How many electronic gadgets do we need?

It’s Saturday before we leave on Wednesday. I haven’t actually started packing, but am still in the gathering, evaluating, and buying more stuff stage. Today, electronics… and with devices, you need rechargers or batteries. My question… they make universal remotes for your TVs/DVD players/cable or satellite receivers. Why don’t they make a universal recharger cord? This picture is of the devices that I’m sure we cannot live without. Except that we have two of the three phones that are the same model and can hence share a charger cord, each item has its own cord. Yes, we are taking three phones… just in case. I forgot to include the power strip in the picture, as 6 charger cords are shown, plus the charger device for my Cannon camera. We have to have a power strip because I don’t think even US hotels have enough wall plugs!

 

About those 3 phones… we bought two of them before I lost my non-Smartphone and replaced it with a Blackberry Storm. Now I can take my Blackberry because I can change out the Sim card for an Ecuador one. So, we have a spare phone that Phillip wants to take. My music, X-Files episodes, and Star Trek movies are on the iPod touch, and I don’t know how or if they can be transferred to the Blackberry. For the plane, I need my iPod. I can see an iPhone in my future, when my Blackberry contract is over. Phillip’s travel cell won’t have service till we get to Ecuador, so I couldn’t download songs on it here, even though it is a Blackberry – or maybe I could, but don’t know how. So, the red item in the picture is Phillip’s MP3 player, which I loaded Thursday with songs and Rodney Carrington comedy routines. Will Phillip sing out loud with Rodney Carrington on the airplane? I’ll bet he tries! until I elbow him or threaten to spend the flight in the restroom.

 

The netbook is what I will do the blog posts on, what we use for Skype conversations, and what I will use as a pass thru to store pictures onto the external hard drive (also pictured, also with a cord).  I could use the netbook without a mouse, but it drives me crazy to do so. Hence, the mouse will be making the trip. At least I’m not taking my laptop, which is twice as big and four times as heavy as the netbook.

 

We read that batteries may be hard to come by in Ecuador. Since I have been known to forget to turn the power off on the mouse and run the battery down, batteries will travel with us. Again, none of our battery-eating devices use the same size. Flashlights, the mouse, the MP3 player, different battery sizes. Oh well, they only take up the space of three pairs of rolled up socks. If it gets tight during packing time, Phillip can have wet feet for three days… but his MP3 player will work!

 

Phillip laughed at me this morning. He said we would start packing early, on Monday evening, but I said that I planned to “practice pack” tomorrow. He thought that was funny… but just wait, when I have everything fitted in perfectly, accessible when we need it, easy to find, stored in Zip-loc bags with the air sucked out…… TSA will do a bag check and say, “Wow, what a great packer!” Either that, or they’ll never be able to get it back in and we’ll retrieve our luggage and overflow in a box at the Quito airport.

 

Four days! I sure hope the weather allows us to get to the airport (thank you, Ralph) and leave on time (please, American Airlines ground crews).

Packing, Chapter 1



accumulated stuff!

 Suitcase with wheels or a backpack? One piece of luggage or two? Blue jeans or cargo pants? How many electronic devices do we really need? What medicines do we need to take? Those were some of the questions that came up as Phillip and I began accumulating our stuff for the trip. And I do mean “stuff” because, if unchecked, we would be stuffing our travel bags, straining the zippers and causing a mess if TSA decided to open them to do a bag check at the airport. This is a picture of the miscellaneous travel-related “stuff” that’s accumulated on my dresser. No, we aren’t taking two cans of Scotchguard!

Regarding the luggage, we took the compromise position, a backpack with wheels. We aren’t trekking in the wilderness, carrying sleeping bags to sleep under the stars. No, a comfortable bed and a shower, hopefully with hot water, is the way we travel. However, the hotels we will stay in usually have more than one floor and don’t have elevators. Picturesque cobblestone streets are shown in the photos – but cobblestones and wheeled luggage are a combination that spells frustration. We were fortunate to find exactly what we (OK, exactly what I) were looking for at our local Academy sporting goods store, and as a bonus, it had a detachable day pack for me. Our karma must have been good that day, because at the checkout, we found it was on an unmarked 40% off sale! But could it hold all our travel items, or would we need more luggage? We actually tested the capacity by taking it on a cruise with us in October. For the cruise, I packed all our everyday clothes, toiletries, and electronics in it, with an extra suitcase for our fancy clothes – which are NOT going to Ecuador with us. And it worked fine, with more room than I expected.

