June 2024 Expenses & Backpack Travel in Colombia
June started for us somewhere in the air on the way to South America. We saw the sunrise on our layover in Panama and landed in full daylight in Cartagena. We had come to Colombia to fulfill our plan of learning Spanish. We spent our first week as tourists in Cartagena before we boarded a flight to another Colombian city, Medellin. In Medellin, we had a week to rest and get orientated to our new neighborhood, Manila in the popular Poblado section of Medellin, before starting Spanish classes in mid-June.
So just like I have been doing since February 2018, I will be tracking our expenses. But unlike our van traveling days, I have earmarked $3000 a month for this journey. We will see whether we will be able to stay under this number. We almost made it in June.
Expenses
* A few notes about these expenses. Because Spanish classes are not a “normal” travel expense, I am presenting this expense separately from the total of everything else. Normally I report exactly what actually comes out of my bank account each month, but since we may book one or two months of accommodations, transportation, or Spanish classes ahead of time, I’m now reporting not when I spent the money but what month the money was spent on.
Spanish Classes: $732.82
Everything Else: $2,386.02
The Grand Total: $3118.84
Spanish Classes
We started our search for Spanish Schools while we were still in the USA. Greg emailed three schools and got a response back from one. The one that replied, Elefun, is the one we decided to go with. Our first week in Medellin we wandered over to Elefun to sign up. They sent us a placement test and we started group classes the next week. I have no idea what level the test placed us but the class we were assigned was mostly review for us. Which was fine because what we really looking for is an immersion experience with lots of practice listening and talking. And we loved our teacher.
Two weeks of classes plus a couple of notebooks and pens cost $732.82.
Communication
I discontinued my cell phone service right before we left the US. I ported my phone number with Google Voice which allows me to text through the Google Voice app. Unfortunately, although I can make and receive phone calls, I can only leave and receive voicemails, I can’t connect with anyone. This is not a big inconvenience for me. I tried to port Greg’s number while we were still in the US, but Google Voice rejected it. Who knows why? Since he needs to keep in touch with family he is keeping his Google Fi plan. This plan comes with up to 50 gigs of high-speed data – which is quite spotty here in Colombia. After 3 months outside of the US Google Fi will cut off the data. At that time we will switch Greg’s phone to a text and voice plan for $20. He won’t have any data while we are roaming wherever we are but I tend to be the person who looks most things up anyways. We paid $78.09 for Greg’s Google Fi plan in June.
The rest of the phone expense in June, $10.19 was for my Colombian phone plan. It is easy to get a SIM card in Cartegena, there are lots of little kiosks where you can buy them right on the street. But I didn’t feel comfortable with that. So we went to a mall to a Claro Store, one of the main telephone companies in Colombia.
At the store, I was told I was in the wrong place and needed to go to a little kiosk in the mall that sold phones. I got a sim card and a phone number there for $2.06, but then they told me I had to go somewhere else for a plan. This was another kiosk in the mall. This place which also sold lottery tickets, hooked me up with a month’s plan with 30 gigs of data for $8.13. Super cheap.
I was all ready to go – except that my phone wasn’t registered. I was aware that it needed to be registered from reading Facebook posts in Colombia Travel groups but had forgotten this, until a couple of weeks later when I got a text from Claro threatening to turn my service. We were in Medellin by then so we found another mall with another Claro store where the whole process was super easy and I wasn’t directed to go elsewhere.
Consumables
$288.26 is a super low grocery bill for us. But it might have had to do with eating out every day in Cartegena. More on that later. $28.63 is a really super super low booze bill for us. We have decided to be healthier and only drink out – well, except for that last bottle of Mezcal we bought. And $3.08 was for some toilet paper for our Airbnb where we stayed for 4 weeks.
In general fruits and vegetables seem much cheaper than in the US, but other things like olive oil or specialty products like sesame oil seem more expensive. Lucky for us in our quest to be healthier we have started eating only fruit for breakfast.
Entertainment
This is where I explain the low grocery bill. When I booked our accommodations, a hostel, for Cartagena I thought there would be a kitchen available where we could cook our own food. There was a kitchen outside on the roof but it appeared to just be for staff to make the morning breakfast. I never asked if we could use it or if there was any place to store food. But it turned out the heat and humidity in Cartegena were so oppressive that I don’t think we would have wanted to use it anyway. So we decided to eat all of our meals out. We were sorta on vacation anyway, right? At first, we tried having lunches of cheese and bread in our room but we soon gave that up too. Eventually, we just ate ice cream for lunch due to the heat. We spent $490.16 on eating out in Cartegena, every dinner, and most lunches. In the 3 plus weeks we were in Medellin we spent $308.13 eating and drinking out a few times a week.
Our Museums/Attractions/Music costs ($62.46) included tips to tour guides, street musicians, and museum tickets in Cartagena.
Personal
It rains a lot in Medellin. We had brought an umbrella with us but it soon became apparent that we needed another. It was raining and we had just gotten off the metro when someone approached me about buying something. My Gringo instinct kicked in with, No Gracias, just as I realized he was selling umbrellas ($3.10).
