Here’s some detail of our basic day-to-day costs and general notes on overlanding travel, comparatively for the three continents we have travelled so far. Importantly, these are subject to all the notes below:
Amounts are for two people, in UK £ sterling, converted from local currency at the prevailing rate at the time of travel.
Notes on the Table Columns
% Paid camp – % wild camp: the % split between paid and wild camping. In Africa we spent only 10% of our nights in wild-camps (see reasons below). In South and Central America we did around 50/50 wild and paid camping.
Av cost of campsite: the total amount spent on camping, divided by the number of nights spent in paid campsites. This is therefore the average price paid per night for a campsite.
Av spend per day: the total amount spent on camping/food/fuel, divided by the total number of days we spent in the region. This is therefore our average spend per day on these items, averaged over our whole time travelling in the region.
Camping Overlanding Costs
Africa Camping
Our average spend per day on camping in Africa was significantly higher than South and Central America due to:
(a) 90% of our nights were in paid camps (as opposed to only 50% in the Americas);
(b) camping in Africa was often in game reserves where the paid campsites are often expensive and compulsory.
Spending time in the parks/reserves was for us, the real reason for overland travel in the parts of Africa that we visited. Travelling southern/eastern Africa without incurring these costs would miss seeing most of the wildlife and would, in our view, be an un-rewarding experience. So we can’t recommend reducing these costs significantly.
Before planning an Africa trip, we strongly recommend looking at the websites of the various national park organisations to check the costs of entering and camping in the parks (particularly for your vehicle size/type – costs can increase steeply for larger trucks). Some countries are significantly cheaper than others. In 2014/15, South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe were amongst the cheapest, whereas Tanzania and Botswana were amongst the most expensive. But costs vary from time to time, so check them out.
Outside the parks in Africa, we did wild camp when we found nice spots, but it was harder than we expected to find spots available and safe for wild-camping (Namibia is the main exception to this where wild camping is generally very easy). In some countries we used community campsites on the edge of rural villages. These are run by the villagers and often very good. They create employment and are a good way for travellers to contribute to local communities, so we often preferred these rather than looking for wild-camp spots in the area. Some countries (eg South Africa and Zambia) have a lot of farm/fenced land, so it can be difficult to find available wild-camp spots (Note: our time in Africa was in the pre iOverlander days).
South and Central America Camping
Here we used formal campsites approximately 50% of the time and wild/free-camped (incl. sometimes less than attractive fuel-stations) for the rest of the time. We could easily have reduced the number of nights in paid campsites, but we like to use them sometimes: (a) to be sociable – we have found campsites to be great places for meeting other travellers; and (b) to contribute to local businesses, families and economies (this is an important part of our travel ‘ethos’).
Food Overlanding Costs
Africa food
Spend on food was overall pretty low as we were rarely in places where we could eat in restaurants. We also rarely found supermarkets with expensive western foods. Many food stores have no (or an intermittent) electricity supply and therefore no reliable refrigeration. So we bought fruit and veg from local markets and cooked for ourselves.
South America food
Here we were also often far away from restaurants and often cooked. However, our overall spend was higher here than Africa, because we found some good supermarket chains (eg in Chile, Peru) and were tempted with expensive imported foods. Better self-control and will-power in the supermarkets could have kept our costs down significantly!
Central America food
Our spend was significantly higher here because we were almost always near reasonable restaurants. It was often too hot to be bothered cooking and even when we did cook for ourselves, we found expensive supermarkets to tempt us with imported foods. Countries like Panama and Costa Rica are generally quite expensive, but it is certainly feasible to keep the food costs in Central America on a par with South America if (unlike us!) you restrict shopping only to local markets and avoid western-style restaurants.
Fuel Overlanding Costs
Cuthbert’s fuel consumption averages is 16.1L/100km, 17.5 mpg, 14.6USmpg, 6.2km/L. Typical prices of fuel per gallon/litre in each country can be found at www.globalpetrolprices.com so it’s easy to budget approximate costs for your own vehicle’s average fuel consumption. Stating the obvious… if you don’t drive, you don’t spend on fuel. So travelling slowly and taking weeks/months off the road every now and then, can help keep the fuel costs down.
Fuel in Africa
Our average daily consumption in Africa was quite high due to a fast pace of travel (due to Carnet restrictions, we had only one year to see as much as possible). We drove over 37,000 Km in a year.
Fuel in South America
Our pace of travel slowed down in South America, but the distances are large. Our average daily spend on fuel was therefore not significantly less than Africa. We found no problems with diesel in South America for our modern Euro V diesel engine (see here)
Fuel in Central America
After shipping around the Darien Gap our pace of travel slowed a bit more, and the distances are much smaller, hence the much lower spend on fuel there.
What’s Not Included in the Overlanding Costs
Above are merely the costs of everyday basics. In addition to these, there are major costs such as truck shipping and flights to destination; insurance; and vehicle investment/maintenance. There are also many other less significant costs such as: road tolls, visas/border fees, laundry, comms/data/SIM-cards, gas/propane and entertainments (eg entry to parks, attractions etc). Most of these are easily searchable on the internet, but we hope sometime to get around to analysing these in the same way and adding to the costs table… one day!
For a really detailed look at overlanding costs in the Americas, check out the website of our friends John and Mandi who produced a detailed analysis of all their expenditure over several years on the road (click here).
Countries Included
Africa – South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique.
South America – Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, Colombia.
Central America – Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize.
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