November saw us reach 300 days of continuous travel and also the end of our time in South America and the start of our next phase of travelling in Europe!
What did we do?
We spent the first two and a half weeks of November in Cuenca, Ecuador, working and exploring the city. We then spent a whirlwind week travelling further south in Ecuador to the gorgeous Vilcabamba area then flying back to Quito to spend a few days in Otavalo before catching a flight to Madrid via Bogotá. In the Spanish capital we did a wonderful food tour and soaked in a hammam before carrying on to London to see friends and family, catch up on work and do some chores.
What did we spend?
- Total spent for two people in November (30 days): £1694.77
- Average per person per day: £28.25
The pie chart:
The majority of Accommodation is the apartment we rented in Cuenca for $42.50 (£25.95) per day, making it one of our most expensive ones, but also hotels in Vilcabamba, Loja, Otavalo and Madrid. Transport is made up largely by the two flights we took in November, first from Loja to Quito in our final week in Ecuador (£102.82 for two tickets) and then from Madrid to London (£77.05 for both of us), but also a few taxis and several local buses.
Eating out is considerably larger than Food, despite having a kitchen for the first half of November, as there was just so much tasty food to try in Cuenca! Entertainment is mostly entrance to a few museums and spa entrance in Cuenca (£18.30) and in Madrid (£29.85). Miscellaneous includes two haircuts at £1.83 each as well as the usual toiletries and other boring items.
Not included in the above total is £64.56 spent on gifts, which were: some chocolate, coffee, raw sugar and organic soap, a panama hat, a woolen hat, a poncho, two scarves, two pillow cases and three paintings. Transport doesn’t include our one-way flights with Avianca from Quito to Madrid, which came in at £867.57 for both of us.
Indefinite Adventure around the web
- 2nd November: I made my second appearance on the Amateur Traveler Podcast talking about Arequipa in southern Peru.
- 10th November: Dan and Casey published one of my favourite South America photos.
- 17th November: Flip interviewed us about slow travel, safety tips and future plans.
- 21st November: Zab did an interview with Simon about how we use his excellent expense tracking app, Trail Wallet.
On the blog
Apart from our regular features of the Travel Diary, Best Reads and Monthly Reports, these are a few of the posts we’ve put out on the blog this past month in case you missed them:
- Finishing up our posts about Peru, I asked: is Barranco Lima's trendiest neighbourhood?
- We reviewed the lovely vegetarian restaurant La Cuchara de San Marcos in Quito.
- Agness from eTramping wrote a great piece for us about finding vegetarian breakfast foods in China.
- Our first eco hotel review on the site was for a lovely place we stayed over Zab's birthday on the Ecuadorian coast.
- Looking back at our 10 months spent in South America, we highlight the best bits and discuss our plans for 2014.
- I tried to find beauty in Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city. (It wasn't that hard, actually.)
- In the name of research, we sought out the best cafés in Cuenca for digital nomads and picked our top four.
How was your November?
