RTW Trip Expenses for March 2012

Posted on April 3rd, 2012 webmaster No comments          Print

I’m currently going through my expenses for March 2012 in Google Spreadsheet.  I figured I’d share it here for those curious how much it cost to travel long term.

• Food: $447.95

I’ve been quite lazy and been eating out more than I should be.  Looking at my daily food expense breakdown, I’ve been spending between $5 – $24 a day on food, which is a pretty wide range.  I told myself last time I did my expenses that I should cut down on food spending, which obviously didn’t happen.  I’m hoping to be more disciplined this month and use the supermarket and local bakeries more.

• Accommodation: $286.26

I’ve been pretty good with this.  I’ve stayed mostly in dorms that costs between $5-10.  Had a few splurges where I spent $20-25 on a private room, but I factored those in my budget.

• Transportation: $301.86

This month has the biggest transportation expense for me so far.  Last month I only spent $64.54 on transportation.  A good portion of it was spent in Honduras: taxi rides in Roatan and ferry rides.  I’ve also splurged quite a bit on taking luxury bus lines like Hedman Alas.  A second class bus would’ve cost about a quarter of the price.

• Activities: $351.87

Most of this amount was spent on diving.  I spent $268 on a PADI Open Water certification and $53 for an additional 2 fun dives.  The rest are from snorkel rentals, park entrance fees, and a tour.

• Medical: $21.22

The biggest portion of this expense was from a doctor visit in Utila to see if I’m in good enough condition to dive.  The rest is over-the-counter medicine cost.

• Insurance: $64.37

World Nomads travel insurance for 1 month.

• Miscellaneous: $46.29

This mostly consists of internet, laundry, and entrance/departure taxes for different countries (I should probably move that to the transportation category).

Total cost for the month of March: $1,519.82

Still below my $2,000 a month budget and still less than what I would’ve spent back home, so it’s still cheaper for me to keep traveling than stay home .

La Ceiba, Honduras to Granada, Nicaragua

Posted on March 25th, 2012 webmaster No comments          Print

Since many backpackers mainly go to Utila to scuba when they visit Honduras, I’m assuming that many of them who are heading to Nicaragua will take a similar route I took.  I’m hoping this post will be helpful to those planning their trip with the same route.

I took the 6:20 AM ferry from Utila (it was actually more like 7:00 AM as it was late) and arrived in La Ceiba around 8:00 AM.  From La Ceiba I took a taxi to the Hedman Alas bus terminal for 50 lempiras.  Hedman Alas is a luxury bus line, I decided to splurge a little for this.  I bought an Executive Plus ticket for $37.30 to Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa.  It was about a 7-hour ride total and snacks are included.  There was a stop in San Pedro Sula for 1 hour before heading to Tegucigalpa (3 hours from La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula and 4 hours from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa).   A cheaper option to Tegucigalpa is with Cristina bus line for $10.

From the Hedman Alas bus station, I took a taxi to Hotel Boston ($20 a night for a private room with bathroom) in the downtown area for 150 lempiras.  I thought it was a little expensive but I don’t know what the normal rate is.  It was about a 20 minute ride.  I stayed 2  nights in Tegucigalpa as I wanted to check out the city.  Nothing really special with the city, in my opinion.  If I were to do it again I probably would only spend 1 night here.

After the second night, I took a taxi from my hotel to the Tica Bus terminal.  The bus ticket is $20 from there to Managua, Nicaragua.  I have to say their buses are really nice.  The one I took looked almost brand new.  Very comfy seats, has A/C and bathroom.  The ride was supposed to take about 7 hours but it took us around 8.5 hours to reach Managua.  I recommend you bring food with you on the bus.  Tica Bus also takes care of getting your passports stamped at the border crossing.

One of the bus employees (there were 3 of them total) collected the passports/IDs and money for the exit and entry fees.  For me, he asked for 300 lempiras or $15.  I’m assuming it’s $5 for the Honduras exit fee as the receipt for the Nicaragua entry fee shows $10.

The bus stopped before exiting Honduras and before entering Nicaragua, about 5 minutes apart.  If you still have Honduran lempiras left you might want to change your money to Nicaraguan cordobas from one of the money-exchange guys near the border.

We also had to go through customs before entering Nicaragua, and it was located in a warehouse!  It was very quick though, we pretty much lined up and one-by-one entered a room where they’re supposed to inspect your luggage and hand in your customs declaration form.  But for most people they didn’t really inspect anything, you just hand in your form.

The bus made 2 more stops before reaching Managua.  I don’t remember the first one but the second one was  for Leon.  It didn’t stop in the actual city, just at a Texaco gas station where taxis are waiting.  I guess you can take a taxi from here to Leon.  I actually considered on checking out Leon first, but then decided last minute to just head to Granada.

