Hey everyone!

We are Clare and Matej and we decided to start this blog/travel notebook as our diary. We sometimes talk about our experiences and can’t remember how things actually happened, how we got there, and how we survived.

Since this page is our diary, we don’t feel the need to add any affiliate links or any of that kind of nonsense (unless this page gets really popular…then it will be only paid ads), so all the links you see are just our suggestions or pointers to what we used.

One thing about us, we love to take photos, document our journeys, and share them with our families, but at the same time, we hate photos of ourselves. So you probably won’t see any photos where either of us shows our face (except when Matej looks especially handsome). In case you find one, Good Job! We’ll get you a beer when we meet.

Also, we love to go hiking so most of our trips include some hiking small or big. We basically never pay for a phone service so we use offline maps called Mapy.cz and often struggle to get free WIFI.

Gear that we never leave behind

The last line brought me to the idea of mentioning a few pieces of gear that we always take with us on our trips.

Disclaimer: This is not an advertisement. We are just very satisfied customers. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t accept free stuff if asked…

Mapy.cz

This is a gem that everyone should try to use. We love Mapy. We love them so much that even Clare sometimes says the word Mapy instead of maps. They got us out of so many situations when we thought we had gotten lost and helped us plan many of our hikes and walks.

The best benefits – they have hiking paths in places you never thought of, and they are offline! So many times we have walked on unmarked paths that we had no idea how they could be mapped, and on Mapy.

They used to be free, but they started investing more resources in them, and now you have to pay an annual subscription if you want to have unlimited offline maps downloaded. But it’s like $10 per year…

Lastly, they recently changed their name to Mapy.com…I’m happy for them to get more international and more customers, but I will never stop calling them Mapy.cz!

Sawyer Squeeze

We got our Sawyer Squeeze water filter for our first trip to Nepal in 2021 and haven’t left for any trip without it since. We use it mostly when hiking, but it proved useful even in accommodations where we didn’t trust the sink taps and wanted some extra water while being too lazy to go to the shop.

The idea is pretty simple. You collect water in a soft pouch that you attach to the filter. You then squeeze the water through the filter into a bottle or directly into your mouth, and wohoala, it’s clean!

Recently in Tajikistan, we tried it on really dirty water from a lake that was drying out, and it worked a treat. The water coming out was crystal clear, and we didn’t have to visit a toilet more than what’s recommended for a regular human being.

Gorilla Tape

I don’t think there is anything that needs to be said.

Let’s just leave it here with the ancient inscription found on the wall of a cave in central Africa, the Cradle of Humankind:

“If you can’t fix it with duct tape, you haven’t used enough duct tape.”

“This page is a good idea, so it is.”

— Clare