Sunday 13 January 2019

Guatemala notes, part 2

So let's have a quick look over the stuff I took with me (mostly ignoring clothes, as I already waffled a bit about them and generally they were all individually necessary and collectively sufficient) to see what I did and didn't use. This isn't an exhaustive commentary on everything I took, only things I took which I maybe shouldn't have or vice versa.

I didn't wear the (cheap) bandanna I bought at JD Sports before the trip, although I did have it in the knee pocket of my combat trousers whenever I was wearing them (most of the time), where it perhaps helped to cushion the camera I also kept in that pocket. I don't think having it in that pocket was all that annoying and it was nice to have it there in case it suddenly turned out I needed a hat-equivalent to protect my head from the sun when I wasn't carrying my backpack or fleece and therefore didn't have my baseball cap with me. I was and still am a bit reluctant to wear it as I suspect I'd look like an idiot, but a) if push had come to shove I would have b) it could well have come into play as a scarf or neck protector instead (protecting either from cold or sun) and that wouldn't have been so embarrassing c) during a hike or something like that rather than walking around town I think I would feel less self-conscious about wearing something like this. If I absolutely never use it it might be worth throwing this off the packing list but for now it can stay; at the very least, it isn't heavy.

I lost my glasses cleaning cloth (they seem generally very prone to falling out of pocket when pulling other things out), I should probably carry a couple with me to mitigate against this, given how light they are anyway.

I think I already said that I didn't have enough plastic carrier bags; it's hard to be sure, but I think these mostly got "lost" when I handed in laundry in them and got the laundry back with no bag. So more carrier bags is definitely a good idea, and they're very light of course. This would probably also help with avoiding having lots of loose clean/dirty clothes floating around in my bag, where they're at risk of getting lost by falling out of the side or contaminating each other.

I didn't use all of my debit/credit cards but I didn't expect to, some of them were there for emergencies (such as other cards being lost/stolen) and I think that's fine.

I thought I'd lost one of the two keys for my padlock early in the trip until it magically reappeared shortly before the end. I do have two combination locks which I use most of the time, but I think a keyed padlock is a bit more secure and it's nice to have the option, although I didn't use it on some occasions because with only one key for it the risk of ending up being unable to get it open seemed higher. Part of the problem here is that when I'm on holiday I don't have a keyring in my pocket, so I have nowhere on my person to safely keep the small padlock key. I'm not going to stop taking the padlock, but finding some solution to carrying this key accessibly but securely would be helpful.

(Just possibly I could start carrying a keyring, but without a lot of stuff on it to give it weight I think it would be prone to falling out of my pocket when my hand goes in and out to get something else. Potentially I could stick the padlock key, whistle and the little camera-lens-cleaner-in-stuff-bag on a key ring, and that might be enough weight and would also side-step the glasses cleaning cloth falling out of pocket issue. I am carrying an empty Vaseline tin with a few tablets and stuff in too - the sort of stuff which I'd keep in my wallet if I were carrying one, but which doesn't work with a binder clip wallet - and if I could attach that to the keyring or get a similar tin which did attach to a keyring, that would be a bit more weight still. I could also try keeping one of the padlock keys in that Vaseline tin, but although it never did, I always felt it was a little bit at risk of falling out of my pocket (or me pulling it out instead of the actual Vaseline tin I also carried, yanking the lid off and everything falling out - this happened once or twice, though luckily never over a drain or similar) so I'm a bit reluctant to put something as irreplaceable as the padlock key in it. If I lose a few tablets it's annoying but not the end of the world.)

I took a lot more SD/micro SD cards than I used, but they weigh so little I'm not worried about this; I don't want to feel constrained in how many photos I can take, and if I had been able to post SD cards home as extra backups of photos (there's no practical postal service in Guatemala at the moment, so this wasn't an option) I might well have used more.

The 100ml of insect repellent I took was barely enough, although I over-used it a bit towards the start of the trip and it did last out. Being a liquid it's heavy and the one-plastic-bag-for-all-liquids restriction on hand baggage argues against taking a lot more. I may or may not take 2x100ml bottles on the next trip, given it's a bit longer, depending on how packing works out. Because I'm taking saltidin-based spray instead of DEET or some organic crap it's difficult to buy additional supplies abroad, I think.

My full 100ml tube of travel detergent lasted easily; it's an opaque tube so hard to see how much is left, but the answer is "some". Definitely worth taking, but I don't think taking more would be worth it - especially when you can buy some kind of suitable replacement abroad if it does run out.

Not taking my netbook (or a newly purchase laptop or tablet or whatever) worked out pretty well, definitely an experiment worth repeating and I intend to do the upcoming trip with just my smartphone.

