817 Budget Travel Tips; Moonlight Express; Hola South America

Inflation means you have to take a fresh look at how to travel abroad on a budget. Travel blogger Matt Kepnes says you can do it for about $75 a day. It starts with how you use your credit card. If you are paying off your credit card every month, you should get paid and earn some points for it. Monisha Rajesh recommends you include at least one night on an overnight train to feel really connected with where you're going. It's those really intimate moments that you don't get when you're on a plane. You get to look into the backs of people's houses. You get to see cities and all their kind of the guts and glory of it all. South America's Mark Johansson's beat. He brings us an overview of the continent that he's called home for the last dozen years and tells us what's new with the neighbors. Brazil's economy is roaring at the moment. So the Brazilians are traveling around South America like they've never traveled before. All along, for a fun hour ahead, it's Travel with Rick Steves. Today on Travel with Rick Steves, Mark Johansson tells us what he likes most about living in Santiago, Chile, and he helps us get ready to explore South America. British journalist Monisha Rajesh has traveled on many of the world's most interesting passenger trains. She recommends a cozy sleeping compartment on an overnight train as a great way to get close to our fellow travelers and the places we're visiting. Let's start the hour updating our strategies for traveling on a limited budget. Matt Kepnes, better known as Nomadic Matt, knows how to travel on the cheap. But now on the cheap means $75 a day. In his new book How to Travel the World on $75 a Day, Matt shares the smart practical tips that have helped so many travel to so many places for a lot less money. While his book is full of practical tips, he has 10 favorites that he'll share with us today. Matt, welcome back. Hi Rick, it's a pleasure to be here. How long have you been Nomadic Matt? I've been Nomadic Matt for about 17 years and I've been Nomadic for about 20. What does that mean? Well, I started traveling in 2005. I got inspired by backpackers while I was in Thailand. I loved the fact that they were just traveling long term. So I came home and I quit my job. I finished a graduate degree and then I did the same thing. With the plan to do it for a year, then I came home a year and a half later and decided, nah, corporate life's not for me. I'm going to go back out. That's when I created my website Nomadic Matt. That was in 2008. Because there's what do you call it, digital nomads, people that work remotely, right? You're kind of into that culture? Yeah, yeah. I was doing it before there was even a name for it. Good for you. Well, your book's great and I've just gathered 10 tips that sound and interesting. So let's just take a few minutes here and see if we can help people travel smarter. The goal, travel the world on $75 a day. Number one, don't eat near a major tourist site. Eat five blocks away with the locals. Yeah, I find that if you get about five blocks away from any major touristy area, the menus go from eight languages in the size of a book to one language, maybe two. And they're not catering to tourists. They're catering to people who they want as repeat customers. So they're going to care about the food more and you're just going to get a little bit more authentic local experience. Pretty fundamental. Also, the rent is probably half what you'd spend on Piazza Navona. And you're surrounded not by tourists but by locals, which is a better sort of vibe to eat in. Tip number two, carry a backup credit card and a debit card. And limit your debit card so that if it's swiped, you won't lose all your money. And yeah, this is very important, especially in the age where everything is digital and people are duping credit cards. I was once flying to Hong Kong. I couldn't use my ATM card when I landed. And they said, well, you just took a bunch of money out in Russia. And I was like, no, I was in the plane. And somebody in London had duplicated my ATM card. I had my credit card hacked in South Africa. And so while you're going through that process of restoring those cards, you need access to your money. And so having a backup is really important. And I think it's really important to set limits on these because hackers can just withdraw all the money you have if you don't have a limit. So you might be frustrated by, oh, I can't withdraw a lot of money today because you've set a limit. But that's a small price to pay for barricading somebody who might get your card and emptying your bank account. Yeah. And most everything today is credit cards or Apple Pay. So very rarely do you need a ton of cash. Right. Because there's countries that almost don't use cash anymore. Yeah. I mean, try to go to the Scandinavian use cash. They won't know what to do with it. Right. It's crazy. I was in Morocco and several banks took my credit card at the ATM, but I didn't get any cash. And I can't believe banks would do this. But I contacted my office and they took the money but didn't give me the money. Have you ever had that happen to you or when you're trying to use an ATM machine? Has that ever happened to me? But I've heard of it before and it's very frustrating because you have to go through the hassle of then proving that you never got the money and they have to look at footage. Yeah. I guess one takeaway would be use a reputable ATM machine. At the airport, you're likely to have exchange businesses with their ATM machines, right? And at a bank on the streets, you're likely to have a legitimate ATM machine that goes with that bank. And I would imagine that's safer and has a better rate. Yes. Yes. I don't use random ATMs and I advise people not to either. What about when you're changing money and they give you that option to have it in dollars instead of the local currency? Always use the local currency because you want your bank to make that exchange rate for you because they're closer to the source, which is the interest. So if you say, this is the thing that when corporations act like they're being generous and they're just trying to rip off people that are kind of naive, it really makes me upset with that corporation because we're sitting ducks in a lot of ways in this high tech world. And when they give you this nice polite option to, would you like this in dollars? We'd be happy to exchange it for you now instead of later. It seems like they're doing you a service, but they're