





Most jobs begin with a training session or some sort of “why don’t you familiarize yourself with these documents” meeting. But no orientation could have covered the sheer breadth of my first assignment as Frugal Traveler: to get from São Paulo to New York City on less than $500 a week and blog about it.

During the 13-week trip — most memorably through Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico, I slept in hammocks, farmhouses and under-$15 hotel rooms; I ate ants, guinea pigs and every local fruit I could find; and I saw pre-Columbian fortresses, Mayan priests who foretold my future and dolphins when I went searching for alligators on the Brazil-Bolivian border.

Now that the journey’s over, I’ve looked back and awarded some Frugal prizes (the Froogies?) to the best — and worst — moments of the trip.

Best Sunrise

Any That I Slept Through: Weeks 2 to 11

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

You save lots of money by taking buses or boats rather than planes, and you save even more by traveling overnight and avoiding hotel fees. But not everyone can sleep on buses, and I’m among them. So I saw the sun rise from buses in Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and somewhere between Nicaragua and Guatemala.

I also saw the sun rise every morning of a four-day boat trip in Brazil. Everyone slept in hammocks, which wasn’t actually the problem. I love sleeping in hammocks. (It’s definitely on my Top 10 list of “Things I say I’ll do after I get home from a trip but never do,” right behind “Eating bigger lunches and smaller dinners.” ) The problem was that we all went to bed too early.

Favorite Tour Guide

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Don Rigoberto (Peru): Week 5

I arrived at the Kuélap ruins in Peru early one morning as the hilltop fortress was still enveloped in clouds. When I made my way to the entrance, the only other living beings there were a bunch of llamas, munching on the dewy grass.

Finally, a human being wandered by, and I asked him if any guides were available. He turned toward a few huts down the hill and shouted, “Don Rigo! Time to guide! Wake up!”

A man with leathery skin, grimacing from a toothache, emerged. That’s how I met José Rigoberto Vargas Silva, known as Don Rigoberto. He had worked as an archaeological technician for years and knew all the staff members, which gave us access to places the regular tour groups don’t get to. That included a view of archaeologists who were dusting off a mass grave, complete with skulls and all.

I can’t recommend Don Rigoberto, though, unless you speak Spanish; he speaks no English. The language barrier is a problem for non-Spanish speakers throughout Latin America, except at hot spots like Machu Picchu, and unfortunately gives travelers a reason to board that enemy of spontaneity, the organized tour bus.

Sure, those buses are comfortable, but nothing beats a local guide who lives where he works, and knows just where the bodies are buried.





Worst Border Crossing

Guayaramerín, Bolivia: Week 3

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Bolivia requires Americans to obtain a $135 tourist visa designed just for them — reciprocity, I suppose, for the high prices our government charges Bolivians for visas to the United States. So be it. But for that price I would at least expect to get the right visa. Turns out that the official at the consulate in São Paulo, Brazil, had given me an outdated version of the visa sticker, one produced by the “Republic of Bolivia,” and not the newer edition issued by the “Plurinational State of Bolivia.”

That flummoxed immigration officials at the nothing-doing Amazonian border post in Guayaramerín. It flummoxed them, in fact, for two whole days. They kept telling me that if I had just not bothered getting the visa in advance and simply paid for it at the border, I would be long gone. (They finally cleared things up with the home office in La Paz.)

I’d been warned that border crossings could be difficult. But this was the only place I had a problem, which I attributed to its isolated location. Major crossings were a breeze; even the drug-violence-plagued Mexican-United States border, which I crossed in Nuevo Laredo, was a nonevent.

Best-Dressed

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Residents of Sololá, Guatemala: Week 9

I did not expect Sololá to be memorable. I was just changing buses there, but since it was Friday — market day — I stopped to explore.

I expected to see stands offering spices and batteries, women dressed in colorful local costumes making tortillas and men buying (and wearing) the cheapest fashions that Chinese factories have to offer.

But this market was different: the men wore traditional woven shirts and pants so riotously colorful — bright oranges and yellows and pinks and purples, sometimes in the same square inch — that even the most non-fashion-conscious shopper (i.e., me) couldn’t take his eyes off them.

