Guatemala: Packing List

Packing for my one-month Guatemala trip was similar to my packing for Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico, back when I studied for my CELTA. I even took the same wheeled bag! The wheeled bag still squeaks by the carry-on police, but just barely. Back when I bought it, the bag was easily within the dimension limits, but the airlines have reduced their boundaries since then.

e-bag, wheeled, carry-on bag

For a month's trip, all of my stuff fit into the above bag and a lightweight backpack.

Clothing

Similarities in both trips included:

1. Warm weather throughout the stay, so no need to pack for wide variations in temperature; and
2. No moving around from place to place - I'd be in same accommodations for the full month, which meant I'd have a secure place to bring and store items (e.g. technology) that I might otherwise leave at home. 

A difference in this trip and the Playa trip is ... shoes. Shaking my head on this one. I've never been one to amass great quantities of shoes, but I packed kind of an embarrassing number of pairs on this trip. This is because my Guatemala plans include:

• Dancing! 
• Hiking
• Walking on uneven pavements (think Caucasus Georgia and Ethiopia)
• Hanging around the house 
• Maybe some evenings out that require a little bit of dressing up

So, five pairs of footwear. Sheesh. I plan to discard two pairs when I leave, as they've outlived their usefulness to me.

I'll also leave behind some of the clothing items when I go. They are in good repair, it's just that either I'm tired of them or they no longer fit well.

So in theory, my luggage on the return trip will accommodate a few gift items that I'll buy here.


Comfort items

• Aforementioned salt and instant coffee
• Generic Imodium for the inevitable bout of diarrhea
• Sunscreen
• A month-long supply of my current sugar-free, powdered drink mix favorite: peach mango green tea in single serve packets, which had added to my travel comforts in Ethiopia and Caucasus Georgia
• Gum

Technology

My online work requires that I use headsets for meetings, so I packed both a primary headset and a backup headset.

Also:

• AA batteries and AAA batteries because, again, better to have items on hand than to have to take time out to hunt them down in a local store, and because I've experienced store-supply fail.
• Power strip/surge protector
• Flash drives for photo storage (in addition to using a cloud backup)
• Mouse + pad
• Earbuds and the device I use to listen to podcasts every day
• Unlocked, international-friendly android phone + phone charger

Laptop

My beloved primary laptop, bought in 2010, is now an elderly lady. By today's standards, she's heavy. Her after-market battery is kaput, so I've got to tether her to an electrical outlet whenever she's on. All of my life is held in her mother-brain.

Take her to Guatemala? No. It was an unnecessary risk to her fragile body and to the electronic trail of my life.

What to do? I know I've got to buy a new primary laptop but I'm not ready for that research and decision yet.

Well, I needed a backup, anyway, to my online work practice, so I bought a toy laptop.

Oooh, sha, she is so airy-light! And so come-hithery in her sexy, red dress. And at the price (well under $200), if she gets stolen or something else dire, I will be sad, but will not have suffered a devastating loss.

I loaded into her brain only those documents that I believed essential for my needs in Guatemala. Two reasons: 

1. She doesn't have much storage space. 
2. She can't divulge intel that she doesn't have. 

Backpack

I have a handsome backpack that I use for my primary laptop, for weekend travels, for some flights. I took it to Playa del Carmen, to Ethiopia, to Caucasus Georgia, to Dubai, to Istanbul.

e-bag backpack that I left at home

It looks as youthful today as it did when I bought it years ago.

I didn't bring it to Guatemala, however. Nope, I decided to go lighter and cheaper. I'm guessing I'll do a lot of walking in and around Antigua, and I wanted to reduce the carry load. This decision is supported by my decision to bring my toy laptop, Little Red, which requires a bag with less space and durability than my primary laptop.

I also wanted an inexpensive bag, both in price and in looks, to reduce the number of envious looks from would-be thieves. Guatemala has a bit of an unsavory reputation, you understand.


Little bags and accessories

The possibility of dancing or evening-going-out required some thought about packing small bags. Being a solo traveler, I don't have a partner to watch my bag for me at a table while I step away for dancing or even going to the restroom. So I need to be creative in how I carry stuff with me to these kinds of venues.

Choosing clothing with pockets is a good first step.

I also have three utilitarian terry-cloth, zippered wrist bands in which I can stash a credit card, some bills, and a key. (I've got one each in navy, black, and red. I may buy a new one in light beige.)

Gogo terry-cloth wristband with zipper. Source: Amazon

And, yes, I did bring the ubiquitous, LBFP, that is a tourist staple. The Little Black Fanny Pack. Or, in my case, the belly pack. Got it at a second-hand store on the cheap about a year ago.

Result: For my EDC (everyday carry) to and from language school, I've got my LBFP in front of me, attached like an infant, with my camera + reading glasses inside. I've got my wristband with some cash for the day on my wrist.  In my nondescript, blue backpack, I've got a wallet and the keys to my lodging. Both of these are out of reach of easy pick-pocketing, but of course, if someone wants to get serious about things, they'll just take the whole thing from me.

I use the backpack to cart groceries back home after class.

I feel equipped.


The phone issue

I bought my android a couple of years ago, thinking I'd be moving to Oaxaca for a year, and wanting a work backup to my laptop. We got off to a rocky start, but the edges have been smoothed over.

Coming to Guatemala was going to let my android run free like the wind, performing magical tricks that one likes to see performed when one travels outside one's homeland.

Most specifically, I intended to buy a local sim card so I could make and receive local calls. Thus far, however, there seems to be no particular need for me to make or receive local calls. Relying on email for local communication suffices, and I have plenty of wifi access here, including at my lodgings.

As for calling folks back home, I've used my phone to call them via Viber (free), Skype (I bought a one-month subscription to call the USA from Guatemala), or in a pinch, Google Hangouts for real-time communication and email for non-live communication.