really not. This is a way for them to decide what the exchange rate will be and it's not going to be in your favor. So you're saying stick with the local currency and you can better trust your bank to do that at a more fair rate later. Correct, yes. This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking with Matt Kepnes and we're exploring ways to make travel more affordable and accessible. Matt's book is called Travel the World on $75 a day. You can learn more about his work at nomadicmatt.com. Matt, you talk about take free walking tours. There are only a few hours. One of the first things you should do in a new city. What's a free, I mean, I know what the answer is. How do you define a free walking tour? You know, a free walking tour is given by someone who wants to show you around and it's tip based. So if you liked it, you tip them at the end. So in the sense it's not free. It could be free if you don't like it, but it's way more affordable than anything. It's given by a local. You can ask questions like where do you go to eat? Where do you go to drink with your friends? So especially if you're on a budget. I mean, your book is $75 a day. We don't want to spend $50 for a private tour or a professional tour. You want to go on a free tour and pay $5 or $10 as a tip. And these are all over the place. They're advertised as free tours. As you mentioned, I think it's disingenuous. They are expecting you to give a tip and coins are bad luck. It's got to be paper. My experience is a lot of the free tour guides are students who have memorized a script and they're, you know, they're better than nothing. But you kind of get what you pay for. But on the other hand, it's very inexpensive and it's two entertaining hours and it could be mediocre. It could be great. And of course you could pay what you think it's worth. Yeah, I've had them run the gambit to like being to blow my socks off to go. That was not good. I found a free tour guide in Lisbon and I was so enchanted by him. I talked to him after the tour and now he leads tours for the Rick Steves Tour program and he's one of our top guides. You also recommend sleeping in hostels and you didn't say youth hostel here. You said hostel. Tell us more about the alternative for people of any age to enjoy a hostel. We think of hostels, especially here in the States to be, you know, young kids and dirty and, you know, like in the movies. But hostels have really stepped up their game in the last few years and they have co-working spaces, restaurants, bars, private rooms. The hostel beds are now like pods and they cater to people of all ages. Yes, there's still the youth hostels that are party based, but you will find many hostels where there's people of all ages, there's family oriented chains. Yeah. And you got to know the atmosphere because if you want to party hostel, there are party hostels, but if you're not interested in a party hostel and you're interested in eight hours of sleep, it's a beautiful budget alternative for people of any age. Your next tip is using credit card travel points. Make the case. You know, if you are paying off your credit card every month, you should get paid and earn some points for it because these points will get you free flights, they will get you free hotels and travel parks. So basically you're just leaving money on the table, assuming you're gathering those points not to use them. I always, when I see my friends use a debit card, I'm like, why? Why? Because we're all paying the swipe fees that get charged on merchants and that fee, part of it gets sent to me in points. So if you're not earning points, I'm getting your points. But if you're spending points, aren't you consuming in avenues that are beefing up their prices to absorb those point credits? Well you would transfer, like let's say if you have a chase card, you earn these chase points, you would transfer them to the airlines and then book directly with the airlines. So it's things like airlines and car rentals and big chain hotels. But if you used it, if you limited it to airlines that accept that, you might be closing the door on budget airlines or discount airlines within Europe, for example. Yeah, they're really best now for budget airlines and more for the major airlines and the long haul flights. Another point you make is avoid unknown booking websites. Yeah, these websites where you find this is too good to be true is going to be too good to be true. You know, if something goes wrong, the airline, the hotel, the car rental site is going to tell you to deal with it on the booking site. And these services are just going to kind of end up in the sort of black hole. So if you find something on a booking site, especially for accommodation, go directly to the hotel and just say, hey, I found this site, will you honor it? And they will, you know. And your final point, which I thought was very interesting, you say visit tourism offices. I think tourism offices are really underrated and it wasn't so I started working in the traveling street that I started going to them because they are staffed by locals who live in that area and know everything about their city. And we think of tourism offices as places that sell tickets to torture museums and medieval museums and madame to so's. And while that is true, they also have maps and they're also staffed by people who you can ask, hey, when you get off work, where do you go for lunch? Where do you go for dinner? That's a very good tip. And just remember in the last generation, my experiences, tourist information offices have gone from genuine information services paid for by the city government to small businesses that have to earn their keep, pay their rent and make a profit by selling you stuff for kickbacks. But just because they're pushing this concert, that tour or this Piney Can Beer experience doesn't mean that's genuinely what they recommend. That's what they're getting a kickback on a commission on in order to pay their rent. Right. So it's about knowing how to ask the right questions to them. Because at the end of the day, they're not going to these experiences. They're going to non-touristy places. So you're just going to ask them directly, like, hey, where do you go and what's going on? So just ask them questions and just get that. That's good advice. Hey, so Matt, where are you now and where are you dreaming of traveling in the near future? You know, I'm currently in New York City and I'm really looking forward to exploring more of Scandinavia. I want to go to Oman and