Our travels through Uruguay were a little shorter than we expected. Once we hit Porto Alegre, Brazil we searched for our tickets to Chui/Chuy the Brazilian and Uruguayan border town. However, the only buses going there were passing through and would drop us off in the middle of the night.

We try to make it a habit to show up to new towns during the day, especially when we don’t have any hostel reservations to guide us where to go. We could just go and wing it, or catch the bus which had a special going on directly to Punta del Este. We decided to forgo the few towns before – if we really wanted we could always back-track, so we headed to Punto del Este. (more…)

Image Property of Couchsurfing.org and was taken from their facebook page.

If you’ve checked out my budget posts on our travels you may have noticed that I mentioned that Couchsurfing is one of the reasons we have a zero listed next to the accommodations section of our budget. That zero is enough to intrigue a lot of people, especially the budget traveler – but what exactly is couchsurfing?

Well, to be honest it is many things wrapped into one site – think of it as Facebook for Backpackers with a free hosting bonus attached to it.

However, it really is so much more than that, and difficult to really quantify the Couchsurfing experience. (more…)

The neck pillow adds the needed comfort for extended or continuous traveling. It also server as a regular pillow by simply placing it in a pillow case. *I’m OK with the kid’s size neck pillow, but most grownups may be best with an adult size one.
By using your own pillow and pillow case, you also have that piece of mind when going to bed, that you are not sleeping on someone else’s drool.

80+% polyester towel. Travel friendly (doesn’t take up much space and it’s not heavy). Absorbent enough for after showers, dries fast. For abundant long hair we recommend considering a second one.

Since we’ve started traveling, at least after we left Peru, we have been keeping track of our expenses. We hope to not only keep track of our own expenses but to also give you a better idea of how much it would cost you to travel through Brazil. This is a budget breakdown for two, so if you want to get a rough estimate you can always just half it – though I’m not sure if that would be a perfect estimate. We visited Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Paranagua, Ilha do Mel, Florianopolis and Porto Alegre. Most of our time was in Rio and Sao Paulo- though there is one major flaw in our budget here – we didn’t pay for housing. In Rio we stayed with a friend of mine for 3 weeks and in Sao Paulo we stayed with Aiko’s cousin for 1 month. Truth be told, it was part of the reason we could afford to stay in Brazil for so long as it is a pricey place to live/visit.

One other thing to factor into our budget – we didn’t eat out a lot and only rarely went out for drinks at a night club. We did drink, but that is covered in our “Food & Beverage” total, we often bought beer or wine with our groceries so it became too troublesome to sort out. We also often splurged when we didn’t have to pay for housing – and in Sao Paulo we had an almost nightly tradition that involved a bottle of wine and playing cards with family. If you don’t drink and can live off of rice and ramen I’m sure you could do better with your food budget than us.

And here is the breakdown for Brazil…

Our “Special” events included getting into a Samba school, Pao de Acucar (R$106), and Carnival (R$370).

If you see any other indicators where there is R$0.00 for accommodations it is because we used Couchsurfing - which I’ll be writing a post on that soon.

Our “Other” slot was a catch all so when we bought havaianas, bathroom stuff, sun tan lotion (which is expensive in Rio), or the first and last time we bought cigarettes it is all included here.

“Transportation” not only includes local transportation but our tickets for each destination. Brazil has a really great website that lists bus routes from most bus companies called Busca Omnibus. To give you an idea of what we paid for each leg (this is the total for both our tickets):

Rio -> Sao Paulo R$151
Sao Paulo – > Curitiba R$135
Curitiba -> Paranagua R$44.82
Paranagua -> Ilha do Mel (Ferry) R$32
Ilha do Mel -> Paranagua R$32
Paranagua ->Curitiba R$38.78
Curitiba -> Florianopolis R$100.06
Florianopolis -> Porto Alegre R$139.80
Porto Alegre -> Punta del Este (Uruguay) R$329.50

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++UPDATE++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

After reading a comment inquiring for a bit more information, I wanted to add a little more useful information.

Here is a break down of a few items you may be interested in purchasing

Food

Juice R$5-7, there are ‘Suco’ stands all over Rio de Janeiro and you will likely purchase an Acai or some other exotic fruit.

Caiparinha – R$5-10

Cocoanut -  R$5 on the beaches of Rio

Beer – R$8-14 for 1 liter

Lunch at dine-in restaurant R$40-60 for two people (may be more expensive depending on drinks.

Public Transportation

Bus R$2.35 per-person (non A.C. bus) in Rio, R$2.9 in Florianopolis

Metro R$3.20 per-person in Rio , R$3 per person in Sao Paulo

Other

Sunblock – R$16-30 (It is expensive here so bring your own)