The Cost of a Trip Around the World

I use the term ‘Around the World’ loosely because we are only going to Europe and South Africa. I’d love to continue jetsetting around the world for a year or more but I didn’t win the lottery and so far nobody has paid me to climb a rock.

We purchased our airfare for the whole trip through Orbitz. The cost for Atlanta to Paris to Cape Town to Atlanta was $1,694. We haven’t booked a car for South Africa yet but we have one for Europe. In Europe we are doing the lease buy-back program through Peugeot. It is cheaper than renting if you need a car for more than a month but it’s still pricey. It might be cheaper to buy and sell a used car but we didn’t feel like it would be worth the hassle and the likelihood that we would be ripped off since we don’t parlez le french. The way a lease buy-back works is that you pay a set charge like a rental car but they deliver to you a brand new Peugeot at the airport and you drop it back off with them when you leave. It includes a full warranty, insurance, and even roadside assistance. The best part is we booked a Peugeot 207 SW which has a 1.6L diesel engine that gets 60 MPG on the freeway! Considering diesel in France costs $6.50 per gallon, this car will definitely save us some money on gas! For all these benefits we had to fork over $3,758, or split two ways, $1,879 per person. Our chariot for Europe:

Typically it is cheaper to fly to Europe so let’s say that portion of the flight is $694 and it’s $1,000 to fly to South Africa. Our total travel costs in Europe are: $694 flight + $1,879 car + $450 gas = $3,023. We are projecting to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000 in housing/camping/shelter and $1,600 in food for our four month stay in Europe. So that brings the total up to $6,623. We tried to be conservative and budget more money than we’ll need but we’ll see how it looks after a few weeks in France.

South Africa is a lot cheaper than Europe but we haven’t decided whether we are going to risk using Best Beetle to get a 40 year old car for $200 per month. We also don’t know whether we’ll be sharing a house the whole time or camping part of the time. Some people have said the camping is awesome and some people have said it’s terrible. We’ve heard the same thing about camping in Font so we’ll have go find out for ourselves. Here’s the rough SA budget so far:

Flight: $1,000
Shelter: $600
Car + Gas (per person): $425
Food: $800
Total: $2,825

Throw in a contingency plus a few hundred dollars for oversize baggage fees (crashpad) and we get to our grand total of $11,000 for seven months of international fun. If you are a climber in need of motivation to save money, I’d say this is a good place to start. I’d take the trip of a lifetime over buying a house or new car any day of the week!

This is all speculation since it’s been seven years since I’ve been to Europe and I’ve never been to Africa before. We’ll let you know how much we really spent at the end of the journey. If anyone has any suggestions for where to stay, whether to camp or pony up for real shelter, and what type of car is best to rent in South Africa, we are welcome to it!