Travel Gear
Trip Start
Mar 08, 2008
1
38
50
Trip End
Sep 2008
Coroico,
Coroico,
Bolivia
Friday, May 9, 2008
What works:
Sony Vaio UX280:
Little adventure is our little Sony Vaio UX280 pocket PC. It works a treat. It works as our personal movie theatre when we're on night buses (apparently Ecuadorians don't read, so they don't really need reading lights on the buses). We use it to write on our travel blog and for skype calls when we can find a free WiFi network (which we haven't really done yet). We also use it for language training, and to off load photos from our camera.
We've got a fold out bluetooth keyboard, a travel mouse, a blue tooth headset and a 80 GB USB hard drive, which doubles up as photo storage and media library.
Olympus Digital Camera 770SW:
Shock proof (tested), water proof (tested), takes great photos and movies - awesome!
Stereo:
My trusted old 60 GB MP3 player with a set of external speakers... Works really well...
Mini LED:
This mini LED light came off a IBM Thinkpad bag... and it's a lifesaver when darkness falls and you're stuck in the jungle... or trying to find your head lamp...
50 leaves of soap and toilet paper:
Another couple of lifesavers... most South American toilets come without soap... and toilet paper... and some even without running water...
How do you take a photo of your camera?
See the Banos entries for some examples...LED head lamps:
Work well for night walks in the jungle and in caves, and for reading books on buses etc.
Clothes:
Layering is the name of the game. We have already managed to use all of our clothes, so we must have done something right, when we packed...
Anders has:
- 1 pair of shorts
- 1 pair of khaki pants with zip off legs
- 1 pair of swimmers
- 4 t-shirts
- 2 merino wool t-shirts (really, really warm! And they can go for days without smelling!)
- 2 shirts
- 1 fleece
- 1 rain jacket
- 1 thermal top
- 1 thermal long johns
- 1 pair of hiking shoes
- 1 pair of sandals
- 2 pairs of merino wool socks (no smell and really warm)
- 5 pairs of normal socks
And Kerry brought her spare pillow - it turned out to be a very good idea...
What didn't work:
We brought sleeping bags - they are now on their way to France.
We downloaded the Lonely Planet guides for Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil as PDF files...
Little Adventure
bad idea... we've spent way too much time to find printing at reasonable prices, trying to keep the pages in order, and got stuck when we considered travelling through Argentina or Paraguay down to Iguazu Falls... Buy the printed version!And word has it that the best guide book for South America is the Footprint guide...
