twice a day and cooking or getting supermarket meals other times, doing lots of activities like museums and wine tastings and tours etc, catching overnight buses in south america and SE Asia as opposed to flying..and we're budgeting about $35 each per day in SE Asia and $55 each per day in South America, not including expensive activities like Machu Picchu trek and Galapagos Islands tour. Be aware also that Brazil, Argentina and Chile are a lot more expensive (it's more like $70/day there) whilst Bolivia and Colombia are a lot cheaper (say $25-30/day).

Good luck! Reply to this