I am a Digital girl.

I have 3 hrs before my flight leaves to Amsterdam and I'm still trying to fit everything into my pack. One thing for sure is that I am completely ditching my travel guides. I am ill prepared; I wish I knew exactly what pages I could tear out of the 3 lonely planet books I have but I don't. I haven't read it all. The books together weigh more than 5 lbs. I have too much stuff, even at the bare minimum, my bag is really heavy. I've unpacked and unloaded several times.

So, I'm going to try this: Lonely planet now offers online chapters in PDF. I'm bringing my books in triplicate: Two USB keys loaded with copies of the PDF and then a copy on the iphone via a program that runs locally on disk called "Files". File reading on the iphone sucks the battery dry really fast but I'm compensating with a Solio solar charger for the iPhone. I know, it's an iPhone; somebody will probably steal it. I'm going to risk taking it anyhow. My entire life is on that thing but it has saved my ass more than once while traveling internationally. Especially because I am so foreign language challenged. The good thing about subsaharan africa is that there is still no data push available. Only cell and text service. So there is no way to rack up charges on data there. Text messages are pricey, running at 0.50 cents per message. I will likely get a local mobile *if* it is any cheaper.

This is all I'm bringing, for 3 months. (see picture).



Ok I have to run to the airport now.

Next stop, Moshi, Tanzania