Picking the Right Ski Goggles

Most of the time on this blog, I'm addressing the travel gear you take with you for plain vanilla travels: backpacking around the world, a 3-week light hiking trip, and the like. If you're going on a ski vacation, however, that opens up a whole raft of gear to worry about. None of it comes cheap and skimping can really come back to (frost)bite you.

The folks over at Backcountry.com put out a useful newsletter, then archive the stories online. Here's a good rundown on ski goggles, telling you more than enough to decide which ones will fit your needs: Finding the Right Goggles.

In many cases, you really do get what you pay for, so if you're going to be doing a lot of skiing this winter, you may want to splurge for some quality gear.

Phoning Home for Cheap

I surf a lot of travel message boards and am always amazed by the number of people who are asking about how to travel around the world with their cell phone. Are you people nuts? It's going to cost you a bundle, you have to have different sim cards for different locations, and it's another gadget that allows you to tune out and act like you're still home. Leave home at home--there are better options.

For one thing, there's e-mail, which you can send from almost any little town these days. Many Internet cafes are even set up with webphones, Skype phones, and other things that let you talk for next to nothing. Then there are phone cards, which are small, light, portable, and cheap.

I've been trying out one from Pingo and it's a dream. Once you register the card online, you can just keep recharging it and it's pennies per minute. I just talked to someone in Canada for an hour and a half solid for about $2.50. They have local access numbers for other countries, so if you're in Mexico, for instance, you can spend under 10 cents a minute, instead of the 50 cents a minute you'd spend with an official telecom monopoly card. They route all the calls over a VoIP system--as in through the Internet backbone instead of through the normal legacy phone lines. Think of it as a Skype call that actually sounds normal.

Want a free one to try? Click on the banner here.

Water Bottle That's Also a Water Filter

If you want to carry a water filter around for basic travel, as opposed to days in the wilderness, one of the best bets is a water bottle that has a built-in filter. This way you're just carrying a regular water bottle around--which you probably would anyway in hot countries--but you just fill it up and go. Nothing to pump: your mouth does the work.

I used a version of this on three round-the-world trips and almost never got sick. It keeps you from having to have bottled water on hand just to brush your teeth and you don't add mounds of plastic to the world's landfills every time you need to get hydrated.

The Katadyn Micro Microfilter Water Bottle pictured here is $29.90 at Backcountry.com and that's pretty average. Sometimes you can find them on sale for less or different brands on a closeout.