If it can be washed in a sink, bring it.

If you are planning to travel in Latin America for a couple of weeks or more, there is typically no reason to bring stilettos. Nor is there a reason to bring a cocktail dress. Many of you fancy pants out there will need to bring your idea of “dressing up” down a notch and your idea of “casual wear” down two notches. Even if you have plans to attend a fancy gala in Panama City, or a quinceñera in Antigua, or a wedding in Caracas along the way, there is no reason to take up that much space in your backpack. You are a traveler and travelers do not wear such things. Fancy is not an adjective to describe a traveler; a tourist maybe, but not a traveler. As a traveler, you will become more creative in how you mix and match your clothing, and much more tolerant of the mixes you come up with. Normally I would not wear a bright green t-shirt with hot pink lettering with a pair of army green cargo pants and a coral sweater. But in Guatemala, I was like “Hey, this works!” This does not mean you cannot be stylish. Traveling women can be quite stylish (I am not one of those women, but I have seen them and have even taken pictures of them). But stylish won’t amount to a hill of frijoles if what you’re wearing is all stinky and wrinkly, now will it? So let’s talk laundry.

Pack things you can conceivably wash by hand in your hostel, hotel or guesthouse sink or shower. You may not necessarily have to do this all the time, but it makes your life easier if that is possible. I have spent many traveling days in Central America hauling around dirty laundry, searching for a pila. A pila (pee-la) is an awesomely utilitarian laundry sink that is deep, with a built-in “washboard” on the other side that you can use to scrub your clothes. I think every house I have ever been in in Latin America has had a pila. It is a staple and if I ever have a house, I want a pila! I watched my host mother in Xela, Guatemala scrub the heck out her family’s clothes, bedding, towels, even the curtains and drapes, with soap up to her elbows. Her scrubbing could be heard all around the house. They had a washing machine, but she never used it. She didn’t think it made the clothes clean enough. But she let me use it for a few quetzales a load. Sometimes I only had a few things to wash and used the pila. Out on the road, it was all about the pila.

If you think you’re going to be drying your clothes in a big, industrial size dryer, you will be missing out on the beauty of line drying which is all the rage in Latin America. Granted, line drying is not quite as beautiful (or fast) in the tropics. The humidity hangs on the line as heavy as a pair of wet corduroys (a pair of pants you would not want to wear in the tropics, by the way). It still works fine, but not as quickly as on a roof terrace in the highlands of Guatemala, at least during the dry season. There are sometimes laundromats that have electric dryers like most people use in the U.S., but it’s just not the same.

I have also washed clothes in a machine that when visiting me for a week, my mother recognized as the same model her grandmother had used in her house. It was a machine, yes. But the kind where you add water to the basin with a hose, then add soap, then let it churn, then drain the water, then add more to rinse, then drain again, and finally, use an old-fashioned wringer (the kind with the rollers and crank you turn with your Laura Ingalls Wilder arm) to squeeze out the water. I actually thought the process was pretty cool. I used it in a small guesthouse in Guanajuato, Mexico, where the sun always shined and moisture in the air was non-existent (as was evident by my scaly skin and twice-daily application of lotion all over my scaly body). Dry air meant dry clothes on the line in about ten minutes. Go energy savings!

So no matter how you may be able to wash your clothes as you travel, it is just easier if you have clothes that are hand washable and can be dried on a line.  You will adapt quickly to dressing a little (or a lot) more casually than you might at home. And you will adapt to using the pila.

CASUAL WEAR AND COMFORTABLE SHOES ON DISPLAY. Here I am with wonderful friends I met through my volunteer work in Xela, Guatemala: Hanna from Sweden (left) and Sarah from Canada (center). We were visiting the

Mam ruins of Zaculeu near Huehuetenango, Guatemala. They are stylish travelers (told you I had photos). I am simply

casual and wearing the previously mentioned bright green t-shirt with hot pink lettering. We are all wearing comfy shoes. Our footsies were grateful.