One of the other tests we undertook on that October cruise was the wearing of the cargo pants. Phillip is a blue jeans guy. Blue jeans, however, consume a lot of packing space; take forever to dry; don’t have all those cool pockets; and you can’t turn them into shorts in under a minute, unless you have really sharp scissors. Yes, the cargo pants with the zip-off legs will identify us in Ecuador as tourists, but we would never pass as Ecuadorians anyway. Phillip agreed to try the cargo pants, so we bought some and wore them on the cruise. The many pockets and the almost instant shorts sold him on them for the Ecuador trip. He doesn’t wear them around home, of course preferring his blue jeans. He still brings up wearing his blue jeans on the airplane, and I still tell him that whatever we wear on the plane will need to be packed at some point, and WE DON’T HAVE ROOM FOR BLUE JEANS. I expect this may be an issue even as we walk out the door to catch the plane. Anyone care to wager on whether a pair of blue jeans will make the trip?
Next post: Electronic devices, aka the 21^st century security blankets

Planning our route

Once we decided to travel to Ecuador, a fun part – for me – was to plan our route. As retirees, Phillip and I have plenty of time to do it ourselves, and we’ve had good luck in the past with planning travel, so we didn’t use any travel agents. By early August, we had a general idea that we would travel about a month in Ecuador, with Phillip’s priority being the coastal areas, and my priority being the Sierra (highlands) area. We wanted to see the Amazon area on the east, called the Oriente, but it was our third priority for the trip. In addition to my Lonely Planet guidebook, I bought the Fromers and the Insight Guide books about Ecuador.

After Phillip and I roughed out an itinerary based on regions, he called American Airlines and arranged our flight, using frequent flier miles. Based on flight availability, our trip became five weeks long. Fine with us! 

Since we arrive and depart from Quito, we decided to make a loop through the country. I began to look at hotels in the cities and towns that interested us. Quito and Cuenca are World Heritage sites and large cities, so we decided on a week in both of them. Guayacil is actually the largest city in Ecuador, but from what I could tell, except for a park in which hundreds of iguanas live, it doesn’t have as much to offer to the visitor as other locations.

One of our early decisions was that we would use the extensive Ecuadorian bus system for our transportation. Also, we would break the trip up so that we wouldn’t be spending more than 4 hours on a bus between our stops and we would spend at least two nights if we stopped. The 2-night decision was so that we wouldn’t just see Ecuador thru bus windows. Applying those decisions to the route lead us to actually fly from Quito to Manta because of the distance and to stop in Guayacil for two nights. Although five weeks sounds like a long time, we won’t have time to make a worthwhile trip to eastern Ecuador, where the Amazon tributaries and rainforests are. Next trip to Ecuador?

During the first week of August, I made almost all of our hotel reservations using the Internet. Most of our stays are in hostels, but don’t think of dorm-style rooms with shared bathrooms (after all, we are 53, not 23). Hostels in Ecuador are more akin to our bed and breakfasts. Hopefully, I’ve reserved us private bedrooms with private baths! That’s one of the things we will find out and blog about as we travel.

With our route set, this month I am adding the not-to-miss attractions to each stopover on our itinerary. I gave Phillip some sticky arrows and our map, and he is adding stops he wants to make to look at towns on our route. I hope the bus steps aren’t too high, as it looks like a lot of on and off activity!

Why Ecuador?

As I start these posts, a bit of explanation about our travel choices for this year…. Why Ecuador? Well, I could say, why not? But actually, we did have a process by which Phillip and I chose Ecuador for our first long trip. It started when we realized that we could not travel and maintain a garden at the ranch at the same time. When we went our niece Johnna’s graduation in Illinois in May 2009, the 5-pound zucchini squash we had upon our return made it clear. So, since the garden and travel are both priorities, we settled on a plan to save our big trips for every third year. During our travel year, we would not plant a garden.

During December, 2009, while we were on a Transatlantic cruise with Phillip’s parents, we attended a presentation on the Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos intrigued us, so I bought the Lonely Planet book on it. The book described both the country of Ecuador and the Galapagos, as the islands are part of Ecuador. Although we still want to visit the Galapagos in a future travel year, we realized the Ecuadorian country-side was perfect for our foray into international travel.

You know I love lists, so here is a list of reasons why we chose Ecuador:

• It is the size of the State of Nevada, but contains great diversity in climate, critters, and natural beauty because of the changes in elevation, from the Pacific Coast to its Andes mountain range.
• They use the American dollar as their currency, so we don’t have to figure exchange rates.
• They speak Spanish and hablamos un poco de espanol (we speak a little Spanish). The books say that the Ecuadorians speak slowly and clearly.
• The prices of rooms, food, and travel are very low in comparison to the United States. Phillip is interested in looking at the price of property and houses there.
• Since the equator passes thru Ecuador, the seasons don’t change. You “change seasons” by going from the coast to the mountains. This means they grow all fruits, vegetables, roses, etc. year-round. Did you know that Ecuador exports more roses than any other country? And check your foil tuna package… half of mine say “from Ecuador” (the other half say “from Thailand,” but that’s a future post).
• The government is relatively stable, quite stable actually in relation to some other South American countries. The Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, has a PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois, and is nothing like other South American leaders such as Hugo Chavez.
• Although crime exists in Ecuador, it is generally petty thefts and robberies when people don’t take sensible precautions. Travel websites provide great tips on precautions to take (bicycle cable lock to secure your backpack to your chair when you sit at a table to eat, using only registered taxis, etc.)
• And did I mention the critters? Worth noting again, because Ecuador has so many species of hummingbirds, condors, howler monkeys, the list goes on and on…

So, that’s my list to answer the question, “Why Ecuador?”