From a next-generation compass to a swath of old-school cotton, Globe staff add seven items to the pentheon of must-pack products.
Have your own suggestions? E-mail them to travel@globeandmail.com . Before you do, check out last year's hall of fame items and our readers' must-haves.
Cyclists' little helper
Three hours lost in the woods on a mountain-biking expedition made me realize I was no Daniel Boone. I tried checking the sun and reading the moss, but no dice — my wife and I came close to spending the night in the Ganaraska Forest. What we needed was the Garmin Edge 305, a GPS unit designed for cyclists. By looking at orbiting satellites, the Edge tells you how fast you're going, how far you've gone, how steep a hill is, and much more. And you can flip to the navigation page and find your way out of the wilderness — or around the city. It can be mounted on any bicycle (with the included clips), and it's super-accurate (since it uses the same technology the U.S. military uses to guide smart bombs). The Garmin Edge 305 retails for $355. For more information, visit www.garmin.com.
— Peter Cheney
The Big Daddy of baby wipes
You're in the middle of an adventure tour through a foreign land. You have a layer of sweat and grime about an inch thick on your skin, your boxer shorts have become thongs, and there are no showers in sight. Itching and infection are on their way. Your vacation has become hellish — and, since war is hell, why not do as soldiers do to fight filth? Get yourself some Hoo-Ahhs, which are Army Field towels developed by a U.S. Army Veteran. I recently used them to wipe my dirty sins away while on assignment in Afghanistan. The seven-by-10-inch towels contain aloe and vitamin E, and come in a 20-towel resealable package.
Available through a number of U.S. retailers, including Amazon.com, for about $5. For more information, visit www.hooahhs.com.
— Louie Palu
Cotton salvation
It has been the most essential item in my luggage through 32 countries: A 1.5-metre-by-50-centimetre piece of lightweight pink Zimbabwean cotton. It has served me variously as a sheet, a towel, a sunshade, a hijab at an unanticipated interview with an imam at a Khartoum mosque, a room divider, a hastily knotted carry-all, a curtain, and a skirt for an unexpected dance party in south Sudan. It has come between me and bedbugs, heatstroke and culturally offensive bareheadedness. All this for around $8. So here's my best travel tip: If you're going to pack one thing for travel in Africa, bring a big piece of cotton.
— Stephanie Nolen
Scented suitcases
I always pack perfume strips — those scented ads in magazines — in with my luggage when I travel.
Partly, it's nice to finally find a use for those smelly strips.
But it's also nice to unpack clothes smelling like Chanel No. 5 (or at least the magazine version of it). This works for guys too — with cologne ads rather than perfume, of course.
— Rebecca Dube
Wine of the times
Boxed wine has long been an important part of the alcohol-dependent backcountry tourist's kit. Packaged in ultra-light, resealable, indestructible and amazingly capacious plastic bladders, it is no grand cru, but always tasty above the tree line and under the stars. Now, however, more discriminating picnickers and travellers can experience the same advantages as winemakers rush to market with decent vintages "bottled" in stylish Tetra Prisma packages. In fact, portability is the latest craze to hit the wine world. French Rabbit, introduced last August, quickly became the most successful new wine launch in Ontario history.Clearly, picnics will never be the same. For more information, visit www.frenchrabbit.com, www.lcbo.com and www.tetrapak.ca.
— John Barber
A photographer's best friend
Digital cameras keep getting smaller, while the files they create keep getting larger. For the most part, this is a good trend for travellers, but if you're away for more than a few days even the largest memory cards can start to seem small. Portable storage devices like the Flashtrax XT allow you to safely store and manage those megapixels so you can keep shooting.
On a recent trip to Scotland, I used one to store more than 13 gigabytes of castles, lochs and glens.
It worked like a charm and took up less than half the suitcase space of the smallest laptops. It comes with a built-in reader for compact flash cards, and adaptors are available for other formats.
You plug your memory card into the unit and press the "copy" button to back up your photos to the hard drive, and then view them on the 3.5-inch LCD display. The Flashtrax XT retails for $399 (U.S.). For more information, visit www.smartdisk.com.
— Roger Hallett
Parent snap
You've spent most of the day battling highway traffic and Wiggles tapes, and now you're facing the perfect storm of fatigue: Too little sleep and too much access to the holiday turkey and the in-laws' wine cellar. The last thing you need is to have to stagger up to the guest room to assemble the baby crib. It's moments like this that make you appreciate Graco's easy-to-assemble pack 'n' play. It's the travel crib for dummies. For parents used to the earlier generation of travel cribs, it means no more twisting metal bars together or trying to decipher user manuals. You just pull the lightweight contraption out of the carrying case and it practically puts itself together. Starting at around $120, it may be a little more expensive than some other models where there's more assembly involved, but it's also well worth it.
For more information, visit www.graco.net.
— Simon Tuck
