TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums Africa Starting packing process

This is where 1/2 of the clothes and twice the camera stuff is important! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/jester.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/jester.gif" alt="" />

The increase weight allowance for Wilderness and Botswana is changing our packing plans some. Before we were really concerned about some things, now we have some options that we did not have before. But batteries for the electronics is still a concern.

No Kidding....26 pounds is all they will let you take on the interior flights.....at Club O....no problem....Africa....a completely different picture....no pun intented....my camera bag and tripod probably weigh 8 pounds.....

Well at least my Blood Pressure medicine is light! And
Booze is included.....that's a helper! Suppose you could WEAR three layers! Did you notice that laundry is included on most of these trips....save your skivies....aparently aganist the law for them to wash ones....intimates....!

Richard--For BOTSWANA, they changed the limit to 44 pounds per person, for Wilderness, which is a BIG help. And we are definitely planning on them doing our laundry, as we are taking 3 changes of clothes only.. And we do know that we will need to do underwear ourselves, so taking several pair, and then will wash them all at one time, I guess..

44 pounds...really....they are telling me that on the interior flights the planes are ....smallish at best..(soft luggage only...no suit cases)..indeed they even indicated that if one of us was over 220 lbs they would charge for an extra seat......we are not that big....think they will refund me the diference?

They just changed the weight limit for the wilderness resorts as of 4/1/05. Before it was like 25 lbs but just increased it to 40lbs+ (20K) so just over 40lbs.

That has changed our thinking just a little, as the extra 15 lbs makes a huge difference. Still soft stuff, but that is ok, the extra weight means that the electronics is more of an option than it was before. Clothes are not changing that much but the electronics are changing as a result.

Indeed....that is a significant difference....if we end up making the other stops along the way I'm sure the Hotel at JNB will let us keep our(other) bags in storage there for 12-14 days....

Yes the extra 15lbs is huge. It gives some some options that we did not even consider before -- so now have been rethinking our packing. More electronics! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/jester.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Cool.gif" alt="" />

Amazing what you can do with digital media now. So the options have grown, but there is a cost with that also. Battery power! No film at all for us this trip, so we are making sure we have backup options as a result. Have a portable backup option that should show on Monday or Tuesday for the good slr camera.

May end up treating it like a "rental" and sell it after our return? Don't know yet, but not sure I will really have a use for it after the fact. Got a good price on it so that is all that counts.

Now if those "other" people on ebay, would stop out bidding me on the camcorder that would make things a whole lot easier! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/jester.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/jester.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/jester.gif" alt="" />

Wilderness Safari's has a office in Maun where you can leave extra luggage. I will most likely leave my roller bag there and just repack into soft sided duffel bags prior to leaving Cape Town.

Eric..
My husband is a photo nut as well and is our team photographer. Are you taking a laptop for media storage or using another type of storage device ??
The extra 15 lbs changes everything!

Brenda

We initially were not planning on taking a laptop, so was looking at my other options. Of course ordered the download device prior to the weight increase, so have that regardless. But now we are considering taking the laptop. It with the stuff basically weights in at 12 lbs (bag and all), so it was out of the question before.

The good digital camera takes compact flash cards, so there were several choices available for portable download options. Not necessarily the cheapest option, but we ended up with a FlashTrax. It is an overgrown mp3 player, but also designed as a downloadable photo storage device. It (the one I got) has a 30gig hard drive for storage and has a 2 1/2 inch lcd screen and it will actually show you your pictures. That was the turning point for Carol, in that she wanted to know that the pictures were there before erasing the flash card. There are some downloadable devices that will take a variety of flash card, but many of them will not show you the picture.

Regardless of if we take the laptop now or not, will take that gizmo regardless, as it will probably last longer under battery power than the laptop, as it really is a single function device for how we are going to use it. Then will probably sell it upon our return, as I don't really think we will have a long term need for it. The Flashtrax does have an option to take other types of media (with an adapter) if you camera is not a compact flash card. When comparing the prices, given the number of cards were were going to have to buy it was a simple choice. Also I got a refurbished one with factory warranty for basically 1/2 off the retail price, so that helped a lot also. If you use compact flash I can tell you where you can get it.

