Hi folks,
I’m heading to South America for six months or so in the new year. My trip is split into two parts: the first three months I’ll be living in a shared apartment, working remotely doing development work on my laptop. The second three I’ll be backpacking, staying in hostels etc.
The laptop and other things I need for the first three months, I really don’t want to be carrying around with me whilst backpacking. I’m therefore considering sending a suitcase back to the UK with all the excess stuff in.
Does anyone have experience in doing something similar? Perhaps specifically from Colombia or Peru? What companies would you recommend, and how much did it cost you?
Thanks!
Shipping suitcase-sized pieces tends to be quite expensive, and personally, I would never entrust my work laptop to any shipping service anyway. Furthermore, having your laptop with you may prove helpful in some situations. Just limit your luggage to a single backpack. Not only can you buy things at your destination(s) if necessary, you may actually get comparable items much cheaper than back at home.
I'm definitely hesitant to entrust a shipping service with my laptop, however I'm also unsure if I trust myself backpacking with it hahah. I'd be happy to carry it around with me if it was a small chromebook or something, but it's a fairly heavy 16 inch machine that I use for ML work. My thought process is, if I'm sending this laptop home, then I may as well send some other stuff home with it too, rather than buying things at my destination.
Check out a company called Send my Bag. My friend used them to send their suitcase back to Australia from UK.
Thanks, I'll take a look!
Highly rec send my bag BUT you can’t ship electronics or liquids (and other stuff), so some things may just need to be mailed separately
Also check country regulations, I used them to send stuff back to the states from Aus while I traveled, but you cannot ship laptops from Australia in any case (at least not the us)
By the looks of it, sending a laptop to the UK is all fine with Ship My Bag, thanks!
Perfect! The other option is convince someone to come visit and take it home with them, which is what I did 😂
I've done it twice, but primarily with lighter, low-risk items, and both times it was fairly pricey. I sent about 8-12 kilos from both Spain and Nepal back to the SE USA and each time it was ~$70 for a medium box. More than it would've cost to just bring it home with me if I'd checked it with me on a flight.
Have you considered doing a long-term bag storage option and retrieving it before returning home? I've done that a few times and it's been useful and affordable, just depends on your route and flights. If you plan to go from, say, Columbia to Chile and then fly straight out from there back home, then probably not ideal, but if you had a long layover in Columbia on your return or were doing a loop and flying back out of Columbia again, then you can usually find something at hostels for fairly cheap.
Long-term bag storage seems sensible, but I'm currently unsure as to whether I'd be looping back to the same place I flew into. I'll see if I can organise around this, thanks for the help :)
I went bicycle touring in Europe a few years ago. Of course I brought too much stuff that I totally did not need to go bicycle touring in Europe, it being a much more genteel experience than bicycle touring in the wilds of western USA. Sent a 6kg box from Germany to California, 90 euros. The price did kinda suck but the relief of not having to worry about or carry that extra weight on my bicycle was totally worth it. So pack your shit well, and send it home! It's worth it in the long run, you have enough to worry about running around South America. :-)
Shipping something with a battery in it is always tricky. Alternatively you could try finding long term storage near the airport you’ll be going home from.