Mexico trip post-mortem

As is usual, I wrote most of this fairly soon after coming back from the trip and never got round to finishing it off and posting it. I've lightly tidied it up but tried to leave it mostly as is, rather than polish it up now my memories of the trip and what worked well/didn't work well have faded - better to stick with what I've got. This is pretty boring even by the standards of this blog - as always, it's intended to help me when I come to pack for future trips based on experience.

Clothes:
- I slightly preferred not to wear the thicker Quechua socks, but I did wear them at times and they weren't horribly hot. They also appear to be in extremely good condition, I guess being thicker (and maybe higher quality?) helps a lot with durability.
- Two of the four pairs of "bamboo" socks are still in half decent condition, two have developed quite bad holes. I am fairly sure the two which have developed holes were the ones I re-used after last year's trip while the two others were bought ahead of last year's trip but never used (so "new old stock"). The lesson here is probably not to risk re-using thin socks (maybe even good quality ones, which these may or may not have been - I am no sock expert...) after a trip and always buy new.
- Underwear all appears to be in reasonable condition, although some of it has had a fair amount of use over the last trip or two and it may be prudent to rotate some more in.
- The relatively lightweight fleece I bought for this trip appears to be in fairly good condition and the zips I sewed into the pockets appear to have lasted well. I wouldn't absolutely like to swear it hasn't gone slightly baggy, but it may not actually be baggy at all or if it is this may be something it had before the trip rather than because of use.
- Both pairs of trousers appear to be in half-decent condition, althoug the black pair has a small hole in the left pocket (which wasn't a problem in practice as I only keep my phone in there) and seems a bit kind of scuffed-up and dirty looking (nothing major) despite having been washed. As I probably noted during the trip, due to them being different designs, the grey pair was more comfortable but perhaps didn't look quite as well-fitting while the black pair probably looked a bit smarter/less "baggy" but wasn't quite as comfortable. In a way (assuming this distinction is in fact fair) it was nice to have both, at least compared to the option of having two "not quite so comfortable" identical pairs - maybe two comfortable pairs which look a bit slobby wouldn't be too bad given my general poor appearance (I do try, but it's hard, especially when I kind of lack the eye to see the problem myself). The zips I sewed in appear to have held up fairly well. I probably wouldn't chance wearing either pair again on a long trip - they were relatively cheap trousers, and also as I say the black pair is starting to look a bit scuffed-dirty - but if for some reason I went away for a couple of weeks I might well consider taking them again, they don't seem to be absolutely on the point of collapse. (The hole in the pocket is small enough that I could patch it or otherwise bodge it, although for a travel pair that is not idea - it would certainly be doable if I chose to wear them as regular trousers around the house.)
- All four Raging Sport tops look to be in reasonable condition, and I got on really well with these as usual. I just wish I could get them in more varied colours. I haven't examined them incredibly closely and some may well be more worn than others (some were new and some weren't, for a start), but I think they would all probably be up to another trip. It would be good to get some more new ones (I think I still have one completely new in the cupboard) to mix in, of course, so I don't start a trip with all-old tops.
- The red short-sleeve T-shirt looks in reasonable condition, it has some weirdly evenly spaced short "dirt line" marks in one place but these may have somehow accumulated from being folded since it was washed. In any case these are cheap enough that I'd probably prefer to buy a fresh one for another trip and relegate this to daily wear. It worked really well for swimming and evenings. I could debate whether having more short-sleeve tops and fewer long-sleeve ones would be better, but the 4-1 balance did seem to work pretty well.

The new PackTowl seems basically OK, the press-stud strip to help hang it up came loose early in the trip IIRC and I had to re-attach it (which seems to have been stable) and got it the wrong way round, but not a big deal. It does seem to be slightly shrinking in on itself but I would be happy to take it on another trip. (The old one despite going holey was still just about OK, so I don't think PackTowls just absolutely disintegrate overnight even when they are showing signs of wear.) As always it isn't the nicest towel to use, but it beats lugging a normal towel around and I'm sure a normal towel would be even mankier after a few weeks. It was always a nice treat when I did get given a towel at my accommodation though.

What did I take but not use:
- "cold weather gear" like the beanie hat and gloves - but I didn't know I wouldn't end up somewhere they'd be useful before I went, of course
- Travel clothes line. I think I already waffled about this in the day-to-day blog. I should probably leave it at home in future and only take it with me if I have a strong expectation I might be staying in accomodation where it is likely to be useful. (Perhaps the nice-ish hotel rooms with en-suite bathrooms that onebag.com seems to have in mind?) For my hostel-ish uses, even when I have had a private bathroom, I tend to have had no big problem either hanging stuff up somewhere around the room (e.g. on a coathanger) or using a hostel-provided clothes line.
- I have been using the mesh bag that came with my old PackTowl for toiletries. It has a tear but I carried on using it and it was fine. I did take the mesh bag from my new PackTowl (probably because I knew the old one had a tear and wasn't sure how it would last) but never actually used it. This isn't a major problem, and obviously it's not heavy. I could (and just might have done, but I don't think I have) have potentially had circumstances where using this to hold something else would have been useful.
[December 2025: I didn't finish going over everything exhaustively, in particular I think I intended to go through the contents of the tube cube and note what I hadn't used in there, but it never happened.]

