Before I go... | Finding Todd

I am less than one day away from my next adventure. In fact, this time tomorrow I’ll be in the air on my way to Peru.

Before I head off on the trip, I’d figure I’d give you a quick little rundown of some of the things I did the last month getting ready for this trip…

Planning it out

As you would expect, the more you travel, the easier it gets to plan new trips. You learn from your mistakes and after awhile you just kind of get into a groove when it comes to planning out a new trip.

Once I knew I’d be going to both Peru and Bolivia, it only took me a day or two to figure out where to go and what to do when I got there.

From there, I just had to find out how to get from city to city and how long I’d be in each place.

Before I knew it, I had my 3 1/2 week itinerary pretty much planned out.

I’m trying my best to stretch my days out so I’m not doing too much every day and that there are some very easy days scattered in there as well.

One thing I’ve definately learned from past trips is that going too hard trying to see everything and fill every waking moment with something to do is not a good way to travel.

Got a walking tour of the city in the early afternoon? Great! But, guess what, you don’t need to plan out what to do later in the afternoon or at night – just go with the flow.

Leave the time open. Explore on your own. Talk to some people. Eat some food. Just relax!

Now, having said that, there are definitely going to be days on this trip where the day is chalk full of stuff but I’ve also organized it in a way where I have a super easy day the day after.

Bookings

Speaking of organizing…

While I try not to really lock in days as much as I can, there were a handful of tours that needed to be scheduled and booked ahead of time.

Namely, the grandest adventure of them all on this trip – Machu Picchu.

They only let limited amounts of people in each hour to visit there and if you don’t book a couple of months out, well, you’re just not going to get either the time or the circuit (route) you want.

So, yeah, I booked a few things ahead of time…

• Machu Picchu
• Train from Cusco to Machu Picchu
• Day tour of Rainbow Mountain
• Day tour of the Sacred Valley
• Peruhop travel through Peru
• Inka Bus tour from Cusco to Puno
• Flight over Nazca Lines

And then, of course, there were a few flights I had to book along with all the hostels I’ll be staying at so, yeah, I got my credit card out a few time the last few weeks.

By the way, as a side note, next to actually going on all these adventures, all this planning and coordinating gets my travel juices flowing. I live for that shit.

Marked on the map

After I had everything figured out, it was time to mark it all down on the offline map app I use on my phone.

I use the Organic Maps app when I travel. By the way, I don’t make any money promoting stuff on this blog and, in fact, you’ll find very rarely do I actually link anything here so if I take the time to link it, it means I love it and want to share it with fellow travelers.

Anyway, you download maps of the regions you want to travel to before you go and then when you’re on the go you can easily see where you are pretty much any country in the world.

You can also put different colored map markers down of all the things you think are important.

For me, I use orange markers for food, pink for transit, blue and purple for attractions, and green for accommodations.

For this trip, I have around 350 map markers on my map.

My food plan

I don’t know about you, but trying the various food that a country is known for is near the top of the list of things I look forward to when embarking on new adventures.

When I travel, I very, very rarely eat home cooked meals at the hostel. For me, I’m out at a restaurant or street food stall for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The food that’s out there in different countries and different cultures is amazing and I feel bad for people who don’t expand their culinary reach and go out to McDonalds every city they go to.

Of course, having being diagnosed as a celiac coming up on 5 years now, it has sadly changed the way I eat while I’m visiting different parts of the world.

It limits what dishes I can try and sometimes I have to go far, far out of my way to find gluten free alternatives.

It’s frustrating to be sure but, sadly, it’s just part of living without gluten.

I will say, though, that this time around I’m going to be a wee bit more daring.

Now, I know you’re not supposed to have gluten, like at all, ever because the long term effects can be damaging to your system.

Having said that, though, I’m going to throw caution to the wind on this trip.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to go out of my way to find gluten free options but I’m not going to miss out on trying some dishes simply because they have gluten in them.

I’m going to allow myself to try things that I shouldn’t but maybe just a bite or two.

The other thing that’s killed me with the gluten allergy has been the sad and frustrating search for breakfast on those early mornings when I’m heading on an early morning tour, bus, or plane.

No, I’m not going to all of a sudden start eating breakfast sandwiches but I am going to plan ahead getting gluten free snacks or granola bars to take with me on those early mornings.

Shopping

Yup, I finally went out a bought a new travel laptop last month. At home I have a 17″ laptop and I’ve been using a secondary 14″ laptop for my travels the last few years.

I upgraded to a 15″ laptop this time around. It’s still small enough to fit in my day pack but it has the feel of my normal laptop back home. I’m excited to take it on the road with me and start banging out some blogs with it.

Oh yeah, I bought a new daypack too. It has more pockets and pouches and is slightly bigger that the daypack I bought last year so I can fit that new laptop in there as well.

Altitude sickness

Altitude sickness in the highly elevated countries of Peru and Bolivia is no joke.

There are plenty of stories on the web about people who have been stricken down for multiple days by it. Apparently you have trouble breathing and feel light headed and sick.

Now, who the hell wants to feel like that when you travel?

I’ve done a couple things to hopefully combat this.

First, I’m giving myself a couple of days in Cusco to acclimate to the altitude before I head to Machu Picchu. I’ve also given myself a spare, extra day in Cusco in case I need it to just take it easy and relax.

Second, I got a doctor’s prescription for Acetazolamide which help your system when it comes to altitude sickness. You take 3 pills a day and I’ll take my first pills tomorrow as I head to the airport.

Hopefully this will all be good and I won’t feel any of the effects of the altitude. Knock on wood.

Mosquitos

No, just no.

I can not deal with mosquitos!

One of the nice things about living out in Vancouver on the western part of Canada is the complete lack of mosquitos. Yes, there are some when you’re out camping and such, but in every day real life, none to be found.

So, when I see that a place I’m visiting is notorious for mosquitos (I’m looking at you Machu Picchu), well, I need to come up with a game plan.

On a previous trip to Asia I bought a few bottles of mosquito spray and took them in my carryon.

Long story short, I had to throw them out when I went through security cause they were more than 100ml.

Sigh, don’t even get me started on that subject!

Anyway, this time around, I looked a little deeper into ways to prevent mosquito bites and found Insect Repellent Towelettes by Off.

I bought enough to last for the trip and, well, we’ll see how they work out.

In the off chance I do get bit, I also bought a little tube of AfterBite to help with the itching.