From Cancun to Montevideo

I've always loved travelling, To be on the move, see sights and meet people is so exciting and rewarding. A badge I got in Santiago de Compostela at the end of my Camino says " El camino es la meta" . You hit the road not with the purpose to go from A to B, but so that you can be on the road. 

I've been all over Europe (Iceland and Belarus still to go to this coming May), last year I made the journey of my life through all of Central and South America.

I do maintain some web pages and a hundred online photo albums but a blog gives you the chance to put in something more than just the name of the place in the shot and share impressions. So the plan was to post regularly but with only a smartphone available it turned out to be quite difficult to produce decent looking pages. Once I returned I arranged all my photos and videos, but was putting off updating the blog pages till now. Still I think it is an experience worth sharing so please follow.

Itinerary. Earlier I used to take group tours where everything is arranged for you. But after planning a 7 thousand kilometers car trip throughout Europe by myself,  two Camino de Santiago peregrinajes in Spain and a trip to Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia I got the courage and planned this huge trip all the way from Cancun to Montevideo:

Now, I was going North to South but when I started publishing the blog entries with their respective dates, the South ones came on top as being more recent, so you would have to read the blog bottom to top to be in correct trip order, and some pages are already under the Archive link. Better use the links to the right that will take you to the proper entry. There is also a link to the day by day itinerary.

Here is the map, it's live and red points are already behind my back. 17 countries, 34 borders to cross

All in all it took 46 days, from March 24 to May 8th 2017.
Flights:  I booked well in advance:

• Sofia - Madrid - Sofia with Ryan Air - 90 EUR
• Madrid - Paris - Cancun and 
• Montevideo - Rio de Janeiro - Paris - Madrid - an open jaw Air France ticket cost me only 514 GBP, booked 5 months in advance.
• Panama - Armenia, Colombia $157. 

Buses: Once in Mexico, I used buses all the way, except to get from Panama City to Colombia, as there is no land transportation and roads across the Darien gap. I did not try any online booking of bus tickets as this was not readily available for most countries and it turned out to be a good decision as one finds in place a lot more bus companies operating and with cheaper prices. Do research flights as well, for instance, between Lima and Cusco.

Accommodation: I stayed in small hotels and hostels along the way, used Booking.com for all with free cancellation as I had to reschedule parts of the itinerary a couple of times - the Panama City - Armenia flight was only available on Fridays and I wanted to be in Lima for Easter. But once I started from Cancun, I was able to stick to my schedule with only one exception at the Nicaraguan border. 

This does not sound very much like the traditional hard core backpackers who don't worry about a return ticket, take it easy and stay in each country as long as they like, but I had the time limit of my vacation days available and also my experience may encourage people who like to plan everything in advance. 

Spanish: What other preparations for the trip? I had taken several courses in Spanish: first the "Mi vida loca" at the BBC site, then an A1 course in Sofia and the Duo Lingo self study. So, far from being perfect, I was perfectly able to do all the everyday talk in Spanish with the local people and only used English with other travellers. Spanish helped immensely to communicate as I do look like a Gringo (tall, blue eyes...) and gringos are not especially liked in Latin America.

Maps.  It took  hours of preparation for each city I visited, most times I used Wikitravel and TripAdvisor to check what is there for sightseeing, then marked the place in a Here maps collection so I could find it using GPS offline navigation. I also marked the locations of the bus stations and the places I was staying. All this was done before the trip and worked pretty well, but time and again I was asking some pretty señoritas "¿Dónde está ...?" for a chance to chat in Spanish.
Yes, in Spanish there are inverted ¿ before each question and also inverted ¡.

Visas: lucky me, Bulgaria is part of the European Union and all countries visited were visa free for EU citizens, except Bolivia, and I got the Bolivian visa in Cusco, free. There were a lot of border fees in Central America and an outright racket when leaving Mexico. 

Cost:  All in all, the journey cost me about $3000, including the flights, transportation, accommodation, meals and entrance fees. Before the journey I made the yellow fever vaccination, needed for the Bolivian visa, and bought some medicines, including some malaria prevention pills that one had to take once a week. Here and there I'm providing the costs as noted exchange rates are what they were in 2017. I had some cash,  and used the ATM to draw more as cards are not accepted everywhere. In San Salvador and Ecuador the local currency is US dollars so one could replenish the cash, but a lot of ATMs could not connect to my bank. I also paid by debit card whenever I could, this worked with the bus tickets and in supermarkets.

I read a good advice: take half the luggage and twice the money.

I also had the chance to visit again Argentina in 2018 and Guatemala and Chile in 2019 and while in Chile I went to Rapa Nui (Easter island). I added these although they were done later.
Entonces, bienvenidos y vamos a viajar conmigo!