The Things We Spent Money On
During this trip we have been recording every single thing that we paid for. Our efforts to stay on budget have actually paid off. We want to do a little breakdown of the different things that we spent our money on. So here goes!
Lodging
We spent $627.54 on lodging. During our time we stayed exclusively in hostels. We did not get sponsored for any of our stays or activities. The average for each night was around $20. We always got a private double room with a bathroom. There was only one time where we slept in a dorm. Lodging in Ecuador is very cheap and you can get a clean and comfortable room for $20.
Food
We spent $443.23 on food. Shopping at the local market helped keep our costs down. Of course we still ate out at restaurants since we were out and about on most days. Since this was our first month we still had to find our balance between eating out vs. cooking our own food. Eating out isn’t too expensive in Ecuador, you are able to get a set menu for about $3.50. Groceries are also cheap.
Activities
Activities took up $292. We visited national parks where we had to pay fees, we went zip-lining, hiked the Quilotoa Loop, went paragliding, rented bikes, visited waterfalls, and went on a chocolate farm tour. These are things that help us experience the country, culture, and give us adventure.
Transportation 
Transportation cost us a total of $183.05. We took 11 taxi’s and 21 buses in Ecuador. We visited a total of 9 cities. Transportation isn’t very expensive in Ecuador. Approximately $1-2 per hour is considered fair for a bus.
Flight
Our flight to Ecuador was a one way ticket and we purchased it in advance so this is not included into our world trip budget or into our Ecuador budget . It cost us $700 for two people.
Classes
Spanish lessons took $144. This was an investment for us. We really enjoyed the class and found it very helpful for traveling in South America. Our class was 3 days of 4 hours each day.
Shopping
We spent $121.50 on shopping. This included some clothes (we didn’t expect South America to be so cold), a few personal items and camping gear ( sleeping mats and a propane tank)
Miscellaneous
We also spent $35.58 on misc items. These include things like the laundry, paying for a bathroom, or something else we could not place into a specific category.
Our Average
In Ecuador we spent a total of 26 days. During that time we had a daily average of of $71 a day which is $11 below our budget. (This does not count the cost of the plane to Ecuador) This is all for TWO people.
Our Blog and Social Media
During our time in Ecuador we had a total of 225 users on our website. On our Facebook page we had a total of 152 followers. On our Instagram page we started with around 1k followers. By the end our time in Ecuador we had around 2k.
As you can tell the Instagram has been having the greatest success. There was a great amount of growth and a lot of interaction. On our blog we saw some initial interest. It has been a little harder to stay ahead with the blog. We are guessing that now that we are posting more consistently our monthly readership will go up. Fingers crossed.
Overall Ecuador is a cheap country to travel to. We learned a lot from our spendings and are getting better at balancing and saving in different categories. For example, in Peru we did a lot of camping to cut down some costs.
Sticking to a budget can be difficult, what’s your experience? We’d love to hear from you. Let us know down below.
-Alex & Katie Gensitskiy
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