I was/am tempted to buy a second smartphone, something half decent but maybe worth £25-50, so I could leave my relatively valuable and (more importantly) hard to replace abroad Blackberry Priv in my bag most of the time. I had a quick poke on ebay over Christmas but given I would like something with a half-decent camera (if this is going to be the phone I'd carry around most of the time, since I don't always take my actual camera out with me, particularly at night) and I felt constrained on delivery times I struggled to find anything which seemed decent enough and cheap enough, so haven't done so yet. This would be extra weight and it does grate a bit, and statistically I suspect it's a poor financial choice, but I'll bear the possibility in mind for the future. This would be less of an issue if I had a laptop with me, as I'd miss the keyboard on the Priv less if I had to replace it with a smartphone bought abroad.

I hardly used the semi-disposable cheap paperback book I took with me; after reading it in bed the first few nights I just ended up reading on my phone in bed. Probably not worth taking something like this in future.

I didn't use my Nook e-reader at all; I had copied guide books on to it and some various other bits of reading material, but in practice I always looked at stuff on my phone. Probably not worth taking in future.

My inflatable travel pillow got popped the second night of the 3-day hike from Xela to Lake Atitlan (I put a lot of my upper body weight on it via my elbow while trying to get into my sleeping bag in the dark); I had used it as a pillow the first night but I managed OK without it the second night, and I've never used it to help me sleep on plane or bus. Not saying I won't buy another one, but I haven't bothered to replace it yet and I probably won't rush to do so before the next trip.

The USB power bank was definitely useful. It's a bit annoying that its shape and weight make it damaging to carry in the fleece pocket (it already wore a small hole in it when I took it on the train up to visit my parents before the trip), but it is nominally 10000mAh and I'd be a bit reluctant to replace it with a smaller one with a lower rating. I was able to top up my phone and noise-cancelling headphones with it on the plane, I think I did leave it on charge openly in dormitories without worrying too much about theft once or twice, it was also very useful during those power cuts in Xela as it meant I could top my phone up despite not having any mains power. If/when I lose it or it breaks it might be worth considering something semi-reputable (because a lot of capacities quoted are a bit of a lie) but smaller one, but taking a power bank of some description is definitely worth it and this one is fine for now.

I could possibly have cut down on liquids in my hand baggage by taking just a very small tube of toothpaste, enough to get me through the first few nights, before buying one abroad. That wouldn't save weight or volume during the trip as a whole, but would give me a bit more space in my liquids plastic bag going through security for other things.

I took a sleep mask with me, I don't think I ever used it but it's sufficiently light I probably won't throw it out just yet. Oh no, I did use it at one point actually, when I had accidentally ended up staring at the sun a bit and wanted to sit in a darkened room but the curtains weren't actually thick enough to block the sun out properly.

I took some disposable earplugs and never used them, but they weigh next to nothing and might come in handy if I ever find myself in a loud club or my noise cancelling headphones die on me during a long flight. Aeromexico did actually give me a set on both flights, so I could have got away without taking my own, but I had no way to know this.

I did use my standalone camera (though it has a scratch in the centre of the lens which I think is perhaps spoiling some photos where the sun is directly in front of the camera); it is tempting to ditch it (and its spare battery and battery charger) but I do like having the optical zoom and in some ways I'm less worried about a thief snatching the camera out of my hand than I would be about them snatching my phone out of my hand if I were using my phone as my full-time camera.

I did wear my prescription sunglasses a few times. I could do with a decent way to protect them in my jacket pocket or bag without the bulk of a hard case; so far I've just winged it with a bit of bubble wrap wrapped round them, but it's not ideal. I had a spare pair of prescription non-sunglasses too; I didn't use those but I think it's sensible to take them. I was sharing the same bit of bubble wrap for both, since that didn't work properly when I had the sunglasses with me and the non-sunglasses in my bag back at the hotel, I should probably have wrapped each of them up in their own bit of bubble wrap.

I never used the shoulder strap for my bag, and I don't think I ever have done. It doesn't weigh a lot but I could stop carting it round with me. Maybe I should force myself to use it sometimes to see if it is helpful or not before I ditch it.

I didn't take my mosquito net and I didn't miss it. I think I've not taken it for a while, but for the record.

I did use the small tripod (Gorillapod) I took with me; it never left my accommodation, but I used it for taking night shots from balconies and so forth. Arguably this is not getting enough use to justify the weight, but it's not terribly heavy and I do like being able to take these photos without having to just sit the camera on a flat surface and hope the angle is acceptable. (This is also something I couldn't easily do if I only had a smartphone camera instead of a standalone camera, although I imagine it would be possible to get a tripod to hold a smartphone if I wanted. I'd be reluctant to risk my smartphone-in-the-tripod falling over the edge of a balcony, though - with the camera I can keep the  strap around my wrist to guard against this, and as long as I don't have the strap taut this doesn't cause any vibration issues. My smartphone is never going to have a wrist strap on it.)

So on the whole I used most of what I took and didn't particularly feel deprived by not having packed anything else. I'll bear the above in mind when packing for the next trip, of course; taking more carrier bags is definitely going to happen, for example.

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