Of Frogs and Backpacks.

by Alex in Pre-trip, Gear

Today sees Alex and Tasha taking the first concrete steps towards their Big Trip... Okay, so Tash may argue that the first steps were made with the creation of this glorious website you see before you, but I beg to differ. To me, a plan isn’t set in quick-dry cement until you’ve invested money into it, and thus we have! Embarking this morning on a window-shopping, finalise-our-research trip, we have come home with a coin purse*, two microfibre travel towels, and most excitingly of all, a shiny new 35L backpack in which to keep it all!

I know what you’re thinking – “Isn’t it way too early to be buying gear yet?”

Throughout all of our early planning, our thought has been to try and space out our pre-trip purchases as much as possible. The reason for this is pretty simple, it’s all to do with frogs and water. If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water unexpectedly (please don’t do this), he will panic and jump straight out. If, however, you place a frog into a pot of cold water and then bring it to the boil (please don’t do this either), he will simply sit there and not notice. Similarly, we have found in the past that if we leave our purchases until a ‘respectable date’, we find ourselves in a Christmas Eve-esque frenzy of missed deadlines, high premiums and forgotten uncles.

Seriously, could you boil this little guy?

Although spontaneous, these purchases do not come lightly. They come after hours of research in travel stores with infuriatingly unhelpful staff members, and on websites definitely not designed to cater to the Australian traveller. We researched several suppliers over the past few weeks, before settling on the BlackWolf range of packs. Our aim in choosing our packs was to find designs small enough to be taken as carry-on luggage on a majority of airlines, versatile enough for our style of travelling, and hardy enough to withstand the European winter and African summer. To that end, we have opted for backpack-style zips rather than open-topped hiking packs, with a maximum of 40L each. This may sound small to the aspiring travellers among you, however we are both light packers and as your more seasoned brethren will tell you, after the first week, you really feel every extraneous kilogram.

BlackWolf Cyclone 35L

The specific packs that we have chosen are BlackWolf’s 35L Cyclone for Tash and 40L Monashee for myself. We’re confident that we’ll have enough room in our combined 75 litres for all of our necessities, and as many seem to forget, they do sell toothpaste in Europe. :)

BlackWolf Monashee 40L

*Alright, technically the coin purse was bought yesterday. For more up-to-date information on our purchases, check out our Gear page.

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