I Traveled for 84 days in a 60-Liter Pack.

Last summer I bought a one way ticket to Nicaragua, and packed my entire life into a REI Trailbreak 60 backpack.

I had landed a job as a marketing intern at a surf-side ecolodge in Northwest Nicaragua, working one month in exchange for room-and-board. All I would need was a camera, tripod, and a couple pairs of board-shorts.

Easy enough to pack for, right?

It would be. But after some last minute planning, I now had three months of travel, and just about any possible weather and social setting to pack for.  As a broke, recently-graduated college student who can’t afford checked baggage, or even carry on for that matter, I had no other option but cramming it all into my Trailbreak 60, which I convinced the airlines was an acceptable “personal item.”

Here’s what I brought:

-One tripod

-One MacBook Pro

-One Power Bank

-One digital camera

-One Gopro

-Two point-and-shoot film cameras (plus about 10 rolls of 35mm film)

-One towel

-Two pairs of Pants (Jeans and Khakis)

-Two pairs of Shorts

-Two pairs of board-shorts

-Five T-Shirts

-Two button-down shirts

-One long-sleeve T-shirt

-One heavy-knit sweater

-Seven pairs of socks and underwear

-One Patagonia Nano-Puff Jacket

-One Gore-Tex rain jacket

-One baseball cap

-One Toiletry Bag

plus a few different odds and ends like books, pens, and dongles, and chargers.

Basically, I stuffed a ton of shit into one backpack and here’s how I did it:

Gear Cubes and Stuff Sacks

I find these to be essential for any backpacking trip, whether that’s a three-night trek or three-month trip.

They allow you to pack-down and organize different groups of items, making packing, unpacking, and accessing gear much easier. I bought all of my gear cubes and stuff sacks from EGT, for only a few bucks a piece! I used them to divide my gear into groups of socks and underwear, pants and shorts, jackets, and t-shirts.

Dry Bags

For my trip in particular, considering it involved lots of surfing, dry bags were a game changer!

I used a five-liter Sea to Summit “eVac Dry Bag,” to pack away my wet boardshorts, towel, and anything else that was wet on travel days. Dryers are rare to come by throughout Central and South America, so having somewhere to shove wet gear without soaking the rest of your belongings is huge.

I also used a one-liter dry bag (which I secured to the brain of my backpack) to hold my Passport, vaccination records, extra cash, and other essentials I couldn’t risk getting wet.

Lightweight Daypack

My biggest travel hack was packing an extra backpack. For me, that was a TimBuk2 roll-top cycling pack. This bag specifically, doesn’t have a frame which made it easy to roll up real small, and strap to the tent loops on the outside of my main backpack.

It was great to have this extra bag for day hikes, and periods where we were traveling by bus. With most bus companies you don’t have to pay extra for luggage, so on these stretches I was able to divide my gear, making things easier to access and pack down in a hurry.