Tips 👏
- Create a check-list with Google Sheet.
- Get an early appointment with a GP for the medications prescription.
- Start in advance since order things on Amazon take time to arrive.
⏱ Duration
Packing itself was very fast, but gathering the items took us a around 1 month.
While this is not an exhaustive list, it’s what we found useful to have with us during our trip. It’s personal, but we both felt that was worth sharing, specially regarding the accessories and quantities.
Everyday clothes 👖
We didn’t took much for 5 months since it was easy and cheap to do laundries on the way. We also packed initially one fashion outfit but sent it back since we never used it. Here’s what we took:
- 5 tops (tee-shirts)
- 5 sets of underwear (socks and panties)
- 1 pair of hikking socks and trousers (we had them convertible but never used it)
- 1 pair of our favourite trousers
- 1 sporty and comfy bottom (jogging or leggings)
- 1 warm hoodie
Cold outfit 🌨
We spent half of our time in the mountains. Barbara having a hate relationship with the cold itself, we had to take our precautions. We layered up and each took:
- A technical padded jacket
- Pair of thermal leggings and long sleeve
- Snow hat, scarf and pair of warm gloves
- 1 pocket-foldable rain jacket wind-breaker
Hot outfit 🔥
As you may guess, we spent the other half chilling on the beach and working on our non-existing Londoner tan, for which we took:
- Board short or bikini
- Rashvest to snorkel without sunburn
- Sea shoes to avoid feet cuts on hidden corals
- Swim hair band for long hair while scuba-diving
- Pocket beach towel since not all the hotel provide one
- Cool kid cap and sunglasses with a solid case to avoid breaking them
- Dive mask with snorkel since renting one everytime is expensive (fins too but we didn’t got enough space)
Sleeping gear 🛌
We knew that we sometimes would sleep in cheap hotel not always very clean. To avoid getting bed-bugs or other weird things, we bought a pocket travel liner to sleep in. It was very handy and didn’t took much space.
Moskitoes were our second main worry regarding the bed area. We decided to invest in a nice but not fashion moskito tent to prevent being eater alive in the amazon bassin. That was super useful, and we highly recommend you to buy one upfront since it’s not that easy to find.
Shoes 👟
We took a good pair of running shoes for the everyday life since we knew we would walk a lot. We also packed a pair of comfortable hikking shoes, as well as flip-flops. We did quite some research to pick those since we would use them extensively. Good quality and fit was essential.
Travel 💺
Moving around a lot, we spent a lot of time in common transports between flights, trains, buses or boats. Hence, we decided to gear up for it, to make the travel time as smooth as possible, and we took:
- Blindfold to get some sleep in the planes
- A pair of compression socks to facilitate the circulation
- Earplugs for the screaming babies around or the party hostel
- Face mask to avoid catching the cold of the dude in the back
- A charged power bank since browsing on the phone is battery consuming
- A pair of old-fashioned earphones since the airlines ones are usually s**t, and a cheap bluetooth one for comfort.
Tech 💻
Since we both work in IT, the tech gear was an important part of our packing process. While again this is very personal, we decided to leave with enough accessories to browse and binge internet without any fuss. Some of our equipment was fragile and expensive, but it was actually easy to take care of and keep an eye on.
- An IPAD Air to check our bookings
- A Kindle to pretend being a smart person
- An old laptop to browse internet and write this blog
- Iphone, micro-usb and other various charging cables
- A GoPro with a case for scuba-diving and a floating hand grip
- An HDMI cable to plug our laptop on the various TV screen of our hotels
- Two Universal 4 USB plug, one each, couldn’t do our trip without this one
We had a lot of back and forth to decide if it was reasonable to take IPad/Laptop with us but we were glad to bring both (one each). Day when nothing happen were long, and browsing the things to do around would have been very tiring on a phone. We took good care of those, and always kept them in a safe place and didn’t got any troubles.
Accessories 💡
Those were the key to a fuss-free trip. We took a long time to think of all the tiny bus useful things to bring with us, to help us in the day-to-day travel life. We asked a lot of travel friends about what were the most useful pieces of accessories to take, and brought the following:
- Pocket mirror
- Re-usable steel water bottle
- Small draw strings bag to go around
- Dry bags waterproof for water expeditions
- Few small carabiners to hook stuff on bikes
- Foldable hangers with a rope to hang laundry easily
- Re-usable sandwich wrapper, perfect for all kind of sandwiches
- Small night stand light and torch, perfect to chill in the evening
- Pocket umbrella for rainy days with a trousers rain-proof cover
- Foldable tupperware and knife-fork for improvised cheap lunches