After seven months of continuous travel through South America, we have grown quite attached to several pieces of travel gear. Our Sawyer squeeze water filter and metal HydroFlask bottles have kept hundreds of plastic water bottles out of local landfills, estuaries and streets. My HyPath backpack system has held up admirably through many sessions of overstuffing and being chucked into the bellies of buses. My teeth are still singing the praises of my Quip battery-powered toothbrush, whose travel tube adhesive still sticks reliably to the mirror of every bathroom I encounter. And our REI multi-nation power adapter and six-slot USB charging station have teamed up to successfully power a chromebook, two smartphones, a camera battery, a mini-keyboard, and a bluetooth speaker in seven countries so far.
But the roll of masking tape we bought a month into our nomadic journey is playing the starring role in today’s blog post. Though it cost us a little more than a dollar in Southern Peru, it has proven to be one of our most valuable pieces of travel gear.
As I write, masking tape is securing our REI power adapter to the janky electrical outlet it previously fell out of. It is keeping several partially-used bags of food from spilling their contents, from pasta to coffee to salt. Yesterday, we fashioned a snug “sling” out of masking tape to secure a wobbly chair leg until it can be fixed permanently, since we don’t have an allen wrench on hand to do the job properly. And we have used it for labels to quickly identify which of the numerous black USB charging cords we need to power up whichever electronic devices currently needs juice.
When we stay in hostels, we write our room number on strips of masking tape to use as kitchen labels for our basket or shelf of dry goods, and on milk, eggs and plastic containers of leftovers in the refrigerator. A few weeks ago, we used it to hold broken pieces of a Samsung tablet stand together temporarily while the super glue dried for a permanent fix.
Masking tape truly is one of the best hacks we have discovered during our nomadic travels, and I feel confident it will save our bacon – both literally and figuratively – many more times before the roll runs out.