Extra Stuff

Updated April 2012. New notes on gear that we bought new and what we've tossed out.

We have a lot of random small gear. Some of it goes into a bin that we've named the "Extras Bin", formerly the "Spares Bin", formerly-formerly the "Books Bin". Some of it lives in random places in the vehicle; behind a seat, in the glove box or center console. Most of it is either electronic accessories or guide books and maps.

Our main goal with packing and storage is to be as flexible as possible while still making sure everything has a place and is easy to get to. It's a constant balancing act. We'll learn after the first month or two if we've done a decent job of that. Until then, here's how we have our extra gear stored.

Extras Bin

1. Lonely Planet Guides - Mexico , Belize , Guatemala , Nicaragua , Costa Rica , Panama , Colombia , Ecuador , Peru , Bolivia , Chile and Argentina.
2. Other Books - Fly-Fishing in Patagonia (not pictured) and Mexican Camping.
3. Maps - From Reise Know-How, a German map publisher and the most recommended and up-to-date road maps for the countries we're visiting.
4. Two-way radios - Made by Motorola, in case we split up and need to find each other.
5. Spare cables - A network cable and power extension cord.
6. USB hub - For my MacBook with only two USB ports. (Sent home in Baja, never used).
7. AA and AAA Batteries - After Jessica blew up three battery chargers in Africa we switched to good ol' fashioned copper top.
8. Spare phone battery - Cheap and small, no reason not to have an extra just in case.
9. Water purifier batteries - CR123A, for our SteriPEN water purifier.
10. Stove repair kit - Cleaning and replacement parts for our two MSR stoves.
11. Tent and fishing wader repair kits
12. Sewing kit
13. Spare lighters
14. Screen protectors - For our phone, GPS and cameras.
15. DVD sleeves - In case we acquire or need to burn DVDs.
16. Acer netbook - Our backup, stripped-down communal laptop for quick and easy emailing or word processing when bandwidth is limited. (Sent home in Baja. Didn't use often enough for the space it took up.)
17. External DVD drive - All of our laptops have two hard drives and thus no DVD drive.
18. Jared's backup hard drive - For running virtual machines for work and backing up files.
19. Jessica & Kobus' Western Digital Backup Hard Drive - For backing up photos and business files.
20. Alfa Wifi Extender - Had a family member bring down when visiting in Baja. These are awesome for picking up wifi signals when you are just out of reach.  (Note, there are Mac and PC versions)

Random Stuff

1. Life Remotely business cards - We're handing these out like candy at a parade.
2. Money/receipt envelopes - A way to keep our personal and business expenses and cash organized in the glove box.
3. Money wallet - Jessica's super secret stash wallet.
4. GPS - A Garmin 60Csx, a bit out of date but it works well and served us fine in Africa.
5. Emergency locator beacon - ACR SARLink, a gift from our parents in case we get lost in the jungle.
6. Smartphone - Sony Ericsson U20a Xperia Mini Pro, it's small, Android, and has a slide-out keyboard.
7. MP3 player - 80GB classic iPod
8. Electronic Spanish dictionary
9. Kobus' camera - Olympus XZ-1

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Comments

 

#3 David 2013-04-26 22:25

Regarding GPS maps, the best maps are made by the free projects: Cenrut, Venrut, Colrut, Perut, Mapear and Tracksource. Enjoy!

 

 

#2 jessicam 2012-11-25 20:41

Hi Damon. Don't buy the Garmin maps! They are awful for South America, and I don't even think they make them for Central America. The OSM (openstreetmaps .nl) are great. Also try cenrut.org for great cental america maps. Perut.org for the best Peru maps, and proyectomapear. com.ar for Argentina and Chile. OSM are the best for everywhere else. We have an article coming on all of these hopefully in the next two weeks. Hope to see you on the road some day!

 

 

#1 Damon 2012-11-23 21:40

Thank you Jared, Jessica & Kobus for putting together such an incredible source of information for fellow overlanders. You guys are pretty bad-ass. I will be starting this trek to Argentina in 3 weeks from northern California and was curious how well the Garmin maps for Central & South America work. Also, did you all use the free maps from sites like http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ or get them directly from Garmin. Thank you for your help. Disfruta el restore de tu viaje!

 

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