Chile - $234.48
We spent a total of just over fifteen days in Chile across three separate trips, while we criss-crossed southern South America between Argentina and Chile. We spent a total of nearly $3,600, or $234.48 per day, which is pretty significantly over our yearly target of $194 per day. The vast majority of this overrun came from our main trip to Chile, more specifically from the O-Trek portion of our time here. This is where the majority of our Lodging cost came from, alongside almost all of our Miscellaneous spending which included renting gear, buying trekking poles, and a small amount of wifi in camps. These days on the O-Trek could have been cheaper, but we wanted to enjoy our time, and ensure Sarah’s first through-hike was a good experience. Our highest categories of spending here were Lodging, Food & Groceries, and Other Transportation. Our only $0 expense category was Visas, as they are not needed for US passport holders.
Lodging ate up a tremendous amount of our budget in Chile, accounting over $1,700 or $113 of per-day spending. This is easily the costliest this category has been all year. However, much of this cost (over $1,200) came from the seven nights that we were on the O-Trek. As explained in our Trip Report - Chile | Patagonia & The O-Trek post, the agencies which operate the campgrounds and lodging facilities leverage the fact that they can charge whatever they want. This means that our most expensive night’s stay of our entire world trip, at $360, was for two beds in an eight-bunk room at one of the refugio’s on the trail. By the way, this cost did not include food, heating, or a private bathroom. These seven nights break down to an average of $171 per night, but for the remaining eight nights our per-night accommodation cost was closer to $50. While accommodation in Patagonia is never cheap, a trip without the O-Trek would have resulted in a much more reasonable total for lodging.
Our second highest category of spending in Chile was Food & Groceries, which cost us about $950, or $62 per day. Again, some of this higher cost can be attributed to the O-Trek, where we purchased some unusual items, like $100 for trail mix ingredients, or $15 per meal freeze-dried goodness. However, food in Chile is expensive, at least when choosing to eat in a restaurant as we often did. Don’t get us wrong, there are of course good deals to be had, but many restaurants in tourist towns like Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas know they can get away with charging higher than normal prices for food, and are more than happy to separate as much money from your wallet as possible.
We spent about $20 per day on Other Transportation, which included two international bus rides and several other shorter bus journeys. Our international trips were from Ushuaia in Argentina to Punta Arenas, as well as from Bariloche in Argentina to Puerto Montt in Chile. We also had to take a bus from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales, and from Puerto Natales out and back to Torres del Paine National Park. These bus tickets add up in price quickly, especially covering long-distances as the international ones tend to do. In addition to buses, we also spent some money on Ubers and Taxis, though we found these to be incredibly cheap everywhere in Chile.
Our last large category of spending in Chile was on Miscellaneous items, costing us nearly $20 per day. As mentioned above, this was a bit unique here as most of these line items were for rentals or purchases of trekking gear. Returning from the O-Trek, we also had buckets of laundry that were like the bottom of a garbage can, so we were more than happy to pay someone else to take care of those for us.
Finally we had a smaller amount of per day spending on Activities, Flights, and Rental Vehicles. We spent about $6 per day on Activities, exclusively coming from the highly-priced Torres del Paine park entry tickets. We only had one flight while in Chile, from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt, which cost us a reasonable $57 per person, especially when considering the limited flight options into or out of Puerto Natales. Our smallest category of spending was on Rental Vehicles, coming from one day of our rental car for Patagonian Argentina, which we picked up and drove around while still in Chile.