How Much We Spent On The Pan American Highway - October

Kate Colliety
3 days ago
2 min read

Eeek! We've been on the road for a month now and it's exceeding all expectations. As we make our way down Chile we've been enjoying the Lake Region, the perfect cone shapes volcanoes and currently we're heading towards the Carretera Austral. One thing that's surprised us so far, and that's helped our budget is that the wild camping in Chile rivals Norway. We have always been able to find a spot for the night often with unbelievable views.

Even with wild camping we may have gone a little over budget this month, we're still kitting out the car, remember we're living out of it for the next two years! We did make one BIG mistake though, we didn't realise how expensive the toll roads in Santiago were. With popping to Ikea once, sometimes twice a day we racked up quite the bill... plus foreign cards can't pay on the website, therefore we had to pay a company an extra 20% to help us.

Fingers crossed next month isn't as expensive... with the goal of Alaska in mind we need to reign it in a bit.

October 2025: Budget Email

It's time for our Pan American Highway Budget round up!

And we bought a car! A 2007 Toyota 4Runner, with 250,000km on her.

We had set a budget of 10k (GBP) and really wanted to stick to this as we know the trip is going to be expensive.

After totting everything up including fees, upgrades (new battery and awning) plus the endless trips to IKEA, we have a final number....

Our Journey So Far:

1

Country

2,269

kms

7%

PanAm

CL

Location

Click here to follow our journey on the PanAm Explorer App!

October Total: $1,752

We still had a few start up costs this month, Let's break it down...

October (Chile):

🛏️ Accommodation (We stayed 2 weeks in a campsite while sorting the car): $66

🍔 Food & Drink: $383

🚗 Petrol: $518

🌋 Activities: $58

🛰️ Starlink: $47

🌲 ioverlander: $44

🏧 ATM Fees: $10

📱 Phone Data: $5

🛒 Shopping: $66 (this includes Mike's fishing gear, some souvenirs and other random bits.)

🛣️ Tolls: $220 (we didn't quite realise how expensive Chile's roads are!) 😱

THE CAR

Drum roll please...

We spent 10.8 million CLP on the car which is around $11,500 USD or £8,674!

We're super happy we managed to stay under budget! We then added a few extras like an awning, new battery and Starlink to bring the whole car total to...