As educators with a large family who love to travel, we are always looking for a bargain. This summer we wanted to go to South America (Paraguay) to meet one of our sons who had been living there. But it seemed like a real waste to go all that way and not look around some, so we began exploring for bargains!!! The first thing we discovered was that it is MUCH cheaper (about half the cost) to fly some of the South American lines than to fly the regular American airlines. We were a little skeptical, but when we looked at the prices, we held our breathe and took the chance. And were we glad we did!!!

We found that it would cost us about $650 to fly directly to Paraguay (and back) on LAPSA (that's from a consolidator we found--Stravaganza out of Miami--very pleasant and helpful), but for $820 we could buy a four stop pass directly from LAPSA-SAETA. That allowed us to fly into Quito, Ecuador where we traveled for about a week including taking the wonderful train from Riobamba to Guayaquil (a real bargain--about $13 per person, and everyone rides on top!!! It's full of tourists--mostly European; Americans seem not to have found South America yet...It is great fun and goes through beautiful scenery including the "Devil's Nose" where it zigzags down the mountain going forward, then backing up, then forward again, and so on until it makes its way to the bottom--a real thrill--and from the roof of the train, no less!!! There is a fancy railcar run by Metropolitan Touring for the less adventurous (and more wealthy) travelers. My husband pointed out that all the older people seemed to be on the tour, and all the shoestring people like us seemed to be kids--oh well, we're young at heart!!! Anyway, after visiting the iguanas in the park at Guayaquil, we used our next flight segment to go from there to Lima, Peru so that we could see Cusco and Machu Picchu--spectacular, unforgettable, indescribable--more on this later. Then from Lima, we flew to Asuncion, Paraguay, and our last stop then was back to Miami. And I can't tell you how very pleased we were with SAETA and LAPSA. They are fabulous. They treat everyone like first class customers. There are sandwiches, cookies, and drinks at the gate while you wait. As soon as you are seated, the stewardesses come with juice while you are waiting to take off. Soon after the flight starts, they serve drinks and hot hors'd'ouvres, then delicious FULL meals on linen clothes and real dishes (Can you tell we're use to getting a lot of peanuts--or if we're lucky, little sandwiches and carrot sticks in plastic trays--on American flights?) More drinks, and then you pull out your headphones--no charge--to watch your movie either in Spanish or English, then take a nap with your pillow and blanket--one for each seat in a plastic bag so you know it's fresh and clean. In all that traveling, we never had any lost luggage, delayed flights or reason for complaint. And the leg room was great; my husband is about 6'4" and over 250 lb.., and even he had plenty of leg room, more than first class on domestic airlines... So you see, in this case, traveling the bargain way was MUCH better than we would have gotten if we paid twice as much for a more familiar American airline!!!

In Quito, we had good luck and bad luck. Our son-in-law who lived in Ecuador for two years and who speaks Spanish was supposed to go with us, but at the last minute, it turned out he was unable to. So the only Spanish we knew was a little Tex-Mex and what we could get out of a Handy Phrases for Travelers guide that someone had loaned us. Since Quito was our first stop, we were a little worried about how we would get along. Our son-in-law told us that there would be a couple in a booth right after we picked up our luggage who found people rooms. And there was. The service was called "Rabbit Tours". They found us a very reasonable room--$45 for three of us with a buffet breakfast included. Now you can find much cheaper places, I'm sure, but this one was very clean with two bedrooms and a bath (the toilet flushed, and the water was hot all day--the definition of a luxury hotel in South America!!!) and a TV in each bedroom (one English channel); the beds were clean and comfortable, and the staff, most of whom spoke at least some English, were very helpful. (The hotel was called Hotel Barnard; it's right downtown across from the Military Hospital) There are several very reasonable places to eat nearby and a cabstand right across the street.

Well, the hotel was so satisfactory that we were very pleased with Rabbit Touring. So we called them to see how much a tour to Otavalo would be. With no Spanish, we were having a hard time communicating, so we asked the desk clerk to help us, which she cheerfully did. The tour people quoted us a price (we thought...) of $40. That seemed all right...what did we know? And we were not used to things yet so we thought that would be a good thing to do especially since we didn't speak Spanish. Well, the day was fine, a good trip, although the driver's English was very limited, and he took us to a much more expensive place than we would have chosen for lunch. But it was very scenic--right on a lake and wasn't all that expensive in American terms--$7-8 per person for large steaks with all the trimmings. Anyway we went to Otavalo and other places around there--beautiful scenery, interesting Indian markets, and reasonable souvenirs--about a seven hour trip in a comfortable mini-van with someone else doing the driving (a major consideration in Ecuador where people pass people who are passing other people and sometimes buses on what appear to be barely two lane mountain roads), and we were congratulating ourselves on a having made a good choice--until we got back to the hotel, and the tour guide handed us a bill for $120...claiming that we had misunderstood, and it was supposed to be $40 per person.

