This page is for my recommendations for products that I have used for our travels and figured that you, my readers, would also appreciate knowing where to find them. You will see my comments about them in some of my blog posts, such as the posts about suitcases, but wanted a central location for you to quickly find them if you did not want to read the story first.

They will be laid out in a way that you can go directly to the provider of the product as well as read my blog post on the subject, if I wrote one. As you are probably aware, I don’t make or sell these products, so you are just getting a direct link and they are getting a free referral. Now if I could just figure out a way to get a referral fee for sending you to their website, then we could all be winners.

 

Name of Product	Blog Post
eBags TLS Mother Lode Weekender	Suitcases 1  Suitcases 2
Scott e Vest	These are so good, we bought a green one and a tan one for our most recent safari
Op-Tech Binocular/Camera Harness

If you are looking for a backpack style carry on bag, you have a few options. You can buy one through Rick Steves or you can buy one from ebags. We have had ours since we made the mistake of carrying too much stuff in large suitcases on our first trip to Europe in 2014. Never again. Although I still use mine for every trip, even month long trips, my wife has chosen to use a similar sized roller suitcase except when we go on safari because they insist that you use a soft sided bag so that it is easier for them to pack them in the safari vehicles than hard sided bags. We managed on our las safari to pack less than 11 kilos in each carry-on and less than 5 kilos in our personal bags. That met the requirements of the smaller commuter airlines in Africa with smaller spaces for bags. Plenty of room for about 2 weeks worth of clothes and camera equipment. We live by the packing lite system.

We bought our original Scott-e-Vests in our favorite colors, Blue for me and Red for my wife. Unfortunately, on safari in Africa, blue attracts tsetse flies. So, before our last safari in 2022, I bought a green one for me and a tan one for my wife. My son has inherited my blue one but my wife will keep using the red one when traveling but not when on safari.

If you look for camera or binocular harnesses, there are hundreds of different varieties. Some are made from leather, or webbing or are stretchy. The link below is for the webbing version from Op-Tech. We also like it because it uses simple clips to connect to the camera. I have an extra set of clips so that I have one harness but two camera bodies that I may carry. I don’t carry them both at the same time, so I did not consider looking at a harness for two cameras. These are great for a safari. We have had ours since 2014 or so. Still going strong.