Packing for South America

Okay, so this post is super extremely late.  I wanted it to be the first thing I posted, from the airport or something on the way flying down here.

Then I realized I had a lot of stuff with me, and it was taking forever to type.

And then I never got around to finishing it because South America and life...

But here it is finally.  A list of everything I brought with me.  I stuck the photos first, so if you don`t want to actually read through all I brought you can just look at the carnage of a bed I had before packing everything away.

I`m still going to follow this up with some of my favorite things I brought, and things that I found I needed after.

And without further ado, the post I started back in July:

Well its finally here. Departure date to fly off to Lima. All my worldly posessions are in a storage unit or on my back. (Well...except for the pile of things still in Mom and Dad's basement.) 

This is what the bed looks like

When I was prepping for this trip I searched around on the internet but couldn't find a very good list of what to bring for an extended stay that wasn't a business trip with lots of amenities. So I'm going to list everything I'm bringing, and do a follow-up post later saying what I brought that I really didn't need and what I wish I had. Maybe someday another traveler will come across this through the magic of the internet and it will be just what they need.

Everything packed into an REI Trail 40 and an REI Flash 18

Clothing

7 pairs of socks

6 pairs of undies (4 ExOfficio)

3 sports bras

1 regular bra

2 cami tank tops

2 regular tank tops

1 Nike running top

1 pair small sleeping shorts

1 pair pjs

1 pair jeans

1 pair cargo shorts

1 pair prAna Halle pants

1 pair prAna climbing pants

1 belt

5 tshirts

1 REI running hoodie

quarter zip poly pro

1 lightweight plaid

1 flannel plaid

1 bikini top and bottom

1 sarong

1 packable raincoat

The North Face Hedgehog GTX waterproof light hiking shoes

Keds

Flip flops

baseball hat

running headband

small PackTowel washcloth

medium size REI camp towel

Miscellaneous

journal

planning journal

extra pencil, pens

scissors

tape and small case for it

my favorite spoon

pocket knife

REI travel pillow

passport, drivers license, proof of yellow fever vaccination

debit card, credit card

utility paracord

small cordalette

deck of cards

2 pairs of sunglasses

Black diamond headlamp

SteriPen, instructions and its filter

Spanish conversation guide

a copy of The Help in Spanish

16 oz Nalgene and 32 oz Nalgene

small pack cube for ditty

medium pack cube

large pack cube for clothing

compression sack

Electronics

camera and camera case

small 2 SIM phone from Amazon

Galaxy S2 for wifi purposes

ipod

outlet adapter for Peru

camera battery charger

cord for downloading photos from camera

outlet to USB adapter

2 USB to microUSB cords

USB to ipod cord

Ditty Bag (what my family calls toiletries)

travel toothbrush

tube of toothpaste

dental floss

deodorant

2 razors and a travel size shaving cream

Neosporin

sunscreen, one small bottle for daily use, one large to refill.  SPF 30

small mirror

hand sanitizer

tweezers

Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and Naproxen

small sewing kit

chapstick with SPF 15

prescription malaria, travelers diahrrea, and altitude sickness pills

digital thermometer

nail clippers and file

Q-tips

bandaids

aloe vera

Pepto pills

Máncora Beach

August 6-8, 2015

It was time to head up the coast towards Ecuador. We decided to bite the bullet, have a long bus ride and book it to a beach almost at the border to relax for a couple days.

We had a 10 hour ride into Trujillo, halfway there. We arrived in the morning and the bus to Mancora left at night so we stashed our packs at the bus office and spent the day walking around the Centro Historico.

It was a cute area with colonial architecture.

After dinner we hopped our second 10 hour bus to the beach in Máncora.

Some of the cool beach grafitti

Again arrived early, a nice mototaxi took us to a couple different hostels to check availability and pricing. We settled on one with hammocks in the courtyard, hot water, and a swimming pool.

Quick nap and out to the beach.

The next 3 days consisted of swimming in the ocean, laying in the sun on said beach ( getting sand blasted by the wind but it was still a beach) walking around town to window shop, eat shellfish dishes, fresh juice, and ice cream. It was wonderful.

Beach selfie!

Lots of wave diving

This is my real beach face

We opted to just enjoy the beach, there were abundant horseback riding, snorkeling, hot spring, boat tour, surfing, etc opportunities also. I did take advantage of the slackline that was set up over our hostel pool.

Being over water falling is way less painful and I was able to try getting back on the line from the middle.

It was tough.  I did it though!

Then I thought maybe getting on from Sharkie would be easier.

Not so much.

It was a super fun pool time

We watched the sunset both nights.

 And had some silhouette fun too.

Surprise horse in the background

Feeling much refreshed and slightly sunburnt, we left at 11:30pm on a bus to Cuenca, Ecuador. Border crossings at 2am are quiet. Two passport stamps later we're in another country ready for the next adventures and a nap.

Hacienda Cachigaga

July 29-August 4, 2015

Farm number two was a sugar cane farm, Hacienda Cachigaga just outside Huanuco, Peru. We stayed in a beautiful open air hacienda above the little shop they had for their products.

