Our costs in Portugal

46% under budget in Portugal?? Not bad at all!

14 days we have been travelling around the Algarve, in Portugal, the shortest stay in a country so far. We have not restricted ourselves with money but we have not been big spenders either, so our costs in Portugal have been kept very, very low.

Total costs €551, against a budget of €1,016 makes up savings of €466, or 46% of the budget.

We have not overspent in any category. Hurray!!. Nonetheless, we have provided a short commentary of what we have spent the money on:

Mainly on Food

We have spent €203. Our budget was €335, so we have saved €132 (37%).

We went out one day, in Monchique, to try the famous Portuguese dish ‘piri-piri’ chicken, some sort of chicken in BBQ sauce with chips.

Other than that, stuff from the supermarket. Although, as usual, we mainly shopped at Lidl. Other supermarkets we have used are Continente and the French chain, Intermarche, both worth visiting as they have much more variety, especially on fish.

Other

We bought a battery for Gary’s computer. His laptop, although quite good, as he got it from work, is rather old. His fully recharged battery used to last only an hour. Poor Dora couldn’t keep up with recharging it!

Our new water bladder was leaking so we have to return it when we get back to Guisando. That day, all our lunch got quite wet. We have ordered a new one now so it arrives in Guisando. The cost for the new bladder have been recorded under Souvenirs, although eventually we will get a refund from the retailer.

Aires

As we were only going to stay in Portugal for a short while, we didn’t bother to buy any local SIM card to access internet. This lack of internet access, coupled with the difficulty in finding water for free (unlike in Spain, where free water was available in most of petrol stations) has forced us to use Aires more. Most of Portuguese aires have set up WI-FI.

The average cost of a Portuguese aire per night is about €11. However, we found a very cheap one for €5 per night. We stayed there three nights. This ended up cheaper than using the  WI-FI in McDonalds, which would cost a minimum of €2.50, it only gives one hour access and does not provide any electricity and water. So the aire was very good value.

Travel

We took a taxi once to get back to Dora when we finished the walk in Praia da Luz. This cost us €17.

Oil prices continue to drop on the international markets. The unusual behaviour of this commodity, coupled with driving very little around the relatively small area of the Algarve, has kept our fuel prices to a minimum. The average costs per litre of diesel was €1.07.

Interestingly, the fuel consumption (9.91 kms/litre) has gone down compared to other countries like in France (8.44 kms/litre) or Spain (8.11 kms/litre). We cannot explain this . Maybe Dora is getting more efficient as she gets older, or she is really getting into the trip, or she really likes Portuguese food!. Any other ideas?

Below there is an update of costs per day compared to the other countries we have been:

SM