Having already laboriously written this email once and then
lost both my backups, I am taking this as a hint that I should do two things. 1.
Write less and be more selective in what I write about, and 2. Enjoy writing
more so that even if I lose the fruits of my work I still keep the pleasure of
writing it. A quote in one of my yoga books says “we only have the right to
labour, we don’t have the right to the fruits of our labour”. This to me is a
call to love what you do and do what you love because if like me you lose your
work or for some reason you don’t reach your intended goal it doesn’t matter.
That being said let’s get on with the show…..
Tight Ass!
The miniscule amount of research I did on Central America (a quick perusal of a world map to find out where the countries were and a glazy-eyed flick through a travel guide) suggested to me that it was “doable” comfortably in about 3 weeks. With that in mind and a suitable amount of money put away I set off to Guatemala……Anyway two months passed by and I had only JUST reached Costa Rica. This meant I was only just beyond the halfway mark in my journey to Colombia.
An extra 5 weeks of traveling hadn’t done my back account any favors and to make matters worse, everyone had told me Costa Rica is the most expensive country in Central America. I knew it was time to get TIGHT and rein in my already far from big spending. Really there wasn’t very much to rein in, however I knew that Costa Rica was going to be an important and necessary practice in frugality or “tightassedness”. Thus with firm resolve I rolled up my sleeve and stuck my thumb out. It was going to be hitch-hiking for me, crappy hostels and a LOT of beans and rice.
Anyway, that was 4 weeks ago and now I am two hours from the Panama border and reflecting on the journey. Instead of travel through Costa Rica on severe time constraints as many pressured, overworked travelers do, I had given my self a variable time constraint – I would travel until the very modest amount of money I had set aside for Costa Rica ran out.
My budget was US$240 dollars. Unfortunately so far I have already spent about $380 (an extra $140 dollars - which is half of my budget for Panama) or about $13.50 a day.
Three-quarters of the way through my travels through Costa Rica, it looked as if I was going to make my original budget but then in San Jose a little voice said that I should go to the dentist and things went a little crazy after that (the first dentist told me I needed 14 fillings!)
Things didn’t turn out to be that bad (I only needed one filling, the rest weren’t holes but natural fissures) but never the less, after 2 consultations, some x-rays, one filling and a teeth cleaning I had definitely blown my “thread-of-a-shoestring” budget. Such budgets as could be expected don’t readily accommodate dental work. Without the trips to the dentist however, I would be currently hovering around $250 or just $10 over my original budget. Not too bad!
Cost Cutting Measures:
Travel
To cut down on traveling costs, I did a lot of hitch-hiking which was fun and I met a lot of interesting people, but I am still not sure whether it actually SAVED me money. This was because generally took a lot longer to get everywhere and I expect I probably spent the money I saved by hitching on extra accommodation and food for the longer journey.
Accommodation
To cut down on accommodation costs I searched out the absolute CHEAPEST hostels. To give you an example of the extreme measures I would go to, one night in Malpais, a surfer town on the Nicoya peninsula, I walked around the town for 3 hours to find a cheaper hostel than the one I had spotted within the first 5 minutes of arriving ($10 per night). In the end I found one for $7.
There weren’t many savings to be made in the accommodations stakes because I was already staying in very cheap hotels anyway. I did spend a lot of time trying however. Thankfully some friends of friends offered me free lodging in their house for a week and that really helped me out.
Tight Ass!
The miniscule amount of research I did on Central America (a quick perusal of a world map to find out where the countries were and a glazy-eyed flick through a travel guide) suggested to me that it was “doable” comfortably in about 3 weeks. With that in mind and a suitable amount of money put away I set off to Guatemala……Anyway two months passed by and I had only JUST reached Costa Rica. This meant I was only just beyond the halfway mark in my journey to Colombia.
An extra 5 weeks of traveling hadn’t done my back account any favors and to make matters worse, everyone had told me Costa Rica is the most expensive country in Central America. I knew it was time to get TIGHT and rein in my already far from big spending. Really there wasn’t very much to rein in, however I knew that Costa Rica was going to be an important and necessary practice in frugality or “tightassedness”. Thus with firm resolve I rolled up my sleeve and stuck my thumb out. It was going to be hitch-hiking for me, crappy hostels and a LOT of beans and rice.
Anyway, that was 4 weeks ago and now I am two hours from the Panama border and reflecting on the journey. Instead of travel through Costa Rica on severe time constraints as many pressured, overworked travelers do, I had given my self a variable time constraint – I would travel until the very modest amount of money I had set aside for Costa Rica ran out.
My budget was US$240 dollars. Unfortunately so far I have already spent about $380 (an extra $140 dollars - which is half of my budget for Panama) or about $13.50 a day.
Three-quarters of the way through my travels through Costa Rica, it looked as if I was going to make my original budget but then in San Jose a little voice said that I should go to the dentist and things went a little crazy after that (the first dentist told me I needed 14 fillings!)
Things didn’t turn out to be that bad (I only needed one filling, the rest weren’t holes but natural fissures) but never the less, after 2 consultations, some x-rays, one filling and a teeth cleaning I had definitely blown my “thread-of-a-shoestring” budget. Such budgets as could be expected don’t readily accommodate dental work. Without the trips to the dentist however, I would be currently hovering around $250 or just $10 over my original budget. Not too bad!
Cost Cutting Measures:
Travel
To cut down on traveling costs, I did a lot of hitch-hiking which was fun and I met a lot of interesting people, but I am still not sure whether it actually SAVED me money. This was because generally took a lot longer to get everywhere and I expect I probably spent the money I saved by hitching on extra accommodation and food for the longer journey.