China. What are you going to do in Oman? That's an interesting place to have on your list. I have a friend from Oman. So I want to go hang out with him and his family. And I've just seen pictures and it looks really beautiful. The beaches, the mountains, which just looks lovely. Can you do it on $75 a day? I'm going to find out. All right. Matt Kepnes, Nomadic Matt. Thanks a lot and thanks for sharing your tips in Travel the World on $75 a day. Happy travels. Thank you, Rick. Matt Kepnes is the author of How to Travel the World on $75 a day. Matt tells his own story in his earlier book. It's called Ten Years a Nomad. He explains why no one is really too poor to travel in a blog post on his website at nomadicmatt.com. We take off for South America in a bit. But first, moonlit landscapes are just a part of the thrill you get by including an overnight train in your travel plans. Monisha Rajesh explains next on Travel with Rick Steves. Riding the rails at midnight can sound romantic, relaxing, or maybe just easier than joining in the daily commuter slog and hustle. How nice does it sound to enjoy a relaxing evening with views, to call us sleep to the rhythm of the rails, wake at your destination? Well, in Europe the sleeper train was getting rare, but in 2022 things changed when a revival of slow individualized travel made a resurgence as the pandemic isolated and restricted world travel. Monisha Rajesh has traversed the world by train and made a career out of writing about the magic of the rails. At first, Monisha thought the resurgence of the sleeper train was a trend not meant to last. But after traveling the world by rail on countless night trains, she's observed within the night riders a passion for carbon conscious travel and an abandonment of uncomfortable budget and short haul flights. Monisha joins us now with an intimate look at what it's like to ride the rails under the pale moonlight. Monisha, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm just fascinated by your passion for night travel on trains. Can you give me just a little background on how you met your first night train? When I was about nine in 1991, my parents decided to move back to what was then Madras, now Chennai in the south of India, and resettle. And I spent a couple of years living there. And that was the first time I ever rode a sleeper train. It was Indian Railways, and it was on a journey that was to go and visit my brother at boarding school. And those were my first experiences of long distance sleeper trains, and they are probably my most memorable. Now, my parents left India and came back to the UK, and for 20 years I didn't really go back to India again. I was working as a journalist. I was moving across different genres, doing film writing and copy editing and whatnot. And then I decided that I wanted to go back and see India as a tourist. I wanted to travel by myself for four or five months and really get under the skin of the country. And I started to think about how I could best do that, how I could meet young people, how I could chat to people face to face in the most practical way, and that was via the railways. You just were romanced by these magic moments on night trains. A lot of people travel forever, and they never consider spending the night on a train. So take me back to some of those first unforgettable moments, because it's nostalgic for me too. I can remember sitting on the train and watching the countryside of La Mancha in the high arid interior of Spain light up with the thunder, lightning storms, and falling asleep to the rhythm of the rails, and just hanging out the windows as I go through the mountains and being surrounded by all that alpine grandeur. What are the moments that you just treasure from those early night trains? I think they were the moments where I could see people just getting on with those processes that happened during the night that we don't really think of. People, chefs down alleyways hosing down their pans when the restaurant's closing, parents wrapping up their kids' bedrooms. You could see little fairy lights around people's windows. You can see people watching TV. It's those really intimate moments that you don't get when you're on a plane. You get to look into the backs of people's houses. You get to see cities and all that kind of, I guess, the guts and glory of it all. That's what really struck me as being that sort of private viewing that you get. You've traveled all over the world on night trains. Your book Moonlight Express has chapters for so many of these exotic sounding destinations and so many wonderful ways to enjoy Europe on night trains. What are three or four of your favorite night trains around the world? I think my favorite night train is in Norway. It's probably the train from, I sort of split it into two parts, Oslo to Trondheim and then Trondheim up to Buda, which is just inside the Arctic Circle. I love that second journey because I did it during the midnight sun when at three o'clock in the morning I could sit in a dining car and look out at people who are in waders doing fly fishing and people cycling and just embracing this incredible red glow of light. I could watch it all from inside a moving train. When Buda is north of the Arctic Circle, isn't it? Yes, it is. I remember looking out the window waiting for that monument that says, you're crossing the Arctic Circle. Yeah. I think to be doing that by train takes it to another level of magic because it's constantly moving through the landscape. You're watching it change all the time while sitting in that comfort of being in a lovely comfy berth with a cup of coffee. I didn't expect you to say the Arctic of Norway, but then I can relate. What's another train ride that you thought were just, wow, why didn't anybody tell me about this? Well, the Dole Express, which goes from, I suppose technically it's not actually Europe, it's the Turkish train in Ankara, which goes up to Kars in the northeast of Turkey. That's a special train because that's been around since, I think, the 1930s in various guises, but it only became a big deal in the last three or four years after a Swedish YouTuber took it and then posted about it. Now it's full of domestic tourists, lots of Turkish students who ride it, and it's a real kind of bucket list adventure for them. Really? That's from Ankara to Kars, K-A-R-L. Yes. Everybody goes from Istanbul to Ankara, but going east from Ankara, that's pretty serious travel. Yeah. It's a beautiful journey, and it takes you right up to almost the border of