Having already published a compilation of our expenses in Europe over six months, we are doing the same with seven months in Central America. That’s how long we took for our trip from Mexico to Panama. We saw and experienced a lot along the way and even visited a mechanic once or twice. The following figures show exactly what that means.

Countries

We have visited 8 countries in the past 7 months. Mexico surprised us the most with its diversity. The country is much bigger than you might think – just from map knowledge, without having got to know it beforehand. Another highlight for us was Guatemala and the more expensive but still worthwhile visit to Costa Rica. You can of course find the details of our experiences in the individual blog posts for each country.

Distance

During our trip through Central America, we covered 12,851 km in our camper Ben.

6’244km in Mexico
   531km in Belize
1’074km in Guatemala
   443km in El Salvador
   876km in Honduras
   887km in Nicaragua
1’422km in Costa Rica
1’374km in Panama

⇒ On average, we drove 59km per day.

Overnight stays

We spent a total of 219 nights in Central America.

We spent 102 of them on free camp spots or simple parking areas
69 of which we stayed at a campsite
44 nights we spent in a hotel
3 nights we slept in an AirBnB

⇒ We slept under a solid roof more often than we thought in Central America. After all, we flew to Mexico before our campervan Ben and then the ship was delayed. Later there were sporadic short intervals, mostly when our van was in a workshop where we couldn’t spend the night directly on site.

103 of all nights we were in Mexico
32 in Guatemala
25 in Costa Rica
25 in Panama
12 in Honduras
8 in Belize
7 in El Salvador
6 in Nicaragua

⇒ We actually liked Mexico much better than we thought. What’s more, the country is simply very large and you need more time for the routes in Mexico if you are traveling at a leisurely pace.

Expenses

During the time we were traveling in Central America, we also spent CHF 15,800, similar to half a year in Europe. However, we have not included flights and shipping costs in the following list, as this would greatly distort the percentage breakdown. We have added these additional expenses after the general cost distribution.

24% for eating out
17% for car repairs
15% for grocery shopping
11% for sightseeing
9% for fuel (diesel, AdBlue & LPG)
7% for hotel accommodation
5% for campsites
5% for household incl. mobile data and health costs
3% for border crossings and compulsory car insurance
3% for public transportation (excl. shipping, incl. parking and toll charges)
1% for other expenses

⇒ Food also remains our number 1 priority in Central America, accounting for 39% of total costs.

Expenses for shipping and flights

As we are on a different continent in Central America, there are special additional costs. On the one hand, these are the costs for shipping our campervan Ben across the Atlantic. On the other hand, we have to follow him by plane, which means additional expenses for flights.

For our slightly modified Sprinter with a high roof (2.85m) and a length of just under 7m, we pay roughly the following RoRo shipment charges

CHF 4,700 for shipping from Emden, Germany to Veracruz, Mexico
CHF 5,200 for shipping from Colón, Panama to Cartagena, Colombia

⇒ It is interesting (and annoying) that although the shipment from Panama to Colombia only takes one day, it costs more than the shipment from Germany to Mexico, which took 4 weeks!

The above-mentioned flights between Europe and the pick-up point in Mexico as well as the flight over the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia cost a total of CHF 2,300.

2,300 CHF for flights to fly to Central and finally South America

Sightseeing

In these 7 months we took 10,200 photos and wrote 100 blog posts in English and German.

We visited 15 national parks.

6 of them in Costa Rica
3 in Mexico
3 in Guatemala
1 in Belize
1 in El Salvador
1 in Nicaragua

⇒ The national parks in Costa Rica are by far the most expensive. However, with their astounding nature and huge diversity of wildlife, they are also the most beautiful we have visited.

We visited 13 Mayan ruins.

9 of them in Mexico
2 in Belize
2 in Guatemala

⇒ Some of the ancient Mayan ruins were extremely impressive and the Mayan culture can still be felt and seen today, especially on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico and throughout Guatemala.
We are already looking forward to the Aztec ruins in South America, which are much older than the Mayan ruins in Central America.

We visited and climbed 10 volcanoes, spent the night on one and even slept in a crater.

4 of them in Guatemala
1 in El Salvador
4 in Nicaragua
1 in Panama

⇒ For us Europeans, the density of volcanoes here is enormous, whereas we have no volcanoes in Central Europe. Our highlight is definitely the two-day Acatenango tour, from which you have a wonderful view of the country all around and of the active El Fuego volcano. It’s also funny to think that we camped in a volcanic crater in El Valle, Panama! The supervolcano crater is so big that an entire village fits inside. However, the volcano has of course been inactive for thousands of years and if you don’t know that you are in a crater, you won’t immediately recognize it as such due to its huge dimensions.

Workshop visits

We have endured 6 workshop visits.

3 of them in Mexico
2 in Panama (1 of which was for new tires)
1 in Costa Rica

⇒ Rather a sad list, but that’s also part of it. Here in Central America, the road conditions are, let’s say, not quite as great as in Europe. And our Ben is our means of transportation and a home 24/7, so it’s clear that he needs more love and attention. Nevertheless, it’s annoying every time something breaks or sounds funny. Even though we know from other travelers that it’s the same for them and it’s probably just normal. In addition, the quality of the workshops ranges from very poor to acceptable. Many spare parts are not available here or only with months of waiting time, so often the next best part is simply made to fit and somehow installed. What’s more, many mechanics don’t seem to have done any training, but instead learn by doing – if you’re unlucky, your mechanical problem is their learning by doing project. If we take our Ben back to Europe at the end of our trip, we will probably have to have all the “repairs” we have done here redone in Switzerland so that we can get a renewed registration for Ben in Switzerland.

Itinerary

As before, we usually decide spontaneously what the exact itinerary should look like. The high degree of flexibility has proved very useful for taking a detour or taking the mood of the day into account. There are days on such a long trip when we don’t want to travel forward at all because a place is so beautiful. Or we want to move on very quickly because we don’t really like a country or region. This is how the following itinerary – here in fast motion – came about.

Comparison of expenses in Europe with expenses in Central America

After our similarly long stay in Central America as the time of the first blog post about the costs in Europe, we can now draw a comparison. Our expectation at the beginning of our trip was that daily expenses in Central America would be significantly lower than in Europe. We were wrong about that. Of course, we had to take into account that we had been traveling for a long time in the cheaper southern part of Europe.

We arrived at an average daily cost of CHF 68 in Europe compared to CHF 73 in Central America.

This comes as a real surprise to us. Two factors account for the spending parity in our case. Firstly, food, and especially a variety of food, tends to be expensive in Central America – a large proportion of the local population probably can’t afford to shop the way we do. And secondly, the often rough roads take their toll. Car repairs and new tires account for 17% of costs in Central America. In comparison, these expenses were 0% in Europe as we did not include the costs during the preparation of the trip in the cost breakdown. We can therefore also argue that if there had been no car repairs, a day in Central America would have cost an average of CHF 8.- less than in Europe. Or about 60.50 CHF. Be that as it may, for our purposes Central America is at a similar price level to the cheaper part of Europe that we traveled to with our campervan Ben.