Accommodation
To cut down on accommodation costs I searched out the absolute CHEAPEST hostels. To give you an example of the extreme measures I would go to, one night in Malpais, a surfer town on the Nicoya peninsula, I walked around the town for 3 hours to find a cheaper hostel than the one I had spotted within the first 5 minutes of arriving ($10 per night). In the end I found one for $7.
There weren’t many savings to be made in the accommodations stakes because I was already staying in very cheap hotels anyway. I did spend a lot of time trying however. Thankfully some friends of friends offered me free lodging in their house for a week and that really helped me out.
Food
To cut down on food costs I cooked my own food where ever possible and only ate out on very special occasions (like when there was local delicacies to be tried – ie “patties” Caribbean meat pasties, fish soup, coconut slice, fruit and cheese bread and “Casados”, a staple meal sold at little restaurants or “sodas” all across Costa Rica. It contains rice, beans, fried banana, cabbage salad and some form of meat and will set you back about US$3).
As most people who cook will know, cooking is usually cheaper than eating out, but not always! I did eat a lot of self cooked rice, beans and vegetables which worked out very cheap, but on the other hand, I developed a fairly severe addiction to a Costa Rican organic brand of biscuits that which proved to be a pricey habit to keep up. All in all I don’t think I saved a lot of money because just like the situation with accommodation, I was already accustomed to eating in virtually the cheapest places anyway and so cooking didn’t make things much cheaper (there was also my expensive organic biscuit habit).
Entertainment
Last thing I did to cut costs, was do virtually only things that don’t cost money. Unfortunately pretty much everything in Costa Rica costs money - even walking! (The national parks which Costa Rica is famous for are pricey little suckers to go walking in. It cost me $24 to walk in two of them). In this area I probably saved a reasonable amount of money but then again I missed out on things like white water rafting, canopy tours, boating trips and guided tours. Fortunately the things I missed out on were not really things I especially wanted to do, so I feel ok about those loses.
So was it all worth it? The good things were that I met a lot of truckies, I got a good amount of days for my dollar in Costa Rica and I rarely felt that I was missing out on things. What’s more my bank account thanks me (I’m sure I could have easily spent double what I spent without much effort). The bad things were that it was really time and effort consuming trying to always find the cheapest option and secondly, I didn’t do some of the cool things that would have been fun to do here (swinging through the jungle on a giant flying fox is one of them). Still there is always next time for the expensive things - I can come back and do them on my stressed out vacation, if I ever get that high paying job with 2 weeks holidays.
In the end I would say that it WAS worth it! It was a really interesting way to travel and view the world and it taught me a few good lessons. The most important one of these is that “trying to do things really cheaply often back fires and turns out to be overly time consuming and have its own hidden costs which make it not that cheap in the end”. I also am getting over my awkwardness about asking how much things without prices cost (I have done that a lot).
And as far a Panama is concerned? I will keep trying to do things as cheaply as I can because mostly I am enjoying it and my bank account is thanking me but perhaps I will splurge and take the occasional $10 hostel instead of walking 3 hours to find the $7 one.
Lots of love to you all
Namaste
Martin
To cut down on food costs I cooked my own food where ever possible and only ate out on very special occasions (like when there was local delicacies to be tried – ie “patties” Caribbean meat pasties, fish soup, coconut slice, fruit and cheese bread and “Casados”, a staple meal sold at little restaurants or “sodas” all across Costa Rica. It contains rice, beans, fried banana, cabbage salad and some form of meat and will set you back about US$3).
As most people who cook will know, cooking is usually cheaper than eating out, but not always! I did eat a lot of self cooked rice, beans and vegetables which worked out very cheap, but on the other hand, I developed a fairly severe addiction to a Costa Rican organic brand of biscuits that which proved to be a pricey habit to keep up. All in all I don’t think I saved a lot of money because just like the situation with accommodation, I was already accustomed to eating in virtually the cheapest places anyway and so cooking didn’t make things much cheaper (there was also my expensive organic biscuit habit).
Entertainment
Last thing I did to cut costs, was do virtually only things that don’t cost money. Unfortunately pretty much everything in Costa Rica costs money - even walking! (The national parks which Costa Rica is famous for are pricey little suckers to go walking in. It cost me $24 to walk in two of them). In this area I probably saved a reasonable amount of money but then again I missed out on things like white water rafting, canopy tours, boating trips and guided tours. Fortunately the things I missed out on were not really things I especially wanted to do, so I feel ok about those loses.
So was it all worth it? The good things were that I met a lot of truckies, I got a good amount of days for my dollar in Costa Rica and I rarely felt that I was missing out on things. What’s more my bank account thanks me (I’m sure I could have easily spent double what I spent without much effort). The bad things were that it was really time and effort consuming trying to always find the cheapest option and secondly, I didn’t do some of the cool things that would have been fun to do here (swinging through the jungle on a giant flying fox is one of them). Still there is always next time for the expensive things - I can come back and do them on my stressed out vacation, if I ever get that high paying job with 2 weeks holidays.
In the end I would say that it WAS worth it! It was a really interesting way to travel and view the world and it taught me a few good lessons. The most important one of these is that “trying to do things really cheaply often back fires and turns out to be overly time consuming and have its own hidden costs which make it not that cheap in the end”. I also am getting over my awkwardness about asking how much things without prices cost (I have done that a lot).
And as far a Panama is concerned? I will keep trying to do things as cheaply as I can because mostly I am enjoying it and my bank account is thanking me but perhaps I will splurge and take the occasional $10 hostel instead of walking 3 hours to find the $7 one.
Lots of love to you all
Namaste
Martin