Pre-Departure Tips For Overseas Travelers:

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1= Make sure your passport is current for at least 1 (One) year after the date of your departure.

2= Bring a copy of your birth certificate in case you loose your passport.

3= Ask your doctor what innoculations you will need for your trip. Get the innocluations.

4= Check the Department of State website (www.state.gov) for international travel hazards/warnings information.

5= Do you need a Travel Visa? Contact the State Department for one.

6= Bring medications and corrective lenses, bring back ups of medications and corrective lenses, then bring the perscriptions.

7= Lay out everything your going to bring. Will it fit in your bags? Do you have too many bags? Not enough?

8= Make a list of addresses, emails, and phone numbers of people at home you may want to contact while away'remember to pack it.

9= Call to confirm your flight within 24 hours before it is scheduled to leave.

10= Bring a Med Kit.

11= Pack for the weather. Is it going to be hot, cold, tempid, humid, noxious, or oxygen deprived?

12= Tatto an emergency contact number to yourself in an obvious place'then hope you never change addresses.

13= Throw yourself a great going away party, with a keg of beer that is way too big for the drinkers in the crowd. Then throw up. Then throw yourself a great going away breakfast. Then don´t throw up. Then throw yourself a quiet goodbye dinner. Thank everyone for coming, and make bad jokes about being abducted and sold for parts'which force everyone to laugh uncomfortably'until they file out your front door with hugs, handshakes, and shows of sympathetic excitement and jealousy.

14= Make and take a backpack repair kit. Include extra clips, straps, buttons, and patches. Duct tape is always a must: a handy tip is to take half a pencil (or a short pencil) and add duct tape around it. Think of it like a roll of toilet paper, where the pencil is the cardboard tube and the duct tape is the two-ply, don´t wipe with it. Presto! A compact and handy duct tape dispencer.

15= Money: bring some. Invest in travelers checks (If you´re a AAA member their offices will give you travelers checks free of charge. Banks usually charge a nominal fee). Keep the travelers checks seporate from the reciept (which you also remembered to pack). A note regarding money in South America: don´t carry any bills larger than $10US. Theft is not as big a problem as venders being unable to break the bill. I have spent a few of my hours in South America watching a sales person run up and down the street searching for someone with change to the $20US anomoly. Foreign bank cards are accepted in many local bank machines. I prefer to travel with plasti than with green. Also, don´t keep all your eggs in one basket. Seporate you money. Put some in your wallet and some in your bag or ho(s)tel. This is fortunate should your belongings go galavaning off with some thieving chap looking for an easy score.

16= If you´re able, burn you CD´s, don´t take the origionals.

Closing Point: Remember don´t bring anything you wouldn´t mind leaving down there. If you can´t live without it, then get two and leave one at home.

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