Our subscriptions include Netflix, Abode Photoshop, The New York Times, and Michael Fox’s Patreon account ($56.41).
Traveling Life
We pay $76 for a storage locker back in the US. I have been whittling away at my possessions for 12 years now, storing and moving things from various houses and attics. This past summer I finally broke down and agreed to store all of our extraneous stuff in a rented locker. It is just a small pile of things at this stage. Hopefully, when we return to the US I can divest all of it.
With $805.49 we did well on lodging costs for June. For this journey through South America, we are utilizing several resources and choosing different types of lodging depending on our circumstances.
Here is a little review of the two different kinds of lodging experiences we had in June:
Accomondations in Cartegena
I knew very little about Colombia or our first city Cartagena when we were first making our plans to travel. So I went to the internet to ask, “What is the best neighborhood in Cartagena to stay in?” The internet told me, Getsemaní. Lodging for Getsemaní was out of our price range on Airbnb so I started looking for rooms near Getsemaní. They were more affordable but nothing ticked all our boxes. And then I stumbled on Booking.com. Booking showed that although there weren’t apartments in Getsemaní that we could afford, there were hostels. It was just a few months prior when I learned that hostels not only offer multi-bed dorm-type accommodations but also private rooms. Being well over the median age for someone staying in a hostel, we like to have our own space. After carefully examining all the options, I found one I liked, La Viduka Hostel, and booked it.
Overall I loved staying at this hostel because it was in the heart of Getsemaní, but that was also the problem with it. Our room was right on the street. And it was a busy street with cars lined up on it every evening trying to get to the heart of the neighborhood. It could be noisy. Also because we were in the front of the hostel we were right next to the reception desk which could also be noisy. Good thing we travel with earplugs which cut out the worst of the noise. Also, we tended to be exhausted at the end of every day and slept with little problem.
Our room was adequate. A bit dark but that was fine for staying in steamy Cartagena. The room’s air conditioner was amazing. We would spend every morning after breakfast exploring the city and return to our room after lunch, strip off all our sweat-soaked clothes, hang them up to dry for the next day, and lie in bed cooling off until it was time to go out again for dinner.
There were some nice common areas in the hostel but we never used them because there was no air-conditioning outside of our room.
A free breakfast was served on the roof every morning. The roof had a great view and atmosphere and the food was good. The stairs to the roof were a bit precarious, but luckily I was awake enough every morning to successfully navigate them.
The next hostel we stay in will have a private bathroom. Although the bathroom at the hostel was cleaned every day, other guests would leave it a mess and for some reason, the cleaner would never clean up anything left in the sink.
Accomondations in Medellin
In Medellin, we wanted to find lodging for 4 weeks close to the school we were going to attend. The school is located in a small neighborhood called Manila which is part of a larger touristy area called Poblado. Because of this private lodging was out of our budget. I looked at hostels but 4 weeks was just too long to stay somewhere where we had to share a kitchen and other facilities with lots of people. Finally, I found a private home where we had a private bedroom and bathroom and shared spaces with the owners. The location was perfect, two blocks from school. And we loved the neighborhood. The owners were nice and after a few days, we fell into a pattern of using the kitchen when our hosts were not. This worked well for us but we spent most of our time in just one room. Four weeks was a little long for this type of situation.
Transportation
Our transportation costs were for taxis ($50.10), a flight from Cartagena to Medellin ($107.27), a Medellin metro card with the equivalent of about 5 rides ($6.83), and a public transportation app ($11.99), Moovit, for my phone.
At each airport, we took a taxi to our lodging. They are expensive, but expedient, especially when you are weary and want to get somewhere with minimum hassle. On our way back to the airport in Cartagena, we used the app Indrive. Indrive is a ride-sharing app like Uber, but unlike Uber, you can name the price you want to pay. The app will give you a suggestion of what to bid and sometimes drivers will counter bid. But overall it is a super cheap and convenient way to get around. As a comparison, our trip from the airport in Cartagena was $15, and our return trip, $4.13.
Originally we had planned to take a bus from Cartagena to Medellin. But the bus ride was 13 hours. Not wanting to depart or arrive in the dark we would have had to time the trip exactly and travel overnight. We considered taking two days and stopping on the way but didn’t see any place that looked appealing. The airfare was only $107.27 for the two of us, about twice the cost of the bus but we decided that it was worth it.
Right Now
We are still in Medellin although we have moved to a new neighborhood and now have an entire apartment to ourselves. We have two more weeks of school before a friend comes to visit us. After our friend leaves we will spend two weeks traveling through Southern Colombia on our way to the Ecuador border. We will cross into Ecuador and make our way to Quito where we will take more Spanish classes.
To see all of our expense reports, click here.
If you are interested in reading other expense reports from nomads who really know how to live cheaply while still having a good time, check out the blog from our friends Mark, Liesbet, and Maya who are traveling in their truck camper in South America at Roaming About.
Have you traveled by backpack? Do you track your expenses? Have you visited Colombia? Please let me know whatever this post inspires you to think about in the comments!
As per usual, I'm gaga over your photos. What an adventure you're having.
great breakdown! how was elefun for spanish classes?