Our travel blog book coming 2013

After my daughter Tegan and I returned from New Zealand last year I set to work to complete our blog entries.  After that I located a business online that could take the data from Blogger blog and create a book from that.

I was energized with the thoughts of having a hard bound blog book of our trip.  I entered http://www.nztrip2011.com/ into the line asking for the url and then chose which of the entries I wanted included in the book and the uploading began.  It took quite sometime to complete.... well over an hour if I remember.  But in the end there was a rough foundation of words and photos to create our book from.  Luckily all the work was done on my local computer and it allowed me to create 300 dpi photos to replace the ones from the blog and edit and create other photos to add to the book as well.  I spent a good 2-3 solid weeks editing and stylizing the book that now sits on our coffee table and is shared with our friends when they visit. 

Blurb was the publisher I used and they created a book that impressed me and continues to impress those that see our book creation.  I intend to do the same this time around documenting our travels through Central America.  I will be working on the book with ferocious intent upon my return to Canada in January.

You can read more about my blurb experience on nztrip2011.com.

Costa Rica Budget Car Rental

So, upon doing some research on car rental companies in Costa Rica, I have concluded that that there is heaps of issues with the practices of some rental companies.  Budget always seemed to surface as the better of the bunch when reading reviews. 





I booked with Budget and asked for the car seats to be thrown into the reservation. 

They quoted me a rate more than my weekly car rental for the rental of 2 car seats.  Well!  I asked them immediately to remove them thinking toting our $25 boosters along with us would be an easier pill to swallow than the $168 for the rental.

I sought out an alternative and although they aren't currently approved for use in Canada, they are safe and useable nearly everywhere else in the world.  I won't go into my gripes with Transport Canada on many issues...

The product is called Bubblebum; an inflatable booster seat.  It is compact, light and folds up to a small portable size easily stuffed into our backpacks.  I believe they use similar technologies as Theramrest products.  What a fantastic alternatives to lugging our plastic molded car seats around with us.  I ordered a pair and they were $40 USD each and the shipping was $50 for the order.  Scary cost on the shipping but it was the only alternative.  These are difficult to source here in Canada.

Southbound in 3 weeks

Happy Halloween!

Today marks another milestone as we inch towards our departure day.  We are 3 weeks away from the start of our trip to Central America.

All of our hotel bookings are complete except Costa Rica and El Salvador. 

Costa Rica's itinerary is being ironed out.

Organizing our travel gear is on the way.

Everyone is getting really excited.

Backing up photos while abroad

Being a family of four and attempting to travel light on our 7 week journey in Central America I have concluded that I will need to limit the amount of photography gear I travel with. I am considering dropping my 70-200mm lens and doing away with my flash as the first step to weight loss. My basic gear will consist of my Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm, Canon 24-70mm, Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod, intervalometer and filters etc. My backup camera will be the Canon S100 and Tegan's Panasonic DMC-TS4.

Being a family of four and attempting to travel light on our 7 week journey in Central America I have concluded that I will need to limit the amount of photography gear I travel with. I am considering dropping my 70-200mm lens and doing away with my flash as the first step to weight loss. My basic gear will consist of my Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm, Canon 24-70mm, Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod, intervalometer and filters etc. My backup camera will be the Canon S100 and Tegan's Panasonic DMC-TS4.

Since we are hauling our iPad and not a laptop around on this trip, I have thought of a feasible way to do backup while jumping from location to location in C.A. The solution that came to mind is to carry my high speed card reader and my 1 TB portable hard drive then use this combo to transfer images from one source to the other. All I need to do is have access to a computer at a hotel or Internet cafe with a couple of free USB ports. I have many CF cards for the SLR so I should have little problem keeping duplicate photos on those as well. I am only lacking extra cards for my point and shoot. So either I chance not having a backup or I pickup a couple of 32 gig cards prior to leaving or while there.

The second issue was how to get the photos onto the iPad so that I may edit and place photos into our blog postings. Our iPad is protected by the Otterbox Defender case and I highly recommend this. I thought of finding a solution to plug in the hard drive to the iPad, but that proved to be a deadend. I ended up ordering a card reader that plugs into the 30 pin docking port on the iPad and allows me to read the photos from my CF and SD cards alike. The only drawback of the Otterbox case is that it is fixed onto the iPad and the ports are deeply set into the case, requiring an extension to use the card reader. So off to eBay and I snagged one for under $5 shipped to my door from China. Hopefully the cable lasts the length of the trip!

Now I am feeling pretty confident about my ability to update my blog entirely from the iPad.

Countdown from 40

Here we sit 40 days away from departing form Central America.  We have our itinerary 1.0 posted as well as a silly introduction to our family, a packing list and the start of some website links.  I have spent the time since booking our tickets planning our itinerary and sourcing accommodations and activities to do on our travels. 

Some challenging conversations in Spanish with Central American hotels, thank goodness it is only written at the moment.  We have about 60% of our hotels/hostels booked.  I need to book some bus tickets soon since we are traveling over Christmas we will need to book ahead of time to guarantee the seats.  We just spent the last week going over the vaccinations and medicines we will be taking on our trip with us. 

Next on my agenda is to work on what we are going to be up to while in Costa Rica and while we are in El Salvador.  Currently I only have the hotels booked for the start and the end of our stay in each country.  Phew!  Costa Rica looks like it is going to have tons of activities to cram into our week there and El Salvador is the surprise I have yet to explore.  I will keep you posted.