Our other digital (backup) camera uses a different media and same with the camcorder that I am going to get. But if we take the laptop, then I have a multi card reader/writer that I can use to download to the laptop. But the battery in the laptop is getting a little long in the tooth and is probably due for a replacement. That would then maybe help with the battery life. Can recharge things at the camps, but the camera battery recharging will come first if that becomes an issue.

But with your husband being the team photographer, then I imagine he is going to be taking tons of photos and not worrying about deletion of photos on site. Then a storage device of some nature would be important. I checked out several different storage devices but ended up settling on the flashtrax for various reasons, and one of the main ones, was being able to at least see a couple of the pictures on the LCD screen before we erased the compact flash card. I know it sounds paranoid, but we lost basically all of our rolls of film (Carols previous film SLR) when coming back from Tahiti. X-Ray machine -- (not long after 9/11) and they would not allow anything at that time to not go through the big high powered x-ray machines. Nobody had any film that basically survived. We had taken a digital camera with us at the time, but were taking low resolution for the web mainly, so they survived fine. But we really were not able to get any prints. Was able to work some stuff with my editing software and did get some prints, but we also did not take as many photos with it and so missed a lot. Even with my editing software it takes about an hour or so per picture to try to fix the damage done by the x-ray machine and it was just too much. So now we are all digital and hope that we can survived the battery recharges! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Laugh.gif" alt="" /> Going to take along some extra rechargable battery packs for the various cameras and make sure that everything is completely and fully charged once we leave Jberg. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />

That Flash Trax looks like a great item.....I had not seen it before...but then I am not 'into' Super Photography.....

If you have compact flash cards then it seems pretty good to me, especially since you can get the refurbished one with a factory warranty. The refurbished one with the 30 gig hard drive was only $199 plus ups shipping (less than $15). So it put it on par with the ones that did not have the LCD screen and stuff. Think that the adapter for other media runs around $60 give or take a little. But what really swung it for us was the ability to see the pictures. After the tahiti mess, Carol did not want to have anything to do with a chance at not making sure that we had the photos before erasing the card. Basically it was the cost of 4-6 cards (was looking at the 512 cards) and we would need more than that. Why not the bigger cards?? Well, just in case -- if a bigger card goes bad or is bad, then we still have options! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" /> Have dealt enough with computer equipment that I try to always keep my options open as much as possible. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smashpc.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smashpc.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smashpc.gif" alt="" />

ps: we should get ours tomorrow or by the middle of the week, so will report on it once it shows.

Were thinking about the Creative Labs NOMAD 60 GB Jukebox Zen for media storage. Guess we'll re-evaluate with the new weight restrictions. I hadn't thought much about bring the laptop until now but the charging and battery life are definitely a concern.
The team photographer works for Intel so perhaps he can get some extra batteries for the computer <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />
What kind of camera gear do you have ??
Brenda

The main camera is a Nikon D70, the backup camera is an Olympus 4.1 mg, but I don't have that many memory cards for it. The 3rd backup (not intended for that purpose) is going to be the camcorder that I am trying to buy. Keep getting outbidded on ebay! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Laugh.gif" alt="" /> But will get one yet and at my price! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />

The laptop had not even been a consideration until the weight was increased, now we are really looking at that for a real option and would give us some extra alternative and options. So will see what the other stuff weights out at and then go from there, still keep throwing stuff into and out of the "pile" to go to Africa! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Laugh.gif" alt="" /> Probably will be doing that up until the last day. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/duel.gif" alt="" />

OOPS.. It is the Archos GMini not the Creative Labs Nomad 60 GB Jukebox Zen that my husband was thinking of getting.

That looks pretty good also. We were probably going to take pictures in TIFF mode and I thing the flashtrax will show those also. I know it will with the jpeg and some raw files. Will find out before long.