This time we are headed for South America, specifically Chile and Peru. The plan is (roughly):
- Peruvian Amazon
- Lake Titikaka (3812m: beware of altitude sickness – hope the tablets work)
- Cusco and Machu Picchu (2430m)
- Atacama Desert (2407m)
- Santiago and Valparaíso
- Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island)
- Chiloé
- Patagonia
That means that we need to pack for maximums of 30 to 10, and minima of 22 to 2, wet and dry. Want to travel light. Ha! Lots of easily washable layers is my guess.
Flights and hotels are booked, paperwork in order, I hope, but in need of checking. Inoculation against yellow fever, typhoid and hepatitis-A done. Anti-malarials and anti-altitude medication still needs to be bought.
The last trip worked OK with the WD My Passport for photo backups and a Nexus-9 and bluetooth keyboard for keeping in touch, so I’ll lean that way again, but the N9 has died in the mean time, and been replaced with a Pixel-C. I’m onto my third in as many months, the first two suffering some sort of screen-related early death that Google has thankfully dealt with satisfactorily. Does leave me a little nervous about the latest one’s robustness. We’ll just have to see.
So much still to do, and to worry about!
Apparently Border Force have decided to go on strike on the day we’re booked to leave. Hope they resolve that between now and then! Would be bad to miss the first connection!
Before the last trip, I wondered whether my tripod would fit into our luggage. In fact it didn’t: at its smallest it was too long by about five centimeters. We took a Gorilla-pod and a borrowed monopod, but those turned out to be inadequate for night photography of aurora. So this time I’ve bought us a much smaller (but still full-height) travel tripod each. Hope they don’t take up too much room in our luggage! Even though they’re much smaller than the old full-size Manfrotto, they’re not insignificant, compared to everything else.
I did buy a four-port USB charger for the last trip, and it was a good thing. I’ll take that again. Should be able to handle South America’s 220v 50 and 60Hz electricity, and enough to charge both of our tablets and the WD drive.
The old Garmin sat-nav has almost certainly been superseded by my mobile phone, and Google Map’s downloadable regions. I hope.