Getting Around
A short hop across Freetown costs about 0.20 USD. That is not a typo. You can move a few miles for the price of nothing much at all, and the driver will still expect you to have the coins ready. Long journeys, the kind that eat several hours and leave you dusty and half-asleep against a window, run $3 to $4. That is the whole fare. Not per hour. Not per leg. The trip.
This changes how you plan a day. A budget that assumes $20 for transport will last you a week here. You start taking the long way because the long way costs almost the same as the short way, and the difference between the two is scenery.
What You Pay for a Room and a Meal
Affordable places to stay exist, and so does transport that fits a thin wallet. Those two things are the backbone of any cheap trip, and here they line up. Find the right guesthouse and the right shared vehicle and your daily burn stays low. The money you save on getting from one town to the next is money you can put toward food, and the food is worth it.
Georgian food is one of the world’s great cuisines and a genuine bargain. A full meal with wine at a good restaurant rarely exceeds $15 to $25 per person. Street food is cheaper still. If you have been eating rice and beans for a week, a proper table with wine and bread and something braised will feel like an event. It costs less than a middling dinner back home.
The Visa You Didn’t Budget For
Our visas to Azerbaijan cost $24 each, plus a small amount to print the visas while in Tbilisi, which came to 0.10 GEL per page. That printing fee converts to roughly a tenth of a cent in dollar terms, so call it negligible and move on. The $24 is the number that matters. It is the kind of cost that sneaks up because you forget a border crossing is a purchase.
In Baku, there was a nearby gym with reasonable day passes. That is a small thing, but small things add up when you are on the road for months. A day pass at a gym is a shower, a place to leave a bag, and an hour that does not involve carrying anything.
Guides, and What They Actually Cost
If you hire a guide, low-end rates start around $25 to $30 per day. A good guide averages $35 to $40. High-end runs about $50 or more, with additional language skills priced according to what you want. Those are daily figures, so a three-day trek with a mid-range guide is $105 to $120 before you have eaten anything.
Other transport across a long trip added up to $4,174, spread over 28 buses, 11 trains, 8 hitchhikes, 7 boats and 2 cars. That number is a total, not a rate, and it shows what a serious overland route costs when you do it by every means available. Hitchhiking appears in that list, which tells you the budget was not infinite.
Flexibility Is the Whole Trick
We have been flexible with a lot of our travel plans to get better prices on flights. For example, we had no plans to fly specifically from Rome to Rio de Janeiro until we saw flights for under $200 for that route. If you have a strict itinerary, it will cost a lot more.
That is the lesson that carries into a place like Sierra Leone. Night buses on one route ran R$200 to R$250, which is $37 to $46 in dollars. Airport shuttles beat taxis and parking, every time. The cheap countries in Europe publish real daily costs for 2026 and the numbers are not as low as people assume. Kenya and Tanzania safaris get compared on cost and wildlife and which one to pick, and the answer depends on what you can actually spend.
None of this is about being clever. It is about knowing the numbers before you land, so that a $3 fare and a $24 visa and a $40 guide day are not surprises. They are just the price of being here.
Leave a Reply