Where you can spend more money than expected – Part 2

Posted on 2012/01/10 by Antonio | Permalink 0

Back to Part 1

Mobile roaming

Mobile roaming can be a nightmare. Its an expensive service when you travel in Europe, but if go to Africa it’s like throwing gold to the garbage. If you can, don’t take a mobile phone with you. If you must have one, because you need to contact someone so they know where the hell you are, or because you feel more confortable for security reasons, only than, take one with you. But than, prepare yourself to a huge battle with it and all the mobile providers you will be working with during the journey. You will be missing the friends and family you left behind, and, without noticing, you will be calling or texting them just for that once. A good surprise will be waiting for you when you will return home and you will receive the mobile invoice. I know, because I was there. Some advices:

  • Check if your mobile is carrier-locked before you leave. If it is, than unlock it or choose another mobile that it isn’t.
  • In each country try to buy a pre-charged card , they sell them on the streets and it’s a great way to stay in a budget.
  • You don’t have to know the prices in each country (It’s very expensive!)
  • Don’t forget that you are paying also all the incoming calls you accept.
  • Disconnect immediately all nice features you can find in the mobile, like each time you see the word “data” or “roaming” in the settings, just turn it off. Than promise yourself that you will not turn it on, not even for sending that very important email. Smartphones like iPhone and stuff, will try to “sync”, “backup” and ”update” and whatever they have to do, and you’re dead.
  • Text messages have a size limit (128-160 characters, depending of the provider), if you think that you save money sending long messages, think twice. They will charge the cost of one messages for each one 160 characters in your message. And boy, each one it’s already expensive, imagine the price of a really big message, like the ones that GPS systems prepare with all the information about where you are and stuff. Useless and expensive.
  • If you really have to call someone, make a very quick voice call, with a local prepaid card.

Services at the borders

When you arrive to some borders, you can have a bunch of “service providers” that will “strongly suggest” that you must use their services or else you will take the risk of staying at the border all day (which can be true due to the complexity of formalities and language difficulties). This happened at Tangier, Spain to Morocco border and mostly at Russo, Mauritania to Senegal border (the very worst case). As politely as you can, refuse the services that you will have to pay in the end, but only if you can afford the time to wait. The service itself is not very expensive, they will accept a small amount of money. The worst is the pressure to exchange money (at the rates they want) and even might ask you to pay taxes that you shouldn’t have to pay. They will try to make you spend money that otherwise you didn’t have to. Just look for the local authorities and start the formalities, preparing yourself to have a lot of patience throughout the process.

Currency exchange

Another way of spending bad money is to make a bad currency exchange on the streets. Every body knows that one of the best ways of getting money in African countries is at the black market on the streets. Normally we know the exchange rate and we can achieve a not so bad negotiation, we have to admit that this is not our core business, or instead of traveling in a Fly scooter I would be working at Wall Street or something. The problem is when you arrive to a border, on a new country, and we still don’t have that new currency money to pay all the taxes, fees and even the guys who kindly “suggest” you that you must use their services or else you take the risk of staying at the border all day ( which can be the true). If you don’t have an idea of the exchange ratio you can do very bad business transactions with this guys. Exchange money is their core business. Believe me I was there. If you cannot take the new currency with you, and you will not find ATM machines in those borders, than the least you can do is to be well informed about the official exchange rate and than try to find an official exchange agency at the border. If there is none, than try to make a good negotiation with those guys, but put a foot in the door in being well informed about the rate.

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Where you can spend more money than expected – Part 1

Posted on 2012/01/09 by Antonio | Permalink 0

You can plan a trip with some expectations that money will not be spend more than needed. Plans are done to stay at very cheap hotels, campings and even at the wild if needed, which is the cheapest solution. Plans are done also how to eat, the cost for the fuel and all. That was my case as I had no intention of spending a lot of money, furthermore because I didn’t knew how long the journey would take. Nevertheless, there are always some surprise costs that you should try to avoid. I tried to avoid them, but it seems that I didn’t avoid hard enough. This is why I know now that I could have saved some serious money, and also this is the reason why I’m writing this text for you.

Here goes some advices, for don’ts that you should and can avoid, if you really are into save some money.

Sleeping

When looking for a place to sleep, do it in time, quite soon on the day. You will not be very tired yet, and you will not have the pressure of the arrival of the night and your mind will be much more clear to take decisions.
To the end of my journey I would start thinking were to stay as soon as 14h, and at 16h I was at the place preparing my self to the night, shop, refuel, eat and some sightseeing. Before, I would extend the ride until twilight, and that leaded me to some very bad decisions. Even more if you are in possession of a Visa card. There were some days, almost dark and even with some rain, tired of driving all day, I would choose the first hotel to stay, just because I needed some rest and there were no time to look for another place to spend the night. That made me take some decision I later regretted, because the chosen hotels were very expensive, and the bill came later in the Visa account. If I did take some time, I could consider much cheaper hotels, or even look for a camping, and why not, sleep in the wild. If you go farther South and farther away of big cities, safer it will be to sleep in the wild. I never did, thought, because I’m a stupid traveller, but next time I will, I’m sure.

Eating

With food you can also be careful and save some money. Buy your own food at the local shops, make some sandwiches or even cook it your self. Of course be careful with what you eat when you are preparing meals yourself (more on that later). If you don’t want or can’t cook, and if you are in a real need of a hot meal, than stop by a local, no tourist, restaurant and eat a good meal. You will be surprised with the prices and quality of some of the food you can find. You cannot forget that everybody likes good food and that local people and their families live there and like also to eat properly. It’s easier to find expensive and bad quality food at tourist driven restaurants. The best meals I had during those days were at unsuspected,  kind of side of the road restaurants.

Visa cards

Visa cards are both, the best and the worst friend of a traveller.
It can save you from some bad situations, but it can also make you spent unnecessary money. Use it as few times as you can because each time you use it you will debited international, exchange and other taxes and stuff. Also it’s easer to spend money when you cannot see it in your hand, but this is not new for anybody, I believe. Withdraw reasonable amounts of money from ATM machines, that you can find all over the place in this days. Almost all villages of some size will have at least one. Try to pay your bills with that money. Do not withdraw much money each time, though, because you don’t want to be robbed. You will have to find a compromise.

To be continued…here



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