The equipment

So this is it. This is the first blog post that I am writing not sitting on my couch but on the road. We are on our first flight, to Buenos Aires, where our friend Esteban is waiting for us with a proper Argentine asado. Hmmm, beef.

Sitting on a plane for 13+ hours gives you time to reflect and recap recent events. The past few weeks have been both very busy and very exciting. We spend virtually all of our time planning, packing, sorting out our apartment, doing paperwork (health insurance, visas, taxes, backup documentation), watching shockingly shitty but addictive soap operas, and saying farewell to many friends and our families.

Saying farewell was the hardest part. Many thanks again to those who made it to our parties, or who we were able to meet individually. I’m a bit poorer now financially, but this was definitely worth it! Apologies to those whom we weren’t able to say goodbye to in person - as mentioned before, we’ll be back!

Anyway, I actually wanted to use this post to write a bit about packing our backpacks in order to have a point of reference when I pack for my next big tour. ;-) Judith & I have spent a lot of time discussing what stuff to take along, trying to find that stuff, and trying to fit it all in one (!) backpack. The fact that we are sitting on this very plane means that at least we managed to get that done in time. Having done similar trips before (albeit with a shorter duration), and talking to friends with extensive travel experience helped us to come up with an in my view sensible list of things for the road. One thing that stroke us was that if you want to do more of the outdoorsy, self-sufficient type of traveling in developing countries and across climate zones, roughly two thirds of your bag is used for stuff like sleeping bags and the likes. Clothes then only really make up less than a third of your baggage. Wow. The list on the right hand side provides an overview of the things we deemed worthy of joining us on our tour. A few very important items are still missing here, though, like my metal Schnapps bottle (‘Flachmann’), a global power adaptor, or warm fleece pants for trekking in Nepal. Purists might argue that taking a netbook & two mobiles is too much, and they might have a case. Nevertheless, the 1990s are over, face it! Having the netbook is quite handy to store our pics before uploading them to our web storage space. Also, since we are both addicted to music, having our mp3s with us is really great.

OK, enough of the equipment discussion. One last thing I did want to share is the amazingly structured manner in which we managed our apartment move alongside the packing efforts.
The picture below shows how two former business consultants handle processes like this…


That’s it for today. Tonight, we will enjoy our first of many asados, tomorrow I’ll get stabbed in the back at the Boca Juniors vs. River Plate match, and on Sunday we’re off to Patagonia.