October was a busy month, with more focus on travel than work compared to last month!
What did we do?
We spent the first few days of October in the north of Peru, first in Piura and then by the beach in Máncora before taking an overnight bus across the boarder to Guayaquil in Ecuador. We then spent Zab's birthday in the rainforest near Montañita before we flew up to Quito to meet my mum and her husband and stayed together in a rented apartment for a week.
From there, Zab and I headed south to Latacunga, climbed to the base camp of Cotopaxi volcano, then stayed at what has possibly been our favourite accommodation in all of South America: Black Sheep Inn in Chugchilán on the Quilotoa loop. After that, we stayed a couple of nights in Riobamba, a boring and rather ugly city (though we took a train ride from there to Ecuador's highest train station) before continuing south to Cuenca, where we moved in to a brand new apartment for three weeks, and where we are now.
What did we spend?
- Total spent for two people in October (31 days): £1954.53
- Average per person per day: £31.52
The pie chart:
We would've liked to have shown you how cheap Ecuador has been since we spent all but three days of October in the country, but we can't. Compared to Bolivia and even Peru, it has certainly been more expensive, but that is not the only reason our spending is up.
Since leaving Lima, we made a conscious decision to stay in much nicer places. No longer will we be staying in cheap and cheerful hostels, even if we have our own room and bathroom; we'd much rather spend a bit more and stay somewhere memorable and worth writing about. The test for potential future places to stay will now be: “would our mothers stay here?” That is why this is the first month where Accommodation accounts for more than 50% of our total spend.
Other than that, the other categories are not so different than usual. Transport includes one flight, from Manta on the coast of Ecuador up to Quito, while Miscellaneous includes some things we've never paid for before: an $8 fee to leave Peru as we overstayed by four days ($1 per day each) and some malaria prophylactics, as parts of northern Peru and coastal Ecuador have a malaria risk.
Entertainment this month also included some things we don't normally do: going to an IMAX cinema in Guauyaquil, a massage for Zab on his birthday, a jungle hike, an open-top hop-on-hop-off tourist bus in Quito with my mum and her husband, a tour to climb to the base camp of Cotopaxi volcano and a tourist train from Riobamba.
Indefinite Adventure around the web
- 2nd October: We did an interview with Laura for My Destination about teaching English to travel, expat living and the challenges of travelling as a same-sex couple.
- 8th October: Lina and Dave from Divergent Travelers also interviewed us.
- 28th October: We did one more interview with Poi and Kirsty from No Place to Be.
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:
- Meagan from Five Dollar Traveller wrote an excellent overview of Burmese street food for us. Spoiler: it's really cheap!
- Continuing with our Peru posts, I questioned whether visiting Paracas and the Islas Ballestas in southern Peru was worth it.
- Zab and I debated which was the best vegan restaurant in Lima: Almazen or Raw Café.
- We also put together our list of top 10 art galleries and museums in Peru's capital.
- Being big chocolate fans, we enjoyed learning about how to make it in a workshop while we were in Lima.
- Zab interviewed Mari in Lima, a woman with a fascinating life story and our second subject in our Expat Living series.
How was your October?