Things to improve:
- It makes sense to carry some toilet paper with me and it did save my arse (haha) once or twice, but as I think I noted at some point in the day-to-day blog, having the plastic bags with the toilet paper in in my pockets (either back pocket or knee) was a bit inconvenient both due to its moderate bulk and the plastic bag in particular reducing breathability a bit. The trouble is of course that if it isn't in a plastic bag it is just likely to disintegrate, although maybe not as much as I fear. Just maybe I could keep a very small amount in my pocket tin, although the chances are that would be too little to really be much use. [December 2025: Could I maybe fold it up extra-small and put it in a very small sealed plastic bag? But that might make it obnoxiously thick.]
- It would probably be good to make sure "everything" on my phones I might care about is synced automatically. As it is (I still haven't really got round to doing much more than copying the bulk of the stuff off onto my PC to keep it safe), I am not that sure that various audio recordings made on both phones have been successfully copied off and put with the rest of the "digital souvenirs" for the trip. Setting up auto-sync for all the relevant folders would side-step this, as well as obviously avoiding the loss of these files if a phone broke or was stolen.
- Finding/making some sort of lightweight case/pouch to keep the bluetooth keyboard together with my reading glasses would probably make the keyboard a lot more usable. This needn't necessarily be rigid, although somehow or other it needs to offer an acceptable level of protection against my reading glasses getting snapped as things are shoved in the bag. [December 2025: This may have been effectively resolved by getting varifocals, although my experiments with the bluetooth keyboard and my phone have been fairly brief so far.]

I had two phones with me, both "de-Googled Android". Despite the O6 battery being a tiny bit worrying before I went away, both served me very well. As it happens I didn't really need to engage with services like Uber so the fact the O6 might have struggled with them wasn't a big concern. We'll see how things go but I may well end up buying another phone to replace the O6 shortly before the next trip - no point buying any earlier than necessary when prices are presumably going down in general. There is maybe an argument for buying a cheap but "modern enough" stock Android instead of something suitable for de-Googling but I don't know. No need to decide now, the O6 may even last and be just about acceptable as a secondary phone even for the next trip, although as I've said before it does occasionally crash and have to be restarted.

I think the P7 camera was worth having, I haven't really looked over my photos and as in general I was probably a bit "take loads, don't get too fussed about trying to take nice photos" snap-happy, as I usually am, but the optical zoom was nice to have sometimes and I suspect it is taking better photos than the O6.

Not having a keyboard phone was a bit crap for blogging, but I didn't do too badly - albeit I haven't tried to read back any of this year's blog yet, so it may make me cringe when I actually do read it. The bluetooth keyboard was pretty good and would probably be more so with practice, but the faff of getting my reading glasses out to use it (and having to lug the reading glasses abroad with me in the first place) definitely stopped this being as easy as I'd like.

I didn't use the LifeStraw a huge amount, but it did see some use. It feels like I got a bit lucky with having free drinking water provided in hostels compared to other trips - this might be a country-specific thing for all I know. I probably did still find myself carrying water around in transit a bit and I didn't always completely trust the LifeStraw. Not because it specifically let me down and I got sick and I think it was at fault, just general nerves and probably irrational worries about something really nasty maybe being in the tap water in some places that it isn't designed to handle. I have followed the long-term storage instructions and put it away, so it should be fine to use on the next trip and I probably will take it with me. [December 2025: I have subsequently been advised, not sure how trustworthily, that the LifeStraw really doesn't work on the kinds of contamination you might encounter with "urban" water in Latin America, it's more suited for camping and the like. I do need to do some more research on this, but I have ordered some new water purification tablets - not the basic NaDCC (?) ones, something with silver in the name - which seem to be generally considered the gold standard if you're not using more advanced water treatment gadgets, and I may take those with me on the next trip instead of the LifeStraw. They would be probably be lighter and less bulky.]

I did take my "at least from 2024 and maybe earlier" disposable plastic water bottle with me and it got some comments which I kind of enjoyed, but even though it's probably fine I am getting a little bit nervous about chemicals leaching out of the plastic into the water - perhaps more so as it ages and the chemicals break down?! [December 2025: my inconclusive research suggests this isn't really a worry, but I am far from sure.] I think re-use of disposable bottles during a trip - it's almost inevitable I will buy or acquire a few anyway - is a good idea, including in combination with the LifeStraw, but I should probably stop re-using them over multiple years.

In general - and I had a note hanging around from after the 2023 trip saying this, which reminded me about it in the context of this trip - I often seem to be short of small-ish plastic bags and never really felt up to rooting around in the tube cube to get any from my stash. So some improved way of storing these where they're more conveniently accessible might be a good idea, and maybe keeping them in the compartment under the lid of my current bag might be a good idea.

It wasn't a huge concern, but taking a handful of pre-written labels or bits of masking tape (but something that will re-stick) or carrier bags with my name written on them with a marker would probably be helpful for putting stuff in hostel fridges when there often isn't a marker and/or tape there for labelling stuff. I don't really want to be lugging a marker and masking tape on a reel around with me.