Armenia, actually, and it goes right through the Anatolian mountains, and you follow the curves of the Euphrates River, and it's a really spectacularly beautiful journey. Lovely dining car, great food, and lovely companions. Journalist Monisha Rajesh is our guest from the BBC Studios in London right now on Travel with Rick Steves. She writes about her adventures on overnight sleeper trains across Europe, Asia, and even into the Andes in her latest book called Moonlight Express, Around the World by Night Train. Her earlier titles include Around the World in 80 Trains, Around India in 80 Trains, and Epic Train Journeys. You'll also see Monisha's byline in major newspapers and magazines, and she posts to Instagram and on X. Her website is monisharagesh.com. That's spelled R-A-J-E-S-H. I like Monisha how you explained the sleepers can be both romantic or just routine, and you used Scotland as an example of that. Tell us about the contrast between the glamorous Royal Scotsman and the more workaday Caledonian sleeper. The Caledonian sleeper is quite a funny one, because I, to this day, have still not met anyone who's ever slept on it properly. It's a route that goes from London up to Edinburgh and Glasgow and further up to Inverness if you want to. But it's very much a train that people used to commute. You still get politicians coming down to London on it. Everybody sits up having a nightcap and goes to work in the morning. And it's very much in contrast with the Royal Scotsman, which is a very leisurely journey. It's a bit like a cruise on wheels where you can have your Michelin star dining on board and then black tie and then hop off to go and do a bit of clay pigeon shooting. The Royal Scotsman has its glamorous observation car, right? Yes, it does. I love that. That's probably the highlight. Describe an observation car for us. So the observation car is hooked onto, I suppose it depends which way the engine's going, but it's an open deck and you can open the back end of the bar and stand out on the deck with the wind billowing through. You can take in absolutely everything about the elements when you're standing there. It's really exhilarating and it's the one place where everybody just recruits after dinner or fasting in the morning to watch the sunrise. You really got to get out of your little couchette and get out and go into the public rooms, don't you? At least hang out in the aisle to meet the people. You write a lot in your book, Moonlight Express, about the kinds of people you meet. Tell us about the social scene and a few tips on how to get the most out of that. I think that the beating heart of a night train is the dining car. You can always see when people board, they just beeline immediately for that dining car because that's where you meet people. That's where you get to discover the cuisine, regional products. You get to just eavesdrop on people's conversation. People make friends there and it's the fastest way to actually immerse yourself in this kind of rolling community of people. You even write about eavesdropping on people. You mentioned, I thought it was quite clever actually, making it look like you're listening to something with your earbuds or the ear reading, but actually your earbuds are not, they're silent and you're just listening to the conversation and soaking in all that's around you. I have a lot of sneaky methods actually for eavesdropping because that's where I get the best conversations and stories from people. I do have my headphones on, pretend that I'm listening to something. I often also pretend to be reading emails while actually making notes. When I have my kids with me, they're an even better disguise. They're a good front because they distract everybody while I'm busy picking up on what's going on. You can eavesdrop and get candid conversations of course, but if you engage with a stranger on the train, are they a little more willing to share personal information because people are just passing in the night? Is there something to that? Definitely. I think that anonymity of train travel makes people really, really open about all kinds of things. I've heard about mother-in-law disputes. I've heard about people's marriage problems. I've heard about medical problems, all kinds of things because you know that the person you're talking to doesn't need to know your name, your age, or where you're from. They'll just listen to you and then they could be gone in the morning. Monisha Rajas has made a career out of traveling by train. She's with us today on Travel with Rick Steves to clue us in on how overnight train travel gives us the opportunity to connect with the people around us in our journeys. After reading her new book, Moonlight Express, Michael Palin credited Monisha with choosing, as he put it, one of the best ways of seeing the world. Never too fast, never too slow, getting to the heart things. You'll find web links to Monisha's articles and work in the notes for this week's show. That's at ricksteves.com slash radio. Monisha, let's talk a bit about the practical details of a night train. First of all, there's different classes, right? You can go from luxurious Orient Express class to cattle car. You can sleep, you can stand in the aisle all night, you can sleep sitting up miserably, you can be packed into a very simple Couchette arrangement, or you can have a private state room on the train. What are the options that way? I think this is a thing I love about train travel at night. There is an option for everybody, depending on what your needs are. There are women-only compartments, there are private two-birth compartments, there are six-person Couchettes with mixed travelers. I always opt for the mixed Couchettes, if I can, because that just gives me a variety of people. I get to chat to lots of different people. A mixed Couchette would be a, is it a triple bunk and two triple bunks facing each other in one compartment? What do you prefer? I liked the top bunk just because I had my own little zone, but there's a case to be made for the bottom bunk. Which of the three bunks do you like? The Couchettes can be either four-person or six-person, and I always go for the top bunk for exactly the same reason. I like having that little private area where I can just go up whenever I want to, because if you're on the bottom, you have to wait till it's bedtime before you can spread out and sleep, otherwise everybody's sitting down there. That's right. The beds fold out from the wall when it's time to go to bed, right? So otherwise