Guatemala: Coffee and Salt, the Essences of Life

Mmm, salt. Source: Amazon.

I make no apologies for this: I packed both salt and, yes, get this --> instant coffee (to Guatemala! Coals to Newcastle!) for my trip to Guatemala.

Thank the baby deity I have.

I'm sure there's salt somewhere in my temporary digs, but without searching through various cabinets or finding my hostesses at home to ask, I don't care one whit where it is. Because I've got my own supply! Not a moment's worry have I had about where I can find this precious mineral.

There's coffee here, too, but the coffee maker is on the fritz, so making it requires me to do some technical things with a hand-held filter thing and a pan of heated water, and I haven't yet figured out how to make the stove burner as hot as it needs to be.

Again, it matters not! Because I have my own coffee with me! And before you scoff, let me tell you it is addictive - it's Nescafe Taster's Choice French Roast. Not the classic or the other flavor. These are fine, but the french roast - smells good, tastes good, and it makes me sigh when I take a drink. Not to mention injecting me with the requisite buzz. And my hostesses have a microwave and I can work it and therefore heat up my mug of water to fold said loamy-brown, crystalline drug into its liquid embrace.

Mmmmm. Sometimes I get the packing just right.

Guatemala: The Almost Pack Fail

Canon SD600

I learned my lesson about camera backups in Ethiopia.

After that experience, I bought two used, vintage Canon Powershot SD600s to replace the exact model I lost in Ethiopia. Redundancy of peripherals and all that. Plus it was a good travel camera.

These days, I have three used cameras plus a pissant phone camera. The backup system has served me well in the four years since Ethiopia, although cracks have appeared, and a change in the future looms.

For my trip to Guatemala, I packed these cameras:

1. Primary: One of the Canon Powershot SD600s
2. Secondary: A used Canon Coolpix that daughter handed down to me last summer
3. Tertiary: My Moto G phone camera, a last resort only, due to its miserable photo quality

I chose the Coolpix to bring instead of my backup Canon because I am down to only one Canon battery, the two that I'd had having finally died of old age. I only bought one replacement battery because the things are pretty expensive, and I am on the fence about when I'll buy a new camera, which will certainly use a different model of battery. With the Coolpix, I'd have a spare, charged battery on hand when the Canon's battery needed to be recharged in Guatemala.


The morning of my departure, I inserted the cameras' SD cards into my primary laptop so I could upload their contents, thereby giving me clean slates for the trip.

Oh, wait.

Do I have an SD slot in the little red toy laptop that I bought for the trip? Why .... no.

Jeez, OK. Where the heck was my camera-to-device cable that fits into one of Little Red's usb ports? Oh thank goodness! Found it! Worked just great for the Canon. Would it work for the Coolpix? No. Nooo. Who'd've thought? 


This almost-fail fell into two categories of travel mishappery: 

• Complacency, or more accurately, just plain sloppiness of thought and preparation
• Too smart for my own good

Close call.

I left the Coolpix at home and replaced it with the second Canon. 

Louisiana: Departure Day: Don't Do What I Did

Pathetic. Just pathetic.

When I moved out of my Opelousas apartment, I broke all of the rules of efficient, effective, low-stress packing up and leaving.

Well, most of the rules.

Here's what I got right

• As per my lease language, I gave my landlord my 30-day notice of leaving in writing. In this notice, I gave my landlord a time range of two or three hours for when he could inspect my apartment.
• As a CYA in the event an issue cropped up with the return of my security deposit, I took photos of my apartment after I'd emptied and cleaned it, prior to the inspection, including the insides of the oven, refrigerator, tub, etc. (I had also taken photos when I moved in.)
• I sold my bulky stuff a few weeks before move-out day. I priced my stuff in accordance with my priority to sell quickly, out of respect for the time and stress I was willing to invest in the process.
• I delivered various items to second-hand stores in the days before my move. 
• I tried to weigh these variables in deciding what to pack or not: Replacement cost versus amount of space the item takes up in my car.

Here's what I got wrong

Complacency - the enemy of efficiency and effectiveness!

When I sold my beloved - but wildly bulky - chairbed, I had a fairy-tale calculation of how much extra space its absence freed up in my car, with this cascade effect: 

1. I miscalculated how much stuff I could take with me to the next home base;
2. I kept more stuff than I would have otherwise;
3. Didn't give as much thought to careful organization and packing as I might have otherwise;
4. I ended up with more stuff than could fit into available space; and
5. Had to ditch some things at the worst possible time - in the midst of packing my car for departure. 

In my la-la thinking mode in the last couple of weeks, I spent time with last dance and other hurrahs instead of the dull mundanity of packing the little things in advance. Boring tasks such as organizing office supplies and papers and such, corraling them into tidy spaces, ready to be put in their right places into the car. Consequently, I found myself - on the moving day! - of stashing this shit every which place I could because the other thing I did wrong was:

Somehow forget just how long it takes to pack stuff. The process of sorting and packing stacks minutes into quarter-hours into half- hours into hours of tedium. My self-congratulatory glow over selling the big things quickly and early was so bright, it obscured the necessity to knuckle down in the days before the move.

Fortunately, a buddy came over and helped me out a bit, and I sure appreciate that.

Other than that blessing, my move-out day was fraught with frustration, stress, anxiety, and moments of despair. Every tiny bit of it a result of my own poor planning and execution. Damn it.

Once I was on the road, I had to work hard to give myself a break and let it go. Had to remind myself that, hell, I accomplished my mission, not as neatly and expertly as I would have liked, but I accomplished it. Put the damn experience in perspective and enjoy the day on the road.

Just ... don't do what I did.