Have you been there in past couple of years ? Their tourism industry has blown up , I found Peru and Colombia to be more expensive than I ever thought it would be and I didn ' t even bother with Ecuador bc everyone was saying it was even more expensive than Peru . I mean , you can find cheap hostels in Peru and Colombia but they ' re in very bad and unsafe parts of town . A safe and fun hostel will run you between $ 1420 CAD cheaper if you ' re an American I guess I recommend Guatemala . It ' s superrrr cheap and assuming you ' re from either Canada or the States , you could get a cheap flight to Cancun and then bus it from there . Nicaragua is apparently dirt cheap as well , I ' ve never been though so you ' d have to do your research on that one .