| I've now got my suitcase and all of its future contents strewn about the floor. I've made some improvements to my packing strategy, detailed below.
New things I am taking:
- A travel alarm clock. We'll probably have roosters to do the job, but we certainly won't be staying somewhere that gives us wake-up calls, nor will my cell phone be turned on.
- A roll of toilet paper. They sell it in Mexico too, but I might as well bring the kind I like with me if I'm going to be traveling the Mexican countryside with a roll of TP in my backpack no matter what.
- A headlamp, for those middle of the night trips to the bathroom.
- Clothes that I can wear and then give away. In the past everything I brought was either to wear or to donate, not dual purpose, mainly because the clothes I give away are the ones that I don't like or that don't fit well. Well, I'll just get over that this time.
- The book Where's Spot? in Spanish. Found it for $3 when I was shopping for my rain poncho.
- A rain poncho. I was lucky someone had an extra and let me borrow it last time. They sold umbrellas in Jalisco but I didn't see ponchos for sale.
- Hiking shoes. This is the second time they are coming along, and the first time to Mexico. I tried doing without them and it just wasn't happening.
- A 3-to-2 converter. I keep ending up in places with plugs that aren't grounded, and my laptop has a grounded plug. I've been fortunate that others have loaned me converters on the last 2 trips.
- Spray-on Benadryl. For the mosquito bites.
- Neem oil. I was going to resort to DEET but the people I am going with this time insist that neem works just as good.
- Bug-Off clothing with permethrin in it, in case they are wrong about the neem.
- Band-aids. Because we totally won't be anywhere near a Walgreens.
- My toothpaste. Because we're flying from Tijuana to Chiapas and I don't think the Mexicans are so HORRIBLE about allowing liquids on board when your flight isn't to America. (They threw away the toothpaste on a previous trip because it was over 3 oz.)
Stuff I Brought Before That Isn't Going:
- The REI lightweight zip-off pants and long sleeved shirt I bought for Bolivia. I suffered in that outfit, and it was ugly. Fortunately, REI has an 100% satisfaction guarantee, and I was 100% satisfied to get the $100 it cost to buy that stupid outfit back.
- Malaria meds. Last time I took doxycycline. It was miserable. I threw up a few times and spent many other days totally nauseated. I'm never taking those again unless I have to.
- The herbal bug spray from Whole Foods. It didn't work at all.
- Skirts. This may sound stupid, but when I wear skirts and walk long distances in tropical heat, I tend to get infected ingrown hairs on my inner thighs. One became a giant welt in Cuba, and I ended up spending a few days in bed as a result.
- Food. Because Mexican food is awesome and I can't wait to eat it. (The granola I brought to Cuba, the Land of Bad Food, was a life saver... but that isn't needed in Mexico.)
- The Grapefruit Seed Extract drops that we used in Mexico to make our store-bought bottled water safe "just in case." I'll take my chances. That stuff tastes bad.
- The Spanish phrasebook. I haven't used it yet. I use the big dictionary instead. Inevitably, words related to livestock and agriculture and globalization aren't in the phrasebook.
I am also taking (as I did for the last few trips) Kyolic garlic supplements (which seem to be no help with the mosquitoes but I take them anyway), Jarro-Dophilus (which REALLY helps for diarrhea, although I haven't had that problem myself), and Vitamin B & C supplements (just in case). Also, as I learned the hard way, all of my drugs - whether prescription or over the counter - are in their original bottles with their labels intact. The Mexican customs people get rather suspicious when you have bags of unlabeled drugs in your suitcase, it turns out.
Another lesson that impacted packing: Often rural peasant communities aren't used to seeing women in revealing clothing. Wear T-shirts with sleeves, and shorts that aren't too short. And a bra.
This time I've printed out tons of information for patients - in Spanish - about Type II Diabetes and what type of diets diabetes should eat. I've also got a bunch of crayons, markers, and colored pencils in totally new, unopened boxes for the kids. We have them laying around as extra and totally don't need them. |
