Latin America Collection

Unfortunately, we let the "bandido" factor influence us too much in
preparing our financial arrangements. Everyone we talked to suggested
we take travellers checks. The idea of having them replaced if they are lost
or stolen is great. The problem comes up that about the only place you can
cash them is in the four and five star hotels. If there were offices where
you could cash them around the service stations and motels, it would be
great. If you are trying to "poor boy" it in the $20.00 per night motels
instead of the $100.00 luxury hotels, you could have problems if you go heavy
on the travellers checks. Compute your costs in advance. Divide your total
anticipated mileage by the fuel consumption rate of your car, and multiply
that by $1.50 per gallon. That is the approximate amount of cash you will
need for fuel for the trip. If you are staying at the Holiday Inns or equivalent,
you will have no problem with travellers checks or credit cards. If not, you
can plan on stopping in them for breakfast and cashing your daily need of
travellers checks.

I suggest that you take quite a bit of cash and divide it up into 3 or 4
bundles and hide it in your car or luggage. Do not carry it all in one place.
In spite of what some people say, you will need U.S. cash and local currency
at places I have already mentioned, plus each border crossing will take from
$20.00 to $50.00 to get through. There are a lot of "hands" out there, as we
will discuss later.