[2022] Packing: What to do, with travel tips and itinerary

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

Medications 💊

Besides the insuline for Barbara (described in the diabetic article), we basically took all the basic medications in case of illness, trying to cover all scenarios. While paracetamol and immodium were the most used, the most important for us what to get antibiotics.

Common medications are actually very easy to get in pharmacies, but antibiotics require a prescription almost everywhere. It’s far from ideal, specially in a country where no one speaks english with your belly preventing you to go anywhere besides the hotel’s toilet. We were lucky since my parents are doctors, and they gave us the basic package. If most likely that’s not your case, go to your GP in advance explaining the situation.

Legal Status 👮

A very important thing we checked before leaving was the legal status of some items we were taking with us. Legislations are sometimes complex, and can have serious consequences for travellers. Before heading off to our adventure, we did some research online to check if what we were bringing with us was not breaking any laws. Here’s the most common things to check:

Chill pills: Stuff to relax or heavy pain killers, like Valium or Codeine, are forbidden in a lot of country.
Contraception: Most of contraceptive pills are not really ok in some South America countries, where abortion is not in the dictionary.
Vaping: The contreversial e-cigarettes got banned in several Asian countries (Hong Kong, Thailand…).

Long story short, the basic things are fine, but as soon as it gets a bit sensible double check were you’re heading to avoid issues like going to jail.

Trolley or Back-Pack 💼

I left with a standard 60L back-pack and Barbara with a 60L Offsprey Sojourn, half trolley half back-pack. Middle trip, I started to be very tired of the weight on my back, and decided to switch for a classic trolley of 80L.

That was the best decision ever, and that’s also how we came up with the name of this blog. Honestly, we didn’t found the need for a back-pack while travelling. Not once we had to carry our trolleys for more than 20 meters, even in the amazon.

In the end, we had one trolley each of 70L, one little back-pack each for passports, tech and stuff and one Adidas Gym Bag for carrying the insuline. For both trollies, we bought a luggage cover to protect of the dusty bus hauls and airport transfers.

Cash 💵

Before leaving, we forgot to withdraw dollars and had to change some at the airport. The USD can be used almost worldwide, and is a life saver in case of problems. We decided to withdraw 500$ at Heathrow Airport where we afterward realized we paid 80£ for the conversion!

The best is to get to any serious bank a month in advance and pre-order dollars. Normally, the bank will provide a not-too-bad rate without extra fees.

Split resources 🤗

Another thing we did while packing was to split some of the stuff in our two luggages. This was to follow the don’t put all the eggs in the same basket mom’s advices. It’s very easy to get a luggage lost or stolen, so it’s better if it doesn’t contain everything.

In short, we split the medicines (in three bags), the cash when having some, the Barbara’s insuline with sweets and the bath products.

Documents 📄

We actually took very few documents with us during the trip. The first thing we checked was our passports, making sure they were still valid for at least a year, but also if they still had enough white pages for the multiple VISA. We also bought a passport protector to avoid damaging them as well as avoid identity theft.

The other one we printed was our complete flight list in English. Some countries asked proof about our leaving date for VISA purposes, so having the list printed made things easier.

The to-do list 📝

It was quite overwhelming for us to think about everything we would need, what we already packed, what was left to do. We decided to use again our friend Google Sheet to check our progress, and make sure to not forget anything.

That worked like a charm. Super easy to use and collaborate on, that gave us a clean overview of the thing left to buy, but also our piece of mind when we left knewing we didn’t forgot anything.