Best Hidden Gem

Popayán, Colombia: Week 6

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Popayán is a pristine, whitewashed, church-filled, romantic colonial city of 250,000. But you probably won’t be going there any time soon.

Situated on the Pan-American Highway, it is a natural stopping point for buses traveling between Ecuador and Colombian cities like Cali or Bogotá, which makes it a haven for backpackers. Still, Popayán is a bit too far-flung for other tourists, since first-time visitors to Colombia will probably stick to major destinations like Cartagena.

Too bad, because this city is made for strolling hand-in-hand through hidden gems like the courtyards of the University of Cauca and dining on the specialties that got it named Unesco City of Gastronomy in 2005.

Most Addictive Snack

Alboroto (El Salvador): Week 9

Alboroto is, more or less, a peanut-free Central American version of Cracker Jack, with stress on the “crack.” But the Salvadorans, who produce the stuff under the brand name Diana, have managed to infuse the caramel corn with the faux-buttery taste of movie popcorn and slightly burned sugar.

I bought a huge bag for a long Central American bus trip and was done in an hour. Don’t let me near those things again.

Best Place to Spend Eternity

Chichicastenango, Guatemala: Week 9

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Guatemala impressed me most not with its brightly colored fabrics or its misty green mountains, but with the deep influence of its Mayan past. Children playing soccer in the streets call for the ball in indigenous languages. Women and children still wear traditional clothing. But most intriguing of all is the melding of Catholic and traditional Mayan religion. Mystified by the Mayan priests performing ceremonies outside the Catholic church in Chichicastenango, I realized it was time to hire a tour guide.

To the rescue came the officially licensed guide José Pérez Pol, who led me through the church and then to the cemetery. Residents of this Quiché-speaking town bury their dead on a picturesque hill above town, where grave markers and mausoleums are painted in bright pastels. The tombs and tombstones are the opposite of the gray, drab colors I’m used to, and, at least the morning I went, the cemetery was full of family members of the deceased along with Mayan priests preparing ceremonies for the dead. I would have been reluctant to approach them alone (would I ever do that in the States?), but having a guide who knew almost everyone he saw brought a surprise: smiles and handshakes and embraces from families and priests alike. Mr. Pol also explained the offerings that had been laid out — candles, herbs, sugar and chocolate arranged in circular configurations.

If you don’t believe in heaven, I can’t imagine a more lovely, lively place to be dead.

Best Thank-You Gift

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Photos (San Juan Teitipac, Mexico): Week 10

In the tiny Oaxacan town of San Juan Teitipac, I paid just $4 a day to rent a room from Rogelio Mateo Tirado, a 72-year-old retired farmer, and his wife, Casimira Larita Sánchez, the town cheesemaker. They treated me like family (down to a 10 p.m. curfew), so I wanted to thank them with something more than a hug. Money — in the form of a tip — would have been the obvious choice. But a photo, I learned this summer, is the perfect gift for new friends.

Back in the old days, the routine went something like this: you befriended a farming family or spent every night at the same taco stand or were invited in to visit a rural school. You snapped pictures, of course, and promised to send copies. You meant it — you might have even jotted down their address. But you probably never sent the photos.

These days, you have no excuse: any decent-size town (at least in the countries I visited) has a place to get prints made.

In this case, I made the 45-minute bus trip to Oaxaca city to make some for my hosts. Rogelio and Casimira were so delighted with the gift, especially the extra copies I made to send to each of their five children living in the United States, that they couldn’t stop talking about it. When I tried to add a few extra dollars to the final day’s rent, they steadfastly refused.

Best Reminder of Home

Bogota: Week 7

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

For the first six weeks on the road, I did not see a single person I had met before. Now, I love meeting new people, but it is an odd feeling not to encounter a single familiar face for a month and a half, and not to let down your guard because you’re reporting.

That all went out the window when I met my old high school pals Doug and Jon in the Bogotá airport. We were all due to fly in the same evening, but I had arrived pitifully late, and they had already abandoned the agreed-to meeting place, the Juan Valdez Cafe, for a food court where they could get a beer. It took a while, but I found them, several beers into their own reunion. Going back to being real Seth — or, even better, the high school bonehead version thereof, was a relief that lasted all week.

