Below are our expenses and how they compared to our budget (in USD):
Flight Cost: $198 versus Budgeted: $700
Cost of Transportation: $235 versus Budgeted: $0
Cost of Visa: $0 versus Budgeted: $20
Cost per day: $19 versus Budgeted: $51
We had a few choices to arrive into Panama and we went with the least expensive way which was to fly. We were able to find a discounted airline, Viva Colombia, that helped us come well under budget in the cost of the flight. These savings helped in the fact that we did not budget for transportation in the country, because our original plans were to only visit the City of Panama. We also did not need to pay any visa costs to enter the country. Lastly, although we went to the expensive San Blas Islands, these costs were offset by WWOOFing for some time, which extremely lowered our daily costs. All of this resulted in a 2% savings in the overall country budget.