Travelling budget South America 2024-2025

Please keep in mind that these costs are based upon our experience travelling across South America on two Honda CRF250L’s in 2024-2025 (September 2024 – Ongoing). Some people will easily manage to travel cheaper and others will without a doubt be able to spend more. This budget overview aims to help you make a better estimate of what a longer trip across South America may cost you. If you would like more details, as always, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Daily cost – 173 days – 31.6€/person/day

Over the course of the 173 days that we have been travelling across South America, we spent a total of 10.945,9€, which translates into 31.6€ per person per day, excluding motorcycle maintenance and transport costs which are discussed seperatly below.

An important factor that might significantly reduce our cost, is that we travelled across Patagonia in low season, riding across Chiloé Island at the end of September, travelling across the Carretera Austral in October to early November and entering Argentinian Patagonia mid-November.

Nonetheless, the daily cost breakdown looks as follows:

Activities mostly include visiting archeologial sites, but may also include other entry tickets or the cost of a metro ticket to get to an activity. Restaurant in turn refers to all out of tent meals, including drinks or ice-creams. Groceries include al our budget spent in stores, be it money spent on food, sim cards or cooking gas. The percentage of the budget going to fuel kinda speaks for itself. The hotel budget then includes all money spent on indoor lodging, including Airbnb’s, hotels or little huts on a camping. Last, but not least, camping includes the budget we spent on official campsites. When in remote areas we tend to wild camp, however, when closer to cities we mosty opt for a camping or for a room when we plan to take some time to visit the place.

Now, back to the numbers! The table below gives a breakdown of the daily budget per person across Chile and Argentina, the countries we have visited so far. We have been informed that going further North the cost will reduce significantly.

We spent quite a while in both Chile and Argentina, so hereby also a cost breakdown per country:

Percentage wise the spending in both countries looks rather similar, but there are some key differences I would like to highlight:

• Our spendings on fuel were percentage wise higher in Argentina, but this is due to having completed some very long riding days from Ushuaia to Puerto Madryn (1790 kilometers in 5 days). Fuel in Argentina is significantly cheaper than in Chile.
• Our activities cost in Argentina is very low, but this is because activities were so expensive that we ended up doing hardly any (apart from visiting Cueva de las Manos). Entry to National Parks ranged from 40USD-45USD per person, something we could not justify for ourselves. This is also one of the reasons we spend significantly more time in Chile than in Argentina.
• The restaurant cost looks rather similar, but the reality behind the numbers is that restaurants in Argentina were more expensive than in Chile.

As we have a seperate budget for motorcycle maintenance and transport, these costs are elaborated separately below.

Motorcycle maintenance

Across this first leg of our South America journey, much of our gear gave up on us, but luckily our motorcycles kept going strong. Of course there is always the necessary motorcycle maintenance.

In the table below you can find an overview of our costs:

Transport cost

Finally, we have the cost of transport. This mostly includes moving us and our motorcycles across the sea by ferry, but also includes the cost of picking up our motorcycles in Valparaiso after shipping them there with InTime.