Best Sunset

Beach Near Rancho Tranquilo, Jiquilillo, Nicaragua: Week 8

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

All that I had heard about Jiquilillo, a small town on the northern Pacific coast of Nicaragua, was that it offered isolated beaches and a protected estuary to explore.

Given my ignorance of the area, I was a bit nervous after checking in at a very basic backpackers stop there with my parents, who were traveling with me for the week. Would my fashionable mom tolerate the shared bathrooms? Would my 80-year-old dad get any sleep on the lumpy mattresses? Should we have just hit the beach at trusty, tourist-trodden San Juan del Sur instead?

It’s amazing how a sunset can soothe your worries. Not long after our afternoon arrival we went to the beach just a few steps beyond the thatched-roof bar to take in the nightly spectacle.

There were all the elements that make for a great sunset: clouds to absorb and reflect and highlight gorgeous colors, a crashing surf providing a nice soundtrack, an isolated beach and a hotel bar a few steps away to retreat to once dusk becomes night. Choosing your destination on a whim often yields the best results, and in this case, it yielded the best sunsets.

Best Use of a Frying Pan

Guatemalan Fried Potatoes and Chicken: Week 9

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

I tend to abandon all healthy eating habits when I’m traveling, which actually turns out to be not so hard since I don’t really have many in the first place. But in Latin America, where in many places deep-frying is a way of life, even my cholesterol intake gets bumped up several notches.

Once in a while I found a deep-fried item that was a miss, which made it doubly disappointing — bad taste and bad health, all on the same plate. But just as often, deep-fried equaled delicious. One of the happiest surprises of the trip was to discover just how skilled Guatemalans are with potatoes and boiling oil. Every market I visited had stands set up where potatoes were cut to a size halfway between shoestring and steak and fried until they were wrinkly and crisp.

Guatemalans also have a knack for fried chicken, which is not as surprising considering how nuts Guatemalan transplants go when an outlet of their native fried chicken chain, Pollo Campero, opens in the United States. Their local version, though, is impossibly juicy and utterly nonindustrialized. At a stand in the Chichicastenango market called Comedor Faby, I ended up chatting with the man running the cash register, who I assumed was the owner. He lamented that he didn’t have the money to trade in the frying pan for a deep fryer that worked faster. I urged him not to give up that dream.

Biggest Frugal Regret

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Albergue Ecológico El Porvenir, Nicaragua: Week 8

When my parents joined me for a couple of weeks on the road, I figured that they deserved at least one night of luxury.

So we took a ferry to Ometepe Island — a startlingly fertile 170 square miles of green topped by two dramatic volcanoes — and found what I thought was the perfect spot, the Villa Paraiso hotel. Until the next day, when we visited the gorgeous gardens and views belonging to a lodge called Albergue Ecológico El Porvenir.

The flower patches were so overrun with butterflies that any photographer, however amateur, could capture one; the rooms were perfectly comfy-looking. And the cost: only $8 a night per person. The one drawback was that the place had no Internet access, which is a necessity for working from the road. Thank goodness I found one flaw; otherwise, it would have been hard to live with myself.

Best Roadside Assistance

Anonymous Nicaraguan Bus Driver: Week 8

Peter Kugel for The New York Times

Let’s say that your parents, more partial to quaint country inns and comfortable cruises to the Galápagos, decide to join you in Nicaragua for a week. What is the worst (non-life-threatening) situation you could imagine?

How about this: your rental car in muck deeper than its tires on a remote dirt road as you and your (80-year-old) dad try fruitlessly to push it out while your mom hits the accelerator, causing the wheels to spray everything in sight with a layer of mud. All the while, locals gape.

That’s what happened on our trip from Jiquilillo, on the northern Pacific coast, to Mechapa.

To the rescue came a guy driving of one of those repurposed American school buses that serve as the public transportation in Nicaragua. One of the passengers on board tossed me a rope, which I attached to the back of the car, and the bus tugged us out. And took off immediately, without so much as pausing so I could thank the driver or offer a tip.

