Sometimes I wonder if we are cursed or blessed. Why? Because this summer we have a few different travel options and at the moment we can only afford to choose one.
Yup, travel can be expensive and even our best travel money saving techniques are not going to help us achieve all our adventure travel dreams. But our one grand adventure that we definitely want to do this year is cycle around Croatia and Greece.
Photo from As We Travel
We have been dreaming of exploring Croatia for a long time now. And as we started to do a little research into Croatia we realised that we could (hopefully) start our cycling adventure in Zagreb before making our way south along the coastline with our bikes to Athens in Greece.
This would also mean we had the chance to cross through parts of Montenegro and Albania on our adventure. A total distance somewhere in the region of 1,700 – 2,000 kms.
With 2,000 kms to travel we should be able to complete our grand adventure in roughly 30 – 40 days.
But as I mentioned earlier, while we do have enough time, we may not have enough money to enjoy our adventure. It means that we will need to skimp, save and tweak our trip as we go along to make sure that ever last penny is used to its best ability. And for the trip we have only budgeted a whopping £25 a day totalling £1,000.
Money Saving Techniques for A Grand Adventure
To make our money last, which we think we can do quite easily, we will be employing all our money saving techniques while we travel.
Packing light
One of the best ways to save money is to pack light. We spent 2 months exploring Italy and Spain with just a 35 litre carry-on backpack each. This means we don’t pay extra baggage fees on planes, trains or buses.
We also have the added bonus of having all our stuff on us at all times. This adds a little bit of peace of mind while we are travelling as we can keep everything valuable secure. It also means we don’t have to carry heavy gear on our bikes!
Camping
Our accommodations are going to consist of campsites and the occasional hostel or hotel room when we want a decent bed. We were able to find an incredibly cheap place to stay in Athens with great accommodations that included a nice hot meal and a comfy bed. This cut our costs way down to about £5 – £15 per night for both of us.
When we drove 18,000 km across Canada and USA we camped every night, although we did have a bed in the back of our minivan.
Cooking our own food
Our final saving tip will be to make sure that we cook all our own food.
Not only does this mean that we will save lots of extra money by not going out, but we will also get to cook with all the food from the local markets which is one of our favourite things to experience when we travel.
While we will treat ourselves to the occasional coffee or dinner out together to keep the romance alive while we are travelling, we will be extremely frugal.
Any other tips or advice for our cycling adventure?