My new camera arrived today! Yay!

I bought the Canon EOS 40D 10mp Digital SLR body and a Canon 24-105 EF f/4L IS USM lens to go with it. Note that the photo on the right shows the camera bundle including the EF-S 17-85mm lens … I didn’t get this, I bought the camera body (no lens supplied) with the 24-105 lens separately.

I thought long and hard about what lenses to buy – I take a lot of photos, so it’s going to get some good use. I like both nature and wildlife photography and also scenery and architecture – so I need both wide angle and good zoom.

My old SLR is a Pentax MZ-10, it came with a 28-80 lens and I later bought a 70-300mm zoom, which has been good for wildlife photography.

Given the 1.6x focal length equivalent of the digital SLR sensor, I need approximately 17-50mm to replace my old 28-80 and 45-190 to replace my 70-300. Ideally, I’d like something a little wider than 28mm – better for landscape and architecture shots (particularly indoors!). I’d also like something a little longer than 300mm.

Based on the reviews of Canon’s lenses from excellent sites like Fred Miranda, and given that I wanted high quality lenses to go with my camera … I picked out a few lenses for my shortlist.

The Canon EF 70-200mm lenses get the best reviews, and would be very nice – but they are a bit big and heavy for what I’m looking for.

The Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM is pretty much my dream lens right now, but it is huge (I’m not lugging a 1.4kg lens around South America – although I have been very tempted), and over $2,900 RRP, it’s a little expensive to justify.

I decided on the Canon 24-105 EF f/4L IS USM as my main lens – 38mm equivalent is not quite wide enough and 168mm equivalent is not quite long enough, but the quality and build of this lens (and the fact that it’s not too large or too heavy), make it a good compromise as my walk-about lens.

I have ordered some other lenses – but they won’t come until closer to Christmas. I’ll talk more about them when they arrive.

The other nice thing about the 40D + 24-105 f/4L combination is that Canon have a $500 cash-back offer until the end of the year for buying this lens with this camera. That will certainly help pay for some of the accessories I need (I’ll be getting some 8GB memory cards!).

I decided to get the camera as soon as I could, so I could start practicing with it and learning how to get the best out of it before we leave – I don’t want to be disappointed with my photos!

We’ve managed to book our first batch of accomodation. We’re concentrating first on those areas which are known to book our early during summer.

We came to a decision today and booked a hostel in Barriloche via HostelWorld.com. We’ve not really found any other online hostel booking site which has as good coverage of South America as Hostel World. Their site makes it easy to search, and options and availability is clearly listed. The traveller reviews are useful too.

We’re looking for a bit better quality in our hostels – a double room with ensuite and WiFi available (which most seem to have these days). We’re not interested in dorms or ultra-cheap accomodation. Our goal is to average no more than about US$50 per night … although I think US$60 is going to be closer to the mark … far cheaper than the five star hotel we’re used to from my time travelling for IBM. Those are all quite expensive in South America – I don’t seem to be able to find rates under US$200 per night, which is far more than we want to be spending.

We’ve now got all our flights booked. Since we have been able to confirm the dates of our two boat trips, the rest of the itinerary has been finalised, and I’ve been able to book our flights while in South America.

I ended up booking directly through LAN – they let me book all four flights at once (Santiago – Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires – Barriloche, Ushuaia – Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires – Santiago), and the price was as good (possibly slightly better) than I could get through the discount providers. I also got a few more convenient flight options, and was able to choose our seats for the flights – which is nice. Because LAN are a OneWorld airline, we’ll get frequent flyer miles for these flights. Pity I can’t upgrade us to business class using FF miles and tramadol ultram – although only the Ushuaia – Buenos Aires leg is long enough to start getting painful in economy (3.5 hours).

Spent Sunday in town again, shopping for more travel gear. Still trying on shoes – that’s our first priority so we can get some and start wearing them in. We need waterproof boots for some parts of the trip we are planning (glaciers!), so that limits our choice a little … but most of the good brands have waterproof versions of their boots in a range of styles.

I’m having trouble finding shoes that fit – most are too narrow (a problem I have with shoes in general), and the ones that aren’t I find slip too much in the heel.

I’ve found one pair of shoes I quite like: Hi-Tec Multiterra Ultra Mid WP, but they have a curve in the sole (inside the shoe), which my feet don’t like – they were starting to get bruised after only 10 minutes of trying them on in the store. Pity, because they were great in just about every other measure. Leanne quite likes the womens version of these shoes. She’s been looking at these at the Asolo Voyager. I’m also looking at the Garmont Flash XCR II – which are quite comfortable.

We’ve got a bit of a routine going now. We get up Sunday morning, have breakfast and get ready by about 11am, drive in to town, park near Darling Harbour, walk up to Kent Street, spend some time looking through the stores, head up to the QVB for a toilet break and then on to the Myer center food court for lunch and a rest. Then we head back down and spend the rest of the afternoon looking through the stores (concentrating on those which close at 4pm first, so we can do the 5pm closing stores afterwards). Then at around 5pm, we head back down to Darling Harbour and stop at Gloria Jeans for an iced chocolate and a shared dessert (and a rest!), before wandering back to the car and driving home around 6pm. It’s a long and tiring business this travel preparation!

After a lot of research and thought, I’ve started putting orders in for some of the gear we are buying for our trip. Not all of it is just for this trip – we’re just using this as an excuse to buy stuff we’ve been wanting for a while. It will get a lot of use beyond the trip next month.

The biggest decision I had to make was about a laptop. With my online businesses – it’s pretty much impossible for me to be offline for 6 weeks – and it would be difficult for me to adequately manage my sites using internet cafe computers. Thus, I have decided to take a laptop with me – most of the hostels have WiFi access these days, so it’s pretty easy to get online.

The problem I have is that my 15″ T60 is just too big and heavy to lug around, and my 14″ T41 is a bit old to run the software I need. IBM/Lenovo have had a sale on for select models of their ultralight 12″ X61 series laptops (1.5kg and very thin and small – ideal for travelling!) … and I have been very very tempted to buy one for this and other trips. The issue is that I’m also planning on buying a new digital SLR camera, which will be very expensive, so I’ve found it difficult to justify spending another $2,500 (down from $4000 !!) on a laptop that I arguably don’t really need. I’ve lost sleep over this for a couple of weeks now, but I finally made a decision NOT to buy the X61 (*sob* – it’s such a lovely little laptop). Instead, I decided to upgrade my T41 with some extra memory – $140 for an extra 1GB RAM (total 1.5GB) is a lot less to pay for significantly increased performance!

Speaking of cameras, I ordered a Canon EOS 40D digital SLR and some lenses today as well. I’ve been wanting one of these for a couple of years now (was actually looking at the 30D and the 20D before it … was really excited when the 40D came out a couple of months back). The deal was that Leanne wanted to see non-refundable tickets to South America before I could buy it … and that’s what she got !!

I also put in an order for some bits and pieces to REI – an online travel and outdoor clothing and accessory store in the US. I’ve decided to get some trousers sent over from the US since I’m having such trouble finding stuff locally that fits … and so I decided to have some other gear shipped over as well – it’s much cheaper than we’re paying here! I asked them how long to expect for delivery and they said around 4 weeks to Australia – which should (hopefully!) give me plenty of time to have it all arrive before we leave.

Yet another order went in to an Australian based travel accessories company – GoGoGear, who have a great range of products – all those little bits and pieces that you need to take with you. Their prices are generally very good and they have useful reviews from people who have used their products too.

Finally, I booked our other cruise – the Navimag from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales. More about that later.

This is starting to get expensive!