After much argument, calling the "nice" couple in the booth at the airport, the desk clerk intervening on our behalf, etc., we still ended up paying over twice as much as we had thought it would be--NOT a shoestring experience!!! And needless to say, we do NOT recommend Rabbit Touring to budget travelers or anyone else...A bad experience, but a good lesson to have at the beginning of our trip. We made sure that we asked every driver from then on what costs would be, for how many people, etc. and agreed clearly up front--in fact, we even had them write it down sometimes if we weren't sure we were understanding correctly. And we had no other problems the whole trip. (Later we found out that we could have taken the bus for about $3 or $4 a person, and by that time we had gotten our "sea-legs" or "land-legs" I guess you'd have to say and ridden several buses, so if we had it to do over again...oh well, live and learn. But perhaps some other shoestring traveler can profit by our mistake.)

We rode buses to Banos and Riobamba; you just go to the terminal, and these guys are outside each bus calling out the name of the places where the buses are going, so you can't go wrong. People jump on the bus at each stop selling food and drinks, too, so you don't have to worry about being on the bus awhile. In Riobamba, we stayed at the Hotel Los Shiras--very inexpensive; as I recall, it was about $15 for all three of us, but they don't take credit cards. The room was clean, though a little dark, and the plumbing a little less reliable (but we did had a bath in the room), and the beds a little hard--well, the beds were okay, but the pillows left a lot to be desired actually...but the staff was nice and spoke some English. And it was just a block from the train station, so it was easy to walk there and transport our bags without a taxi or anything in the morning when we were ready to leave. So I'd recommend it as a reasonable shoestring choice!!!

Now as I said before, the train is a hoot. It has become a real tourist attraction, and the price has gone up accordingly--I think it used to be $3-4 a person, and now it's about $13. And it fills early so if you want to get a seat, be in line early; you might even have someone go ahead and get seats in the car with cushioned seats while you get the tickets--they are not for any specific seat, just general admission!!! And if you don't get seats in the good car, you have to sit on wooden benches in what looks like a cattle car or go to the roof immediately (it was very cold in the morning when we first left, and the people on the roof looked VERY cold, even wrapped in sleeping bags and everything else they could get their hands on.) It was much more pleasant to sit inside until the sun really came out, and it warmed up, and then to climb up on the roof--you can climb up at any stop and be up there for the more scenic parts of the trip. In Guayaquil, our son found an athletic shoe store (near the Burger King) where he bought Doc Martin's for about half what they cost here in the states.

We arrived in Lima, Peru about midnight and saw no reason to leave the airport since our flight out to Cusco was at 6 a.m. Only problem, there are no chairs in the Lima airport, and the floor is mighty hard!!! They wouldn't let us go down to the gates for some reason--security I guess--until less than an hour before the plane--Aeroperu--and I am NOT going to rave about it. My husband says they must have taken all those extra seats that SAETA and LAPSA left out of their planes to give more legroom and squeezed them into Aeroperu; was it crowded! And they had oversold the plane about 150 people. One couple we met got bumped and had to pay for their room in Cusco even though they couldn't get there. We were warned again and again to reconfirm our flight IN PERSON within 72 hours of the flight, or they would say they didn't have a seat because they weren't reconfirmed, so I guess it's a regular problem. Anyway, while we were trying to wile away the hours before our flight, we met this guy who asked if we were going to Cusco. He said he was a tour representative and could get us a room in Cusco, have someone meet us, take us to our hotel, etc. We were a little skeptical, but decided to take a chance. My husband said, "This guy is going to ask for the room money in advance, and we'll never see him again." But he only asked for $10 so we decided to take a chance. And to our surprise, when we got to Cusco, there was a lady waiting with a sign with our name. She had gotten us rooms--no easy task; Cusco was jam packed; we saw many people going from hotel to hotel looking for rooms and being turned away. We stayed one night at the Carlos V, a very historic hotel that was clean and comfortable although the rooms were VERY tiny; bath in room and breakfast for $50 for the three of us. The other two nights we stayed at the Garcielesa; not as attractive, but much larger room with bath and clean for $40. The tour lady was wonderful; we were tired from our night standing up at the Lima airport, so she took us right to the room where we slept till noon. Then she picked us up and took us to a bus for a city tour and tour of nearby Inca sights; then we were dropped back at our hotel. She arranged our tickets to Machu Picchu (train, bus up the mountain, and entrance, and an English speaking guide), picked us up and took us to the train station, then picked us up from the train station and delivered us back to our room--even though the train was about an hour late getting back. In the meantime, she had picked up our luggage from one hotel--because the town was so crowded, she had to get our rooms at two different places; we shudder to think what we would have done if she hadn't been there--and moved it to the other and had taken our return plane tickets and personally reconfirmed them at the airport. Then the next morning, she picked us up, took us to another bus for an all day tour of several Indian markets and villages and more Inca ruins, again with an excellent English speaking guide. Again we were delivered back to our hotel. And then next morning we were picked up, delivered to the airport, our tickets checked, and everything set for our flight back to Lima. I'm sure she got kickbacks from the hotels or bus people or something, but she was a jewel and made our trip so pleasant. Machu Picchu is wonderful; we had read in a tour guide that it was the most spectacular place the writer had ever seen despite numerous tours throughout Europe and Asia as well as the U.S., we could certainly see why someone would feel that way. If you ever have a chance to go there, take it; we are already thinking of going back and taking the rest of our family. It is not that cheap by the time you pay the flight to get there, all the transportation and admission charges, etc., but it really is pretty reasonable in American terms--about $250 per person including the airfare to and from Cusco, and all the tour, transportation, and admission costs for the three days. And you could probably save about $30 on that if you did it on your own (we looked at prices everywhere we went--we were still leery of tour services after our experience in Quito...), but we felt that it was worth the little extra we paid for the red-carpet treatment we received. The tour guide's name was Yoni Alvarez Molina and her phone number is 84-238325 in Cusco. We recommend her highly for a reasonable, but enjoyable trip.