Worst Way to End a Night

Hospedaje Los Arcos, Coatepeque, Guatemala: Week 9

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Heading from Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, to the Mexican border in a battered former school bus, I watched the passengers dwindle as night fell. Eventually, I was the only one left, and I began to calculate how much gas the driver would lose by taking me the rest of the way. Too bad for him, I thought.

Nope. Too bad for me. “I’m not going to the border,” the driver announced, and let me off in a small city a dozen miles from Mexico that I later found out was Coatepeque. The area of town where he left me looked shady, and I was carrying several thousand dollars of electronic equipment. Result: a beeline for the nearest hotel. It was Hospedaje Los Arcos, where nearly $4 a night gets you a mattress, a pillow, a sheet, four dirty walls, a locked door and little else. The staff was nice, which, considering the surroundings, made me feel safe. Safe, I said, not clean.

Best Cliché Come to Life

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Any Interaction With Animals

A summer spent visiting countries where farms of some sort are a common part of family life allowed me to tap into an inner farm boy I hadn’t known existed. After initial unease, as the trip wore on I realized I had learned to do more than coexist with cows (and pigs and goats) — I could lodge my tripod into manure without the slightest flinch.

As I watched these animals, I also realized how many English figures of speech stem from our agrarian past. Chickens are always crossing roads, when they’re not waiting their turn in the pecking order, that is. Pigs delight in rolling around in mud, ignore the runt of the litter and eat as voraciously and inelegantly as, well, a pig. Then there are those horses, always horsing around. Well, not always: once in Nicaragua, I spotted a dead one along the side of the road. But my first thought was not “How awful!” but “Whaddya know, it’s true! Beating him would do no good at all.”

Worst Excuse for a Flight Delay

Aires (Colombia): Week 7

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

I made my way through Latin America mostly on buses — many of them long and trying, but almost always on time and cheap. The few quick hops that I tried by plane were often problematic. But one experience especially made me miss the bus.

It was my flight from Cali to Bogotá on Colombia’s low-cost carrier Aires, delayed for hours on July 20, the day of Colombia’s bicentennial. My fellow customers and I took issue with not so much the delay but the incompetence of the airline in informing us about it. (I had received what looked like a standard confirmation e-mail that morning, only to discover when I checked the very fine print that the departure time had been pushed back 75 minutes.)

When I complained at the ticket counter that we should have been informed earlier and more clearly about the changes, the agent said the “unforeseeable” changes had been set in motion by the bicentennial celebration.

An odd excuse, I thought. The bicentennial celebration was hardly a surprise. According to my calculations, in fact, it had been on the calendar for approximately two centuries.

Most Refreshing Fruity Drink

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Lulo (Colombia): Week 4

On the outside, lulo, the Colombian citrus fruit, looks a bit like the feral offspring of a fuzzy peach and a runaway orange. But inside are the makings of a great juice — a lulada — that you can almost reproduce in the United States with the lulo pulp sold in your supermarket freezer (if your supermarket is in a neighborhood where Colombians live). You won’t, however, be able to make a lulada cocktail, which requires muddling the actual fruit and mixing it with ice and sugar. I came across the beverage midway through my trip, when two of my high school friends joined me for a minireunion. At the Iguá-Nauno Bar in Barichara, Colombia, we downed delicious luladas spiked with rum. I would give “the best mixologist” award to the bartender who invented it, except that we were the ones who suggested it. Though I’m guessing we were not the first.

Best Moment

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, Brazil: Week One

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

After watching condors soar above the Andes, seeing the sun rise over the volcanoes of Lake Atitlán, and eating lunch with the vice-governor of the Guambiano Indians in Colombia, it is surprising to look back and realize that the most exhilarating moment of my trip occurred quite early on — during the fourth day, to be precise.

I had set out from the village of Canto de Atins in northeast Brazil into the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park where seemingly endless sand dunes are miraculously interrupted by crystalline lagoons. The most beautiful place in the world? I could make an argument. At the very least I’d never seen anything like it before — a desert with oases that were not only real, but so cool and clean that they could have been poured from a Brita pitcher.

At one point I jumped into one of the countless unnamed pools, swam to the middle and dived under. Surfacing, I looked out at a sea of sand dunes that looked pulled from a “Lawrence of Arabia” set. “What’s the point of travel?” I thought. “This.”