you've got three people sitting on one big long bench. You're facing each other. Or the conductor comes in and folds them down and when it's time to make up the beds or is that in a different class? No, not anymore. You have to do that yourself now. Okay. It's all self-made, and then you get handed your bedding in sealed plastic or ironed. And then you got these, you got to be a little bit of an acrobat to get up into the top bunk. For me, I had to spread my feet out so I look like an A-frame or something so that I could fit my six-foot-two-inch body. Oh, wow. Touching the top and the bottom. That's tricky. That is tricky. You're probably not six-foot-two, so you never had to worry about that. No, I'm not. But I did travel with a friend who was six-foot-two who always slept at the right angle at the bottom. But I did also discover that there is an etiquette when it comes to making up the births and that you don't all try and do it at the same time. You step outside into the corridor. That's true. You let your neighbor do it. That was just to sort of the decency and I didn't know that was the actual thing, but I always felt like, okay, this is too crowded. We don't need me and one more body in this compartment right now. I'll go out into the aisles. Exactly. This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking with Monisha Rajesh. Her book is Moonlight Express, Around the World by Night Train. So very quickly, we're just about out of time here at Monisha, but what if people are worried about safety concerns? You talked about going into a couchette with six bunks. I mean, you can pay a little more and have two doubles instead of two trebles. But it is a bunch of strangers, men and women in the same compartment, unless you find a way to book something otherwise. What has your experience been with safety and the safety of your luggage and where do you leave your bag when you're going up to the dining car and when you're sleeping? What do you do with your valuables and is the door something you can count on being locked at night and are the conductors smarmy characters or are they there to look out for your well-being? To date, I have never had a problem on a sleeper train. Perhaps I've just been very lucky, but I've found this from most people I've traveled with. Like we were saying earlier, you are a unit when you travel together and you want the journey to be great for all of you. You all want the same experience. So I think there's an innate trust when you're on these sleeper trains in these compartments that you guard each other's luggage, you watch each other's laptops. I always keep my money and my expensive stuff on me, but equally, I don't travel with nice watches and lots of jewelry either. If I have four people in a compartment, I make friends with each of them so they all know me, they didn't know each other before that. And then when I leave, they're kind of all looking out for me and I'm looking out for them. So once you've established that, I think you're right, it just feels like we are a team here and we're going to get through this ride and have good memories. And I think people all have different levels of vulnerability as well. I guess it's all very relative to each person. Women-only compartments are there for that reason and I often travel with my children because my two daughters just feel happier having women around them. Well, I should mention in a lot of Muslim countries, a restaurant will have a women's only zone, which is where women and children can go. Or it's a family zone and then a men-only zone just for the comfort of people. And a woman can go in the men's zone, but the men can't go into the women's zone. And it's probably, there's sort of safeguards like that for people's comfort levels on night trains. Yeah. Well, in fact, on the Doha Express, the train from Ankara to Kars, women cannot travel in another mixed compartment with men that they don't know. They can if they come in a group, in a mixed group, but you can't move them around in that way. That makes sense. Hey, Monisha, one last question. I love to have little mementos of great travel experiences. Is there any little souvenir that you have from your train riding, something physical that you've taken away from this that brings you good memories? I often get given little trinkets from people along the way. Like, and they feel like little ed memoirs when I come back to write my books, but one stands out, which is a really beautiful, heavy brass whistle that I was given by a train driver in Ankara, who actually found me on Twitter a few months before and said, if you ever come to Turkey, you have a brother here. He took the day off work driving high-speed trains and came to meet me at the station. He presented me with this whistle that he then allowed me to blast into the rafters. It was such a lovely childhood moment of hearing this fantastic whistle. I still have it in my bedside table. Wow. I would love a heavy brass Turkish train whistle. That's just such a great souvenir. You don't think of taking the train in Turkey, for example. For many years, we took our tour groups from Istanbul to Ankara on the train. That's the one modern train, I would say, in Turkey. But for you to just to think of going east from Ankara, from Ankara to the shadow of Mount Eirat, the border of Armenia, wow. And then to make friends with a conductor and go home with a little souvenir. That's the epitome of what a souvenir is all about. Moniz, if you don't put yourself in a situation where you'll have that kind of serendipity, you'll never enjoy it. And that's one great thing about your book, Moonlight Express, around the world by night train. It reminds you, there's a lot of serendipity out there. And when serendipity knocks, you open the door and say, come on in. Thanks, Moniz and happy rail travel. Thank you. All aboard now for dreamland. We'll chew, chew, chew, chew to the skies. So if you want to go to dreamland, well then just close your eyes. Moniz Sharadjash's latest book is Moonlight Express, around the world by night train. She discusses the pastimes people engage in on the train, things that can connect us with the cultures of the places we're traveling through. It's in an extra from today's interview, which you can listen to at ricksteves.com slash radio. A freelance journalist who's made his home in South America for the last dozen years gives us a taste of what we can discover in the other America. That's next on Travel With Rick Steves. I know a lot about Europe, but I know very