| Camping gear |
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What if.we chose NOT to camp on this trip - we could save a bucket load of space and weight. As soon as you have to carry the house, the bed, and the kitchen, it soon adds up to a lot of kit. However, we decided that having a tent and camping equipment gives us much more freedom and took away that worry of needing to find accomodation in the last few hours of each day. It also might help us stay on budget if we find daily outgoings are a little too high. In short, although the camping kit adds a lot of bulk to our luggage, it adds even more value to trip. |
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| Therm-A-Rest mattressses are possibly one of the greatest inventions of all time. They are compact, light, insulating, and smooth over even the harshest ground. Thus these were definitely on the packing list. |
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Sleeping bags
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| Will's got a goose-down Mountain Hardwear 4 seasons sleeping bag. This is a little overkill for 99.7% of nights, but being goose-down, it is light and compact, so it has been invited to join the pannier party. Matt is taking a Mountain Equipment Firewalker Ultralite, a thin two-season ultralite bag which should be just right, temperature-wise, for the climate in South America. |
| We are also taking cotton sleeping bag liners, which will no doubt see much more use than the bags. These offer a little mossy protection, and just take the breeze off whilst not retaining any heat - which will be very useful. |
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| We are taking a two-man, Mountain Hardwear tent, weighing just 2.5KG and very compact when packed. It's about 5 years old, but is so robust, and well made, we are keen to have it along. |
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| We both have LifeVenture mosquito nets impregnated with mosquito repellent, that will see most use on the nights we have chosen not to camp, as spotting mossys in a draughty room is a lot harder than a tent. |
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| Cooking |
| We'll be taking cooking equipment in case we don't find a convenient Michelin restaurant where we stop for the night. We're taking an MSR WhisperLite Internationale stove, which burns pretty much anything - we'll be using petrol as we'll (hopefully) have it readily available. We'll take a set of Tefal pans for cooking in - hopefully we won't be needing them tho :-) |
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| Misc |
| A piece of advice we were given was take a low power fluorescent 12v lamp - thin and narrow in size, lightweight, efficient, and would give benfit mostly in camping situations. Apparently these can be run for several hours from the XT battery with no problems with starting the engine the next morning - or so we've been told...! |
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