Hello r/travel!
I paid a visit to my friendly local student travel agency yesterday but as they only give quotes etc ten months in advance, I thought I'd turn to my favourite subreddit for some advice.
I'm planning to head off to the Americas next summer and decided to turn what was originally just going to be a few weeks visiting a friend into a longer trip. I'm not trying to fit everything in, more just have some adventures and whet my appetite.
The bare bones of my plan thus far are as follows:
- Fly UK to Eastern Canada and spend ~2 weeks there with my friend (been before)
- Head down to Chicago for a couple of days then catch the California Zephyr train across to San Francisco.
- Spend ~2 weeks in CA visiting family (been before).
- Head south…
…this is where I need some more guidance. I hope to spend roughly a month in South or Central America, though this could increase depending on how healthy my budget is, and am open to suggestions. I speak Spanish and am happy to travel in crappy buses or whatever. There's pretty much no country round there that I don't want to visit, but I'm probably going to stick to the northern part and give Brasil/Argentina/Chile a miss this time.
I'll be a 24 year old solo female with decent enough travel experience. I like a good mix of city sightseeing, culture and partying but mostly I enjoy meeting new people and eating lots of food when I go abroad. I'm really interested in politics and world affairs, so Cuba is a destination I was considering but I understand that might be a bit complicated to get to via the USA. If I go to Peru I'll probably arrange a Machu Pichu trip and if I go to Ecuador I'll probably visit the Galapagos. I like beaches but not for a month!
Will be flying back to the UK but am happy to mix the order up a little if it makes more sense (Canada, SA, CA, train across the states, fly home from NYC might be better?)
When: Summer 2015, around two months
Budget: ~£2,000 for flights, approx £500/week spending money including accommodation and non-flight transportation. I'll be staying for free in Canada and CA and hostels the rest of the time. Generally speaking I travel pretty cheaply and don't do much shopping or expensive excursions.
Preferences: I don't want to go on a tour or take flights every three days. As I said, I would prefer to spend some time getting a nice taster of a few places and exploring some towns rather than seeing every capital city in Central America. I'm super flexible about changing things at the last minute but I at least want something sketched out so I can determine some costs (any maybe persuade myself that three months is realistic!)
I'm really grateful for any suggestions or advice from people who have taken a similar route. Thanks!