little about South America. I just had dinner with a friend whose son studied in Paraguay. He married a local girl and he would far prefer to raise his kids in Paraguay than in the United States. In Paraguay. I don't know anything about Paraguay, I just can't imagine choosing that rather than the United States of America to raise your children. There's got to be something about it. My son, Andy, fell in love with Columbia. It's an amazing country in South America. It's people, it's temple of life. And now he owns a condo in Medellin. And I'm starting to wonder, maybe I should give this continent a better look. American born Mark Johansson is a, I should say, North American born Mark Johansson is a journalist who's ended up in Santiago in the country of Chile. He's the co-author of Lonely Planet Guidebooks to several South American countries and he's written about his travels for National Geographic, travel in Lesion, Condomast. Mark's just written a book about Chile's desert. It's called Mars on Earth and he joins us now to share his take on South America. Mark, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. We're really happy to share a little bit about South America with you. You've spent a decade traveling across South America. What are we missing? Yeah, you know, I think it's not such a weird thing that somebody might want to live in South America instead of back home. There's a lot of reasons why people enjoy living down here. The cost of living is generally lower if you're, especially if you're making dollars. There's much more focus on the environment than there is in North America these days, I would say. Chile, where I live, Santiago has the largest fleet of electric buses outside of China. Uruguay runs 98% of its country on sustainable energy. I mean, there's lots of wonderful little factoids that I could share about South America that would make you challenge some of the things that you might see in the news every day. You know, I talked to a man whose work is connecting businesses between this whole second tier of economies around the world, Brazil, Colombia, Korea, and so on. It reminds me there is this economic massive world that's not the G7 or the G10 or whatever. And a lot of that is the countries we're talking about in South America. So we have stereotypes and we have misperceptions. As you've settled into South America, what are some of the misperceptions that we might have about South America? Yeah, I think sometimes when you look at the news coming out of this part of the world, at least the news that reaches the United States, it's oftentimes about crime or drugs or in general, negative news. And what often doesn't leave the continent is all the beautiful, wonderful things that are happening here in terms of the food scenes in Lima or the art scene in Sao Paulo, the architecture on the coast of Chile. You have such wonderful aspects of this part of the world that most people don't know about unless they are fortunate enough to come and visit and see for themselves. So I always think living in the United States, Mexico City is just a quick flight south of Houston. It's easy to get there. Why don't so many people recognize? Perhaps the greatest city in Latin America is right there. You're based in Santiago and Chile. When you want to go somewhere, I would imagine there's a wonderful hub of air connections. Border crossings are easy. Everybody speaks Spanish. I suppose most educated people speak a little English too. Yeah, and this is in Brazil. We're speaking Portuguese. Or Brazil. So what is it like living in Santiago as far as using that as a springboard for adventures across South America? Surprisingly, Santiago is kind of far from everywhere in the world, to be honest. Yeah, you can get to Buenos Aires in about two hours. Buenos Aires is one of my favorite cities in the world. It's the food, the nightlife, the wine. It's just wonderful, the theater as well. You can get to Sao Paulo in four hours. You can get to Peru in four hours. You can get to Rapa Nui, Easter Island in five hours. So it takes a little bit more time, but you do have access to some of the most amazing places on the planet, in my opinion. Now you've been there for over a decade now. What are the trends politically and economically? Politically and economically. Well, that is a mixed bag all over the continent. I would say Argentina, which has gone through financial troubles for the last decades over and over again, is trying to fix those financial problems, but has sort of gone to a far right government in an attempt to do that. You have countries like Chile, which is run by a 30, well, he was 36 years old when he became president. So one of the youngest leaders in the world, quite liberal. You have other countries like Brazil that's run by Lula, who was the champion of the left 10, 15 years ago, and now he's back in power. Brazil's economy is roaring at the moment. So the Brazilians are traveling around South America like they've never traveled before. So most of the people here are, things are more stable than you might imagine, I would say. From somebody in the United States dreaming of traveling in South America, the question about stability and safety would come to mind. Sure. I do think that those things are a little bit overblown sometimes, though. You do have to be a smart traveler. You do have to be careful in certain, especially in cities in South America with, you know, not having a super expensive camera around your shoulders or, you know, having a very expensive jewelry on, which maybe you don't have to deal with as much in Europe or other parts of the world. But I think as soon as you get out into most rural areas, questions of safety, you know, you need to be aware certainly of your surroundings and check mornings and things like that. But I think most people come and go back home without having experienced any sort of issues like that. Some travelers fly from capital city to capital city to capital city and other travelers go overland across borders. You've been there 10 years. If you're candid, would you say it's generally flying from big city to big city or do you cross many borders actually? I would say because of the distances and because of the infrastructure here, it is oftentimes a flight between capital cities, if only to use them as a launch pad or a springboard to go off to more remote areas. You know, there's not this great train network like you might have in Europe. The highways work really well within certain countries, but then crossing borders oftentimes means crossing the Andes, which are the tallest mountains outside the Himalayas. So that's not an easy feat for a natural tourist. So what you really need to do is make a point, if you're flying big city to big city, don't get big city bias. And when you're in a big city, make a point to balance that by doing something to have an excursion. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think the the encanto, like the joy, the wonder of South America is the natural treasures. I mean, this is home to the Amazon. It's home to the Andes. It's home to Patagonia. You have glaciers. You have so many volcanoes. You know, and out into nature. I was visiting my son in Medellin, which is the most livable and wonderful city in Colombia. And the highlight was we spent a long day going out way into the countryside and doing a river rafting trip. And that's where we really got to be connecting with indigenous life and with nature and and putting memories together. I would imagine there's a little bit of uniformity that goes with concrete urban scenes. But boy, when you get into the countryside, that's where you'll find more distinct culture. Yeah. And you also get to know, as you say, you get to know the cultures and you get to realize that it's not a monolith. South America, the cultures of South America are incredibly different. A Colombian versus an Argentinian is a very different. It's a very different food. It's a very different personality. And so the more you travel around this region, the more you see that it's just, you know, it's so vastly different from one end to the other. Mark Johansen is a freelance journalist who makes South America his beat. He's joining us on travel with Rick Steves from his home base in Santiago, Chile, one of the largest cities in the hemisphere. Mark co-authors a dozen Lonely Planet guidebooks and his website is markjoansson.com. He also posts on Instagram and X under Mark on the map. Mark spoke with us previously about his discoveries in Chile's Atacama Desert, which he describes in his book, Mars on Earth, wanderings in the world's triest desert. You can hear that in the travel with Rick Steves archives under program number 791 from May of 2025. So Mark, you're co-authored the Lonely Planet guidebooks to Bolivia, Chile and Peru. So those are countries that you would have a lot of experience because you're actually researching in those countries. How is the work different for you, the research in these three countries? Between the countries or between working? How do you compare the three countries? What is distinct about the countries? Chile is a very different country than Peru or Bolivia. It's a much richer country. And so it has much better infrastructure for getting around. But that doesn't make it better or worse than the others. I think Peru and Bolivia have much better food scenes than than Chile. You know, Lima is known around the world for its restaurants. It's it's used food as a way to build up its national identity in a way that few other countries have. And I think that Bolivia, especially the pause is just on its tail. So it's a wonderful food city to visit. But yeah, you'll have a much more indigenous experience, certainly in Bolivia or Peru, because that was the epicenter of the population centers here before European colonists arrived in the 1500s. You know, that is something that is really an important dimension of traveling anywhere in the Americas is a recognition of the rich and diverse indigenous cultures. Of course, in South America, we have these pre-Columbian civilizations that have left us bits and pieces of their often underestimated societies and civilizations. Tell us a little bit about, first of all, the most important pre-Columbian sites beyond the obvious, the Machu Picchu and so on. And then how the indigenous cultures survive today, really. So Machu Picchu is obviously the big allure to Peru. But I think a lot of people don't realize how many other sites are just in the greater Cusco area, which is the base for visiting Machu Picchu. You have Chocquiquidau, which is bigger than Machu Picchu. All throughout, you know, the Andean, certainly the Andean countries from Argentina and Chile up to Colombia, you have all sorts of different, different remains from different cultures, because the Incas were only around for 100 years. That's the thing a lot of people don't realize. So they were just kind of building on the work of many other indigenous cultures that came before them, including the Tiwanaku in Bolivia. You have groups in Colombia and Southern Colombia that were building these huge totems out of rock. It's almost like an Easter Island of the Andes that very few people go to visit. So you have all sorts of archaeological remains scattered throughout, not just the Andean countries, but certainly Brazil as well and the Lola countries. You know, I always think that we underestimate because we are ethnocentric and we have a European kind of orientation that we think that we were civilized in Europe and then we come to America and you find nothing but hunter-gatherers or whatever. And I think a statement that really humbles me is that when Columbus discovered America, discovered, quote, you know, possibly the biggest and most sophisticated city on earth was what we think of as Mexico City today. I mean, the point is there was really well-developed civilizations existing in America when the conquistadors arrived and a lot of those were in South America. Absolutely. Anywhere you travel, especially between Peru and Bolivia, you're going to see that there were incredible cultures living here long before and Europeans at foot. And then you fast forward and you get all the Hispanic, you know, invasions and incursions and you have a society today that is racially either indigenous or mixed or white. I think I would add to that also, though, I think there's a conception that the Europeans that came over all came from Spain, but it's very different depending on the country. South of Chile is full of Croatians and Germans. Brazil is full of Japanese and Lebanese. So you have people from all over the world who've made South America home over the years for different reasons. And we have the tragic sort of reality of indigenous North Americans today that we're dealing with and trying to be fair about with our Indian population. In South America, are the indigenous people generally dispossessed and struggling and the downtrodden or are there countries where they are not at a disadvantage? I think