Pardon the interruption. I want to take a break from our series on James the Great to share a thought or five about gear.
Gear choices are intensely personal, dictated by size, fit, style, and destination. Every pilgrim eventually asks the same three questions: What do I bring? What do I leave behind? And what can I throw away right now? It’s funny how that list evolves as the miles accumulate. While I’ve shared packing thoughts before (see here as an example), these five items unexpectedly proved their worth over 800 kilometers of midsummer heat.
The Camino near Tardajos, Spain.
1. Water bottles on the shoulders
In a Spanish summer, hydration is non-negotiable. Luckily, almost every village has a fountain with tasty, safe water. Early on, I hauled a heavy one-liter Nalgene, but eventually, I gave it away (sad face) and switched to two plastic 0.5-liter bottles.
The problem? Unless you have chimp-like arms, accessing bottles from side pockets is a chore. My solution was the Bottle Bandit, a little gizmo that suspends disposable bottles from your pack’s shoulder straps. I added two “hacks” to perfect it:
A second carabiner: This lowered the bottle to mid-chest for easier access.
An elastic band: I looped this around the shoulder strap to act as a “holster,” preventing the bottle from swinging and clocking me in the head. This allowed me to unclip, chug, and re-holster without breaking stride.
The Bottle Bandit makes it possible to clip a disposable water bottle to the shoulder strap of a backpack. The Bandit is made of black silicone. It fits tightly around the bottle neck just under the cap. The hack was the elastic band (yellow in color here) that held the bottle securely against my body.
2. Dirty Girls on the ankles.
Don’t let the name scare you. Dirty Girl Gaiters are easily in my top three indispensable items. Slip these ultralight spandex sleeves over your ankles and you’ll stop picking pebbles out of your shoes every fifteen minutes. I chose the giraffe pattern to make me appear taller; other patterns are available (but I wouldn’t Google “dirty girls” if I were you. Follow the link here to the Dirty Girl site.).
The Hack: The front hook catches your laces easily, but the rear Velcro strip often peels off the shoe heel. My fix? Superglue. Once I glued the "hook" side of the fastener to the back of my shoe, the gaiters never budged.
3. A guide in the pocket.
Like most English-speaking pilgrims, I carried John Brierley’s guide. The maps and site descriptions are top-tier. My ritual? As I finished a stage, I ripped out the pages and threw them away. It saved weight and provided a strange sense of satisfaction. By Santiago, the book was destroyed.
Note: If I did it again, I might try the Dintaman and Landis guide. Their hostel evaluations are excellent, and I spent half my trip copying their notes into the margins of my Brierley anyway.
Note: Hostel buzz suggested that Brierley was on the trail at the same time we were. I was relieved that I didn't run into him and be forced to explain what happened to his book. Authors are funny that way.
I butchered Brierley's guide.
4. Lube on all moving parts
This gets a little gross, so feel free to skip ahead—but Petroleum Jelly is the salve of salvation. Friction is the enemy that sends pilgrims home with blisters and rashes. Every morning, I “slathered”—and I do mean slathered—the jelly on my heels, toes, inner thighs, armpits, nipples, and anywhere else that might chafe.
It was squishy for the first mile, but the result? Zero blisters all the way across Spain! I’ll take “disgusting socks” over draining painful blisters on a bunk bed any night of the week.
And speaking of disgusting socks, here is my fifth and final indispensable discovery.
Petroleum jelly works magic on the piggies. It kept mine pink and soft and blister-free through 500 miles of walking.
5. Scrubba for the filth
Between the trail dust and the petroleum jelly buildup, clothes get nasty fast. I carried only two outfits: one for hiking, one for evening. To keep them human-grade, I used the Scrubba—a portable “washing machine” (See the link here.).
It’s a lime-green bag with an internal flexible washboard. You simply add clothes, water, and detergent, seal it, bleed the air valve, and “shake and bake.” It’s a beast of a bag that survived months of use without a single puncture. Bonus: if it rains, it doubles as a dry-bag for your electronics.
The backpacker's washing machine in action. Image from here (accessed 8/25/2018).
Procedure: (a) put stinky clothes in the Scrubba, (b) dump in a little powdered detergent, (c) add hot water, (d) seal the top of the Scubba by rolling and clipping, (e) drain the air from the bag using the Scrubba valve, (f) shake and bake and rock and roll and let those little nubbins inside the bag do their thing, (g) rinse, (h) hang to dry. Sometimes I did all of this in the sink. Sometimes I used the shower. Sometimes I used a sidewalk. It worked perfectly every time.
Thanks to my Scrubba I smelled like a rose for the first hour of every morning. After that, everybody smelled the same so it didn't matter anymore.
Observe. Engage. Contemplate. Clip on your water. And keep on keeping on.
These five items unexpectedly proved their worth on my Camino. You might consider them for your own. Or for travel elsewhere.
One day I'll tell you about the five things in my pack that did not prove their worth. They are hopefully rotting in a Spanish landfill somewhere. But that is a story for another day.
¡Buen Camino!
Join Mark and Vicki for a Mediterranean experience in October, 2018. We'll be cruising aboard the luxurious Celebrity Reflection. See the link here for details. Onboard lectures will provide focus as we visit the ports of Malta, Rhodes, Santorini, and, of course, Athens among others. An optional add-on visit to Rome is possible on either end of the trip.