If you've read our profile, you already know that Devon and I are preparing to leave on what we hope will become a year long trip throughout South America. We're starting in Chile--flying into Puerto Montt, at the top of the Patagonia region--seemingly as good a place as any considering our plan to work our way south into the heart of Patagonia with the antipodean summer and then back North as winter creeps in. As we go we will be volunteering through WWOOF Chile and Argentina and any environmental organizations that want some help. While we're at it, we will also be putting up posts here on OnEarth whenever we can, trying to give people an insight to life in South America with an environmental spin.

While we plan on doing and seeing as much as we can for as cheap as we can, those two things usually don't go hand in hand. As might be guessed it also adds a degree of difficulty to the packing process. There are certain items that have to come along—like nearly full winter gear, tent, sleeping bags, air mattress', cooking gear, etc. Then there is everything else we want to bring so when we go to hot tropical places like the Amazon we're at least reasonably comfortable. One solution would be the use of several large suitcases. However, that isn´t really an option as our plan is to use local buses. In addition to saving money the hope is we will also have the chance to to meet local people and, if we're lucky, have some stories to tell about goats and chickens roaming the aisles. Unfortunately, it also means that we've had to make tough choices about what we can bring.

Traveling as light as possible is our goal, although it isn't always as easy to follow through with. Staying in hostels we've become accustomed to seeing international youth travelers on a year abroad. I'm sure they started packing with the idea of just taking the bare necessities, but what they end up with is a pack close to the same size they are and overloaded like porters. Our alternative is to make everything we might want for a year fit into one backpack (both are 3900 cubic inches and approximately 2000 cubic inches smaller than what I would call a typical International youth pack) and one small day pack each. The upside is that we'll have more controlled chaos and won't have as much extraneous weight when we do have to carry the packs. The downside is there are items we'll want over the year that just won´t fit our size limitations.

After much careful selection and weeks of packing, re-packing, buying new things to pack other things into, discarding items in favor of other items, we finally reached our final payloads.

The amazing thing about this yard sale of items is it doesn't include absolutely everything. In addition to what's pictured there are also two 16 oz. jars of peanut butter and about 3 lbs of dehydrated beans. The beans are for backpacking, and the peanut butter is because if there is one immutable fact in the world it is: the rest of the world sucks at making good peanut butter.

Believe it or not everything in that spread of a photo and more turns into four neat and compact packs with a final weight of 39 lbs for Devon's (the red and black bag) and 42 lbs for mine (that tall gold beauty). Not bad considering the duration of trip and the fact that I have known people to go backpacking for a week with heavier packs.

We're ready for the unknown and now that the bags are packed we're prepared for our 10 hours of layover and 26 hours of total travel time.