Being married to a nerdy engineer has its perks. One of them is that he kept track of each mode of transportation and each type of lodging we stayed in while in South America.
This information isn’t useful for much other than freaking out our less adventurous friends and family with the number of beds we stayed in.
So without further adieu, here are the stats from our South American Adventure:
General Numbers
Days traveled: 91
Countries visited: 4
Cities explored: 33
Distance Traveled: 13,260 miles (21,340 km)
Times we got sick: Katie – 2, Ben – 0
Spanish words learned: muchos
Vaccines Needed: 2 (yellow fever and typhoid)
Borders Crossed: 3
Items Stolen: 4
Most empanadas consumed in one sitting: 6
Longest bus ride: 18 hours
Number of times we got lost: Ummm…
Pictures taken: 1,335,654,422,981
Lodging
Hostels/hotels/bungalows/bunkhouses slept in: 34
Nights spent in Tents: 4
Transportation
Airplanes: 11
Buses: 44
Taxis: too many to count!
Night Buses: 7
Boats: 23
Cable Cars: 4
Times we Hitchhiked: once
Hey, just curious cause you’ve mentioned some pretty dragged out bus rides and one of my gf’s and I are traveling to Ecuador in November and do plan to get on an overnight bus over quite some distance (Montanita to Banos). Can you elaborate a bit on your experience with the buses? I don’t think we can book these in advance but the hope is that we could just show up to the designated bus stops and hop on the ones we need. Do you have any tips or info you could share?
Thanks!
Sarah
Hi Sarah, what fun travel plans you have! Buses in Ecuador are generally (in our experience) not the most luxurious in all of South America, but they were the cheapest we encountered. The general rule of thumb is that you’ll pay about $1 USD per hour of travel, so a 5 hour bus ride, should cost around $5 USD (this was back in 2014, so it may be slightly different now, but I wouldn’t assume too much higher). We never booked buses in Ecuador in advance and had no issues. Hop that helps clear it up a bit. Happy travels!
Hello- noticed you were on the south coast of Ecuador and I would like some advice about that area.
I am booked into Puerto Lopez for a few days, then would like to take a bus to Guayaquil , then fly to Quito for my trip home. do you know about bus travel to Guayaquil? wondering how long it would take, do I need to overnight in Guayaquil, etc. thank you. Holly Pender-Love, travelling January 2018.
I’m not entirely sure on how long it will take from Puerto Lopez to Guayaquil. Google Maps is great for this and will show you how long public transport takes From just a quick search, driving time is about 3 hours and 15 minutes. So by bus it couldn’t be more than 4 to 5 hours. There are probably bus companies that run from both cities. I would simply Google it and see what companies show up. Hope this helps!
Hi,
Your life must be really exciting, adventurous and full of fun.
My name is Ana Merka and I am a content writer with Travel Tourist Information Guide website. I manage the pages for Latin America. Link to the referenced pages is: <a href="http://travel-tourist-information-guide.com/latin-america"></a>.
I have worked on most of the pages for Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru and would be working on other locations in Latin America as we go along. I would like to request your valuable inputs on any of these locations that you might have visited as it would be very helpful to improve the quality of information that we can provide on the website for travelers (especially for backpackers).
God Bless You both.
Best wishes,
Ana
Hi Ana, Thanks for your nice comment. Please email me and we can discuss further.