Some people are a little nervous about Peru because of what you hear about the guerrilla activity, crime, etc., but we had absolutely no problems, and we loved it. They give you this brochure when you get off the plane about their special tourist police service; I think they are really trying to build up their tourist economy and want you to have a good time and go home and urge your friends to come--and we are!!! They really are set up for tourists,especially around Cuss and Mach Pica--my husband called it Jackson Hole, South America--Jackson Hole, Wyoming is his archetype of a tourist place...but it really is very pleasant and well-organized, not a typical "tourist trap" atmosphere. Go now before it gets spoiled!!!! After a day in Lima, we went on to Paraguay. We were really surprised by Asuncion. We had heard that Paraguay is one of the poorer and more backward countries in South America, but Asuncion was much cleaner, more prosperous and modern looking than any of the other places we had visited. Public transportation was cheap and convenient; we stayed at a very clean, roomy place called the Hotel Castillo for $45 for three; that included a very nice continental breakfast, TV with English movie channels, and the best plumbing we ran into in South America!!! That was true throughout Paraguay, in fact; they use those European-type toilets with the tank up high and a pull string to flush them, and they really work! You don't know how much it means to have a toilet that flushes and a shower with reliable hot water until you've been in South America for awhile!

All the food in Paraguay was reasonable except for Pizza Hut! It was outrageous!!! Avoid American fast food chains in South America; they are high priced and disappointing except for the Miami Sub in Guayaquil where there were free refills on drinks and gigantic banana splits for a very reasonable price. In Paraguay, we enjoyed the gigantic empanadas--a whole meal for about $.50!!!

For budget travels--DO NOT--repeat--DO NOT rent a car in Paraguay. They are outrageous, and the insurance is costly, but doesn't cover much. We had to rent one because of some time constraints and having to be off the beaten path at times, but otherwise the bus is comfortable and quite reasonable. Don't miss Iguassu Falls--they make Niagara Falls look like nothing. You can catch a bus from Ciudad del Este across to Brazil; it's a free border; they don't even check passports--handy because Brazil usually requires a visa, and that would cost you extra money, but you don't need one to go to across and to the Falls which are easily reached by city bus. The big dam north of Ciudad del Este has a very interesting free tour and movie also. And we enjoyed the ruins of the missions around Encarnacion; again very inexpensive. And we bought embroidered shirts and blouses and leather goods for unbelievably low prices.

We really enjoyed South America. As I said, we speak V-E-R-Y limited Spanish, but we got along fine. We had heard all sorts of horror stories about crime, about cunning people who take advantage of Norte Americanos, etc., but except for our one experience with Rabbit Tours in Quito, we had no problems whatsoever, nor did we meet anyone who had. We really are eager to go back and take the rest of our family who couldn't go this trip. It is MUCH cheaper than Europe (even on a shoestring--we did that last summer!) and just as enjoyable and interesting. So to all you fellow shoestring travelers looking for a bargain--try South America! You'll love it!