The credit card is getting a workout!

Pouring rain here all day yesterday. Not nice being cooped up due to the weekend quarantine here in Turkey, but it does make it a little more bearable knowing that we likely wouldn't have been outside anyhow. Man, did it pour buckets!

So, I spent a lot of time on the computer yesterday. 

We knew when we made the decision that a trip to Tanzania was going to be expensive. It's one of those countries where tourists pay far more than locals to do just about anything.

Even though Tanzania has its own currency, the Tanzanian Shilling, almost anything tourist related is priced in $USD. And I noticed while looking at foreign exchange rates that even though there is not an official relationship between the two currencies as some countries have, the two currencies seem to track each other fairly closely.

I was talking to our contact at the safari and trekking company that we are using, and he said that the average rental car goes for $50 USD ($64 CAD) per day, but locals might pay $35 USD ($45 CAD). He said he could find us one for $35 USD, but even at that rate we're going to hold off until we get there. It could be that taking taxis as necessary might be a better idea.

Accommodation can be had at a decent price though, if you stay away from the tourist stuff. It looks like we should be able to find suitable accommodation for between $10 - $20 USD ($13 - $26 CAD) per night.

So we have paid for our flights from Turkey to Tanzania, and returning to Germany. Total for that was $977 CAD ($766 USD) each. We have also paid for our visas at $50 USD ($64 CAD) each.

So we're already up to $2,100 CAD ($1,646 USD) just to go there. Then add in the hiking and safari trips at maybe $6,000 USD ($7,600 CAD).

This will be a $13,000 CAD ($10,000 USD) trip over the 69 days that we plan to be there.

But again, we knew this going into it.

However... if you figure that we typically spend about $2,000 a month doing what we normally do, then really it's "only" an extra $3,000 a month for the time we will be in Tanzania.

And we know that once we start traveling in our new motorhome, our expenses for the second half of this year will be below average.

So you see? You can justify anything you want!

Speaking of budgeting, I am trying out a really cool budgeting app. It's called Travel Spend. You can check it out here...

https://travel-spend.com/

They have a basic free version, and a flexible ad-free "Premium" version that costs about a buck and a half a month. I'm going to use it for a month before I write a full report for you, but so far I am impressed with how easy it is to keep track of everything.

It's raining again today, but we have rain coats and will get out for a walk at some point. We move on to Antalya tomorrow, and then it is supposed to be sunny again for a few days!

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