By: MJ + PJ
INTRODUCTION
This post is the second of three post-trip analysis posts which covers what we got up to, how much it cost, how we got around, and how these aspects panned out over different regions and countries. The three posts are:
- Costs by Country
- Accommodation and Activities – this post – containing:
- Average Daily Cost, by Activity Type
- Main Activity of the Day, by Percent of Days
- Main Activity of the Day, by Country
- Percentage of Accommodation Usage, by Country
- Transportation
As we progressed through our months travelling, we kept track of our daily activities and costs on a spreadsheet. That record can be found on our 365 Data page – it now serves as an overview of basic metrics. To provide information on how to search the spreadsheet, we also published a post titled 365 Data: Searching the Data.
ACCOMMODATION AND ACTIVITIES CHARTS
This post looks at aspects of the activities we did over the course of a year, and the accommodation we utilized. While you are not likely to travel to the same countries, at the same time, or for the same durations, you can get an idea of each region in what we report here.
If you have questions, please ask in the comments section at the base of this post. Doing so will enable other readers to read additional discussion.
CHART SUMMARY:
To create this chart we assigned one of 14 categories as the main activity of the day. This had to be coded manually in our spreadsheet for this post, but it was not too difficult a task given the daily detail we already had. We then grouped the activity types and divided by incidence number to reach a cost figure.
DISCUSSION POINTS:
As the long transit ticket costs have been removed for these posts, the Change Country category bar on this chart reflects the lesser expenses on a long transit day incurred when moving through transit (such as airport meals and snacks, beverages). These were generally more expensive days as airport and train food is not cheap. While it may seem unusual for the Organization and Website days to be expensive, remember that on those days we bought tickets, booked accommodation, and went grocery shopping.
Most of the national or state park days were expensive because of fuel costs or pricey food within the parks. In the USA we had an annual national parks pass which we certainly got our money’s worth from. The days where we only hiked or trekked were the cheapest and this should be no surprise!
CHART SUMMARY:
The previous chart on activity costs did not show the incidence of each of the 14 types of activity. This chart does! It gives you an idea of what we were doing on most days. On some days we did experience multiple activity types. For those days we had to choose the one activity which was most impactful.
DISCUSSION POINTS:
Special Tours and Museums or Palaces filled about a third of our days. Near the end of our adventure we did a rough count of the number of museums we had visited, and the number came out to be about one per week. That’s quite the field trip schedule! You may find – as we did – that certain activities fall in and out of favor. It can be easy to get sick of castles in Europe and museums in cities, but at those times you look for something else to satisfy your interests.
Some days our primary activity was to ‘explore’, this being the best way to categorize the activity of the day. You can see we did this almost 10% of the days of our adventure. These were the days where we just went into a central area of a city and walked and looked and followed any interest that presented itself. If you try to schedule and plan for every single day, you’ll risk burning out – easily adding unneeded stress to your family unit.
CHART SUMMARY:
We can also look at the type of activity we engaged in for each country, which can provide ideas about how you might approach using your time in a country. Countries are listed alphabetically. This chart spreads the time in the country over the vertical bar, so the bars are proportional to their own 100%, and not comparable by colour segment to actual days (i.e. see Special Tours for Peru and Portugal).
DISCUSSION POINTS:
What stands out most distinctly are the long coloured bars representing Special Tours, and Museums or Palaces – these activities were common across countries. Our median was 4 types of activities and the mean was 4.5 types of activities for the countries we visited.
As we were in the US for about three months it should come as no surprise that it had the most activity types (10). Brasil (two weeks) had good variety with 8 types. England (6 weeks) and Australia (5 weeks) had 7 each.
Our most common activity in Peru was actually Organisation or Website… also known as ‘Rest Day’. These were needed as the Peru tours were often long and busy – we had played hard for four months and needed to manage activities and pace ourselves better.
In Canada (7 days) we really only spent full days seeing National Parks. In France (7 days) and The Netherlands (5 days), we only did two different types of activities – Museums or Palaces, and Special Tours. You might perceive these to be characteristic activities for these countries.
It is worth comparing the two most different (internally and comparatively) continents we spent a lot of time in – Europe and South America. Since you cannot see this data in the chart very easily, we collated the countries’ data for both continents. Here are the main differences:
- On both these continents we spent a similar percentage of days exploring (11%), visiting gardens or special parks (3%), going on special tours (25-27%), and visiting theme parks (0%).
- In Europe we spent 29% of our days visiting museums or palaces (South America 8%), and 8% of our days socializing with family and friends we knew (South America 1%).
- In South America we spent 25% of our days organizing or working on our website (Europe 5%). 13% hiking or trekking (Europe 0%), and 8% in national or state parks (Europe 0%).
It would have been great to compare Asia as well, but we spent minimal days there.
CHART SUMMARY:
This rather overstimulating chart shows what type of accommodation we used in each country. This is particularly useful in hindsight – we really had no idea what to expect for accommodation in each country. It made more sense to present countries on this chart alphabetically. The accommodation chart showing total use of each type is on our 365 DATA page.
DISCUSSION POINTS:
We had never used AirBNB before this adventure. As you can see, we used it heavily in Europe, but first used it in Bolivia. The best advice we can give regarding using AirBNB is the following:
- Book at least two months prior if possible
- Read the reviews carefully – particularly the recent complaints to see if they were resolved
- Travel off season and stay more than a week to get cheaper rates and length of stay discounts
- Be aware that cleaning or administration fees can be almost the cost of a night’s stay at some locations
Our relatives are a member of a house swap network, and the generosity of home owners they were connected with enabled us to use their points to stay independently at some locations. Our entire Italy stay was using this type of accommodation in two cities. If we had been more mobile as a family in the years preceding our adventure we might have been savvy enough to get some house swap credit accumulated (hint-hint), but were very grateful that this opportunity was available despite this.
Hotels and hostels could have been one category, however we felt it was worth separating as they can be both very different or very similar across regions. For example, a hostel in South America is not usually a dorm arrangement like it is in Europe or Australia. A hotel in Cambodia will be a comfortable cultural experience without breaking your budget, but in Belgium it could be American styled and expensive.
Our other two pages in this set of three can be found via the buttons below:
