This is based on $35 per day for food without having to cook and $35 per day for hotel/hostel with a private room. If you stay in bunkbeds at hostels and buy groceries and cook your own food, you could easily do this on $30 a day. This amount doesn’t include tours, transportation, or souvenirs. To save more, do some days in bunkbeds and cook your own meals and some days in nicer places.
How to do it:
Travel in the shoulder seasons: October, November, March April. Book Private rooms at hostels. They run around $30-$40; sometimes you have to share a bathroom but it’s really not a big deal. Some rooms are amazing; some not so much. See my post on restaurants and hotels.
Make sure they have free breakfast and a refrigerator for leftovers. If they have free breakfast, take a piece of bread and cheese and wrap it in a napkin for a snack for later.
Portions are huge so save the food you can’t eat. Time your meal so you only have two meals a day: free breakfast as late as possible and late lunch/early dinner. The cheapest things to order are tostadas, which are really paninis and empanadas.
Cocktails are more affordable here than in the US, as are “cups” of wine.
Instead of paying for an international calling plan if you don’t have it, just use Wi-Fi wherever you are.
Use Uber versus taxis whenever possible. They’re easily half the price. In Argentina, to save money on getting money, do not use the ATM. Wire yourself Argentinian pesos through Western Union from your home city but don’t make the mistake I did: If you just ask for a certain amount of money to be put in they’ll give you one code. That means you have to take the full amount out at once and carry it with you for the rest of the trip. If you want to withdraw, say, three different withdrawals, you need three different codes, one for each withdrawal. For example, if you put in $1000, ask for $300 as one withdrawal, $300 as a second withdrawal, and $400 as a third withdrawal. You have to specifically ask for this.
Walk to places whenever you can. Check how far they are from the bus station or train station. Buses are cheap and reliable. You can also do overnight buses with lay down beds and save on a hotel night.
If you really want to save on tours, use local tour companies rather than online ones like Viator. Just realize that you are taking chances on the local companies. I went with a local company on one tour, got Covid on the bus, had to sit on a horribly hard seat, and it was all in Spanish. The next day I went on one booked through Viator and it was 100% better. If you really want to save that $10, book with Viator far enough in advance, wait for the local tour company to contact you to confirm over WhatsApp, then cancel with Viator and go with the local company. Note that Viator books up 3 days in advance, and they have a strict 24 hour policy for cancellation.
Prices:.
Tostada (toasted
To get around the loneliness that hovcurs work solo travel, especially if you’re older, force yourself to start conversations. It’s hard and often doesn’t lead to conversations but worth a try. Also, book a dorm room. Work a few days in a shared room, shared kitchen, and shared common spaces, you’re bound to talk to a few people.
This all brings up solo travel. It’s challenging. You might go days without speaking to anyone except store clerks. You eat alone staring straight ahead and after so many nights of doing this, you start to feel like you’re on the outside of the bubble of the world, watching all the happy, normal people inside the bubble, wondering how these people came to be so happy.
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