It was around 7:00 PM when we finally reached Managua.  It’s not recommended to walk around here at night so I decided to just stay at the hotel right in the Tica Bus terminal.  It was $14 for a private room with shared bathroom.  Very basic but clean.  Fast Wi-Fi here as well, fast enough to stream movies so I watched Shark Tank on Hulu to pass the time.

Around 9:00 AM the next morning I took a taxi to Universidad  Centroamericana (UCA) for 50 cordobas or $2.17 where minibuses/shuttles to Granada leave from.  The taxi driver was offering to take me directly to Granada for $30, but I said it was too expensive for me.  The minibus from UCA to Granada was only 22 cordobas ($0.95)!  At the UCA, take the shuttle that says “UCA” on it.  The fare was also posted inside.  It was quite an uncomfortable ride for me as I got there right before it was ready to leave, so there were no seats available.  I had to stand up with my backpack.  Then they pick up more passengers along the way and fit as many as they could inside.  The trip was just over an hour.  I think it was worth taking it even though they packed the passenger like chickens as I just saved myself $29!

I got off at the central park in Granada and was impressed with how pretty the city looks.  I had breakfast real quick then started walking around looking for a place to stay.  The city is also pretty small, so you probably won’t need a taxi to take you to your hotel/hostel unless you’re carrying a lot of stuff with you.

Learning to Scuba Dive in Utila

Posted on March 18th, 2012 webmaster No comments          Print

Underwater Vision/Hotel Trudy

While I was in Guatemala I met a lot of travelers heading to Honduras, mainly to Utila in the Bay Islands to scuba dive or learn how to.

Utila is one of the cheapest places (if not, the cheapest) to dive or learn how to dive, making it very popular with backpackers.  Almost everyone I met who has done diving before absolutely loves it.  This made me very jealous as I really wanted to try it, but there’s one problem: I didn’t know how to swim.

I heard from other travelers that you don’t really need to know how to swim to scuba dive, but PADI requires it for safety reasons.  So once I reached Honduras and ready to check out the Bay Islands, I decided to go to Roatan first as I heard it has more to offer other than diving and I wasn’t sure whether I should even bother with Utila.

Roatan is definitely a beautiful island.  Diving is big here as well, but unlike Utila, it has a really nice beach in the West Bay area where you can snorkel right off the beach in shallow water.  I spent most of the stay in Roatan at this beach.  I actually tried teaching myself how to swim here but no luck.

While in Roatan, I decided to might as well check out Utila since I’m already near the island, even if I wasn’t sure whether I would enjoy it.  The other thing Utila is know for is partying, which I’m not really big into.  So the two things that Utila has to offer weren’t for me.

From Roatan, I took the ferry back to La Ceiba, then the ferry to Utila.  The last 20 minutes or so of the ferry ride to Utila was pretty rough.  When I got off the boat and started walking to town, I was approached with people handing out maps and flyers from different dive shops.  The entire island seems to be surround by dive shops.  I just took a map and just kept walking in one direction to find a place to stay.  I met a traveler while I was in Roatan who was just in Utila and mentioned Hotel Trudy as a good place to stay.

While walking with my backpack, someone approached me asking if I was looking for a place in particular.  I said I was kind of just looking around, maybe Hotel Trudy.  It turned out she’s actually one of the dive instructors for Underwater Vision, where Hotel Trudy is located, so she showed me the way.

While we were walking, she asked me if I was going to be diving there.  I told her I wasn’t sure as I didn’t know how to swim.  She was actually starting a PADI Open Water session that day and she offered to try and teach me how to swim in the afternoon before the class if I wanted.  So, of course, I said that would be great if she could do that.

So that afternoon, she started to teach me how to swim and float.  After about an hour I was actually able to do it!  I’m still a terrible swimmer but it was enough to pass the swimming part of the course.  I’m really glad I ran into her.

You need to be able to swim 200 meters and float for 10 minutes before you’d be allowed to dive.  You can also snorkel with fins for the swimming part, if you prefer, but you’ll have to do 300 meters.  I went with the snorkeling option as I found it a lot easier.  I just barely passed the 10 minute floating part, I was pretty tired after that 10 minutes.

That same day we did the swimming test, we did our first dive to practice some important skills for diving.  We went over setting up the equipment and safety checks, then started going underwater.  I have to admit I was pretty nervous going underwater the first time.  Breathing underwater with the regulator was a weird feeling for me at first, but I quickly got used to it as we spent more time underwater.  We practiced things such as clearing our masks of water, moving and breathing underwater without a mask, removing the regulator out of mouths and how to find it if it gets knocked off, what it feels like to run out of air, using our buddy’s alternate air source, removing and putting on our weight belts underwater, and buoyancy control.  All of these are very important as any of them can happen underwater and it’s easy to panic if you never experience some of these situations.

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