The Free Travel Junkies have hit the road again! During our previous nine month trip to Africa, we found that it was cheaper to live on the road than it was to stay in the US. We have every expectation of being able to do that again. Our planned schedule is:
- Guatemala
- Panama
- Peru
- Ecuador
- Colombia
- Chile
- Bolivia
- Argentina
- Paraguay
- Brazil
Hopefully we can keep to that schedule. (In Africa, we had to cancel Jordan because of the war and we had to postpone Madagascar because of a coup).
We started with a night at a Crowne Plaza airport hotel. This cost us 22,000 IHG points. If we had paid cash it would have cost us $176.
We left the US on August 17th and flew in Avianca business class to Guatemala City airport. This cost us 40,780 Lifemiles + $58. If we had paid cash, this would have cost us $1,564. We also had an Avianca domestic roundtrip economy flight from Guatemala City to Flores and back. This cost us 32,000 Lifemiles + $36. (Check the post, “Mistakes were made” for more info on this. Our original booking was only half as many points). If we had paid cash, this would have cost us $436.
We had no luck with points lodging bookings in Guatemala so we ended up paying cash for all our lodging. Our first two nights were at the Naif Boutique Hotel in Antigua. Antigua was wonderful (see the “Guatemala – the best guac I’ve ever had” post for more details). We used a Citi travel promotion to get $50 off of a hotel booking that was $300 or more. This brought our cost down from $339 to $289.
Our second two nights were in the Hotel Isla Verde in Santa Cruz on Lake Atitlan. We were able to use $39 of Expedia credit and this dropped our cost down to $156.
We then had a transition night (this also served as a backup night in case of an airline issue) at the Hotel Villa Del Lago on Peten Island in Flores. This was booked through Capital One travel for $91.
Our final two nights were at the Hotel Jungle Lodge Tikal in Tikal National Park. We made this booking through Booking.com and it cost us $290.
On August 24th, we flew from Guatemala City to Panama City. We flew economy on Copa airlines (if the flight is around three hours or less, we’ll usually choose economy over business class). We booked this through Avianca and it cost us 20,360 Avianca Lifemiles + $118. If we had paid cash, this would have cost us $712.
Next… Panama