that just because of historical disadvantages, there's still to this day lots of issues and lots of sort of hopes and aspirations that maybe have not yet been met. But I think especially in terms of conservation, a lot of conservation organizations around the world, which used to believe that the right way to conserve land was to kick everyone out of it, have changed their way and realized that the best way to conserve parts of the Amazon or parts of the Charcovite forest is to empower the indigenous communities who live in these rural areas to be the guardians of their own land. So I think in terms of at least that aspect of the conversation there is a new way of looking at and empowering certain communities, especially those that are rural and isolated and don't have much economic power otherwise. That's the new enlightened approach. But I think traditionally there's been a structural poverty where for instance, if you get an education, if parents want their kids to have an education, it'll have to be in Spanish. Absolutely. There's a movement in South America for plurinationalism now, which is basically acknowledging that the nation is made up of several nations. Bolivia is a plurinational nation because it recognizes the indigenous communities that are there and gives them a bit more. Bolivian Guatemala, I suppose, would be the most indigenous societies of Latin America, wouldn't they? Perhaps statistically Peru would be up there as well, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. So there is a recognition of that because I know it's just a brutal thing where if you want to be indigenous, you're not going to have an education and you're never going to get a job. And if you want to embrace the urban Hispanic kind of thing, then you have to do that. I think that there's a bit more recognition now. It's still obviously a massive issue, but there's a bit more recognition in terms of the art world. There's a lot more appreciation of indigenous art where certain ideas and concepts came from historically and giving recognition for that. So there is a bit of movement, but certainly there's a long way to go. Mark Johansson's bringing us a Travelers Overview of South America right now on Travel with Rick Steves. He writes about South America for Lonely Planet and takes us with him to Northern Chile's Atacama Desert in his book, Mars on Earth. It's kind of fascinating to me to think that happy as I am in this corner of the world, I might be missing something. You have found that yourself. Yeah, I think once you sort of wiggle your way into Latin American culture, once you become a part of a Latino family, you find that it's hard to wiggle your way out because it's such a lovely close-knit society. You know, even ways that I think in North America, the family unit has been dispersed a little bit. It's not quite as tight-knit. Here, the family, you know, you're going to lunch every single Sunday. You have a family lunch and it's going to be a long hours long lunch filled with in Chile, at least bottles of wine and long conversations. And there's just a joy to life here. And as you said, a different tempo a lot of times that can become addictive over time. My son, who lives in Colombia part of the part of the year talks about in the morning, he loves the sound of the man that comes down the street selling fruit. Papaya, papaya, pina, pina. And it's just so deep in his heart. He just loves the man. He loves hanging out with his friends down there. And it's truly an escape from the intensity of the high-powered American world. It is a fascinating option that we all have in our lives. And that's one of the beautiful things about travel is you realize that there's more than one way to live. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The more you travel, the more you realize that too. This is Travel with Rick Steves. We've been talking with Mark Johansen and his book is Mars on Earth, Wanderings in the World's Dryest Desert. It's about the huge desert, the Atacama Desert in Chile. And Mark, we're out of time, but I'd love for you just to kind of share with us one special moment you've had in Chile where you live that makes you happy that that's where you call home. Hmm. I think one thing that makes me happy to be here in Chile is this. I feel a certain amount of pride in Chile after all this time. It is a country that for all of its challenges has gotten a lot of things right. It's a country that's adding national parks almost every single year. It's adding one or two new national parks. So for somebody like me who loves nature, who loves wild places, to be able to sit in my Santiago apartment and see the Andes, the snow capped Andes right out my window and dream them in nature is just one of the coolest things in the world. And anywhere you go in Chile, you're traveling either by the mountains or the beach. So what can be worse than that? Or what could be better than that? Do you have a man that rolls down his cart in the morning singing papaya, papaya, pineapple? Unfortunately no, but I do have my people at my local farmers market that they know me as their Casero and that are expecting me every weekend. Yeah. Very nice. Mark Johansson, thanks so much for joining us. And thanks for having me. I'd love to come down to Chile sometime and get turned on by the Temple of Life in the beautiful corner of the world that you call home. Please do. Yes, we'll be waiting for you. Travel with Rick Steves is produced at Rick Steves Europe in Edmunds, Washington by Tim Tanton, Kazemura Hall and Donna Bardsley. Andrew Wakeling and Sherry Court upload the shows to our website. Affiliate relations are by Sheila Gershoff. Our theme music was written and performed by Jerry Frank. Special thanks to the BBC in London for studio help this week. You can find links to our guests and search the show archives at ricksteves.com slash radio. We'll see you next week with more travel with Rick Steves. Hey, I'm Rick Steves. It's clear to me that if you equip yourself with good information and expect yourself to travel smart, you will. That's why we offer a world of free content at ricksteves.com. All the TV shows we've ever produced, that's over 100 shows taking you from Turkey to Poland to Portugal. 50 hours of practical lectures with talks ranging from packing smart and tech on the road to cruising and language lessons. There's articles covering every corner of Europe, a thriving family of travelers comparing notes in our forum and much more. And it's all entirely free at ricksteves.com.