We were hosted by Teresa and Honorato, the parents of the guy we contacted via email about visiting. They were wonderful, like host grandparents.

Left to right: me, Rodolfo (son of Honorato and Teresa), Honorato, Teresa, Vanessa and Lulu (related somehow to the family I think) Shay.

The farm sold products to people and small tours that came through every day. Products included jugo de cana (sugar cane juice) straight and flavored, aguardiente (cane liquor), panela (unprocessed cane sugar), and miel de cana (sugar cane honey).

Our work there consisted of labeling various products. We did aguardiente bottles, both 2 liter plastic and glass bottle fifths.

We also stuck labels on panela bags.

Lots and lots of panela bags. Like about 1900 total.

I think they were gearing up to make a big batch soon, when we left we wanted to get some to take with us. We were told there wasn't any on the farm to buy, Teresa called around and found one of their storefronts in town that had 5 bags left.

The waterwheel was going a couple times while we were there, they used the river to push it and squeeze the cane juice out. There was a huge vat of cane juice going to be made into the different things (though we never actually saw the panela or aguardiente processes.

There were also huge piles of spent sugar cane out back. I'm not sure what they do with it.

One of the days we were there we went to their son`s birthday party.  It was a typical South American party, lots of food, lots of family, and lots of beer.  I elected to keep my cup full of chicha, a purple corn juice instead since no one needs that much Budweiser.  We ended up sitting out back at what I took to be the old guy`s table.  They pulled a couple guitars out and played for a while.  It was wonderful.

This guy reminded me of an older, Latino, Crocodile Dundee in all green, the hat, and his boots.

This guy cracked me up with his boots and glasses.

This is Kiwi. He was around too.

Ecologic Chanchamayo aka: what I did for my first two weeks in Peru

This was July 6-20.  I'm a little late getting it posted. So sue me.

(Brace yourselves, this is kind of a long one)

So as you know, Shay and I are WWOOFing through Peru (Wikipedia article here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWOOF ) working on organic farms.  Our first one in La Merced, Ecologic Harvest Chanchamayo, turned out to be office work rather than living and working on one of the actual farms.

View from the top floor of our office out over the river

I settled into learning how to do quality control on the incoming shipments.

When the dried, unshelled coffee comes in from the farms it's weighed in sacks on a giant scale, then we sample 400g, a little from each bag.  That sample gets de-shelled using a machine.

Then we go through the sample and find all the deformed, immature, broken, discolored (basically all the ugly) beans and remove them.  The exportable and discarded beans are weighed, and the chaff (cascarilla) is calculated and converted to a percentage.  These numbers show the growers what quality coffee they have and determines the price they can sell it for.

Good beans are on the paper, bad ones up in the little tray

I've found the shells are -17.3% of the total weight, 80% exportable is very good, usually 72-76% is what we see.

End result for the 'muestra' or sample.  Good beans in the bottom portion, bad ones at the top with the little paper saying all the percentages, where the beans came from, who the grower was, and how many sacks and kilos in the shipment.

We also check humidity of the sample which needs to be 12-13% to export.

The silver canister on the left (not the yogurt) is the humidity machine

If the beans are too damp they will get laid out on the parking strip on tarps to dry in the sun.  We've helped those out and re-bag them on occasion.

This was a big 10 basketball-court-size place we went to spread a lot of beans one time

Its hot heavy work as each bag is about 60 kilos (130lbs)

Office full of bean sacks waiting for the truck to take them to Lima to ship

The truck going to Lima

 Watching the guys load and unload the trucks, heaving the sacks up on their shoulders is kinda crazy.

Shay had the dubious honor of being given secretary work.

Answering phones for an unfamiliar business becomes much more difficult when its also in a foreign language.  I thought she did well, all things considered.  We teased with the other office workers that she was el peor secretaría del mundo que no habla la lengua, the worst secretary in the world who doesn't speak the language.

She kept the expenses record for the company, handled the cash drawer and payments, worked on some spreadsheet entry.  I did a bit of that too when we didn't have any bean shipments coming in for me to work on.

We stuck a flag up on the roof to get ready for independence day (July 28)

We thoroughly enjoyed all the people we worked with.  The office crew was fun, friendly, and extremely patient with our faltering Spanish. The days could get busy but they were always filled with laughter and good humor.  As were the couple evenings we went out for drinks with the office.

There was a group of three Dutch students that came for a couple days, Teun, Marcia, and Evelina.  They were doing research on the differences between the Peruvian and Brazilian organic coffee markets for thesis work, and were headed down to Brazil after researching farms in Peru.

Evelina and Teun are in the back, Orfa who I worked with most is on the right

We also had Nell (NY), Adrian (MI) and Orlando (Colombia) who were WWOOFing too.  Nell and Orlando were on vacation from Colombia where he goes to school and she teaches English, Adrian is backpacking around for a year.  We had some good times hanging out with them and plan to visit Nell and Orlando when we make it to Bogotá.

Having to leave new friends we meet along the way will definitely be one of the tough parts of traveling, but it will mean we have friends in more corners of the globe.

This was one night when we went swimming at a local hotel.  Zeus is on the left, Ricardo in the middle, Orfa, and her niece on the right.