Expenses
Below are our expenses and how they compared to our budget (in USD):
Flight Cost: $2,457 + $1,264 versus Budgeted: $1,000
Cost of Transportation: $829 versus Budgeted: $800
Cost per day: $48 versus Budgeted: $56
The total expenses for South Africa turned out to be very complex. It started out by changing our original plans to enter Africa by land through Europe, but in order to avoid the European winter we decided to fly to Cape Town and do the itinerary in reverse. Therefore, the budgeted flight we had to fly north (Southern Africa to Europe) was transferred to fly south (Europe to Southern Africa) instead. To make things worse, eight minutes before our flight we were told we could not board since we did not have an onward flight… We had to buy a second flight, which completely blew our flight budget through the roof.
The first number on the flight cost was the second flight we were forced to buy and the second number was for our first flight that we were not allowed to board, which is shown separately because we are still disputing this cost which, if successful, will hopefully be refunded back to us. In addition to this, we rented a car for a few days which made the cost of transportation slightly more than anticipated. A bigger factor to the expenses was the fact that we spent more than three times as long as expected in this beautiful country. Although our daily cost was under budget, we end up going over budget by up to 118% of our budgeted amount and possibly more depending on our outcome of the dispute.
