Tuesday, February 28, 2006
How to Pack
From past experience I like to travel lite. When we went to Ecuador last year we planned on staying primarily in one hostel and taking day trips or overnight trips to other places, all the time keeping our space at the main hostel in Quito. This allowed us to take more stuff than we probably should have. I had a small suitcase plus a small backpack.
Our trip in Costa Rica will be a loop from San Jose through Monteverde/Santa Elena, then La Fortuna then Montezuma and back to San Jose. We won't stay more than 4 nights in any one location so I will have to pack everything in a single backpack. An interesting website that covers efficient packing is OneBag. Hard to believe that there would be enough to say about packing that someone could devote an entire website to it, but the WWW is a marvelous place. You should check it out.
I plan on taking a backpack that zips apart to become two carry on bags. This allows me to take everything carry on and have only one bag to take on busses.
Several of the local websites from Costa Rica warn of pick pockets and worse in San Jose, but it seems as though there are fewer problems out in the country side. - with the exception of some of the costal areas. The warnings seem similar to those we heard before going to Ecuador in 2004 - 2005. In Ecuador Karen had her backpack unzipped and spilled all over the street once (the "zipper" was so fast that it just seemed like a small bump in a crowd), and Andrew had his camera taken from his backpack when he stashed it under his bus seat on our way from Banos back to Quito. Other than those two instances everything was very safe.
Our trip in Costa Rica will be a loop from San Jose through Monteverde/Santa Elena, then La Fortuna then Montezuma and back to San Jose. We won't stay more than 4 nights in any one location so I will have to pack everything in a single backpack. An interesting website that covers efficient packing is OneBag. Hard to believe that there would be enough to say about packing that someone could devote an entire website to it, but the WWW is a marvelous place. You should check it out.
I plan on taking a backpack that zips apart to become two carry on bags. This allows me to take everything carry on and have only one bag to take on busses.
Several of the local websites from Costa Rica warn of pick pockets and worse in San Jose, but it seems as though there are fewer problems out in the country side. - with the exception of some of the costal areas. The warnings seem similar to those we heard before going to Ecuador in 2004 - 2005. In Ecuador Karen had her backpack unzipped and spilled all over the street once (the "zipper" was so fast that it just seemed like a small bump in a crowd), and Andrew had his camera taken from his backpack when he stashed it under his bus seat on our way from Banos back to Quito. Other than those two instances everything was very safe.
