Still more on packing for the tropics

SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR -- I've experienced the full range of challenges during my current trip through Mexico and Central America. While the hardest thing in small towns and villages in Chiapas, Mexico, was finding electricity and IP, now that I'm in San Salvador I'm concerned about robbery -- because I'm unprepared for it.

I posted my second thoughts on what I should have brought on this trip, but didn't. My "third thoughts" revolve around laptop theft. Although San Salvador is a wonderful city to visit -- great food, very nice people and lots of first-rate hotels and cyber cafes -- it topped out in the mid 1990s as the second most dangerous city in the Western Hemisphere. They continue to make improvements, but it's still a high-crime place.

Everyone in El Salvador who carries anything of value also carries a gun. Banks have carpeted "cubby holes" for customers to deposit their weapons in before getting in line for tellers. Every gas station, hotel, supermarket or any other place with cash features at least one guard with a sawed-off shotgun, finger on the trigger, posted outside.

It gets worse. As a conspicuous gringo, everyone who sees me knows two things: 1) I'm probably carrying cash or something else of value -- especially when I'm carrying my backpack; and 2) I'm definitely unarmed, as it's illegal for foreigners here to carry guns. I might as well paint a target on my back.

Walking around in San Salvador focuses the mind on what I might have done differently.

I'm not worried about data loss. My files are all backed up online, with another copy on the SD card in my BlackBerry Pearl. But if I were to be robbed, they'd probably take my BlackBerry. And downloading my files from the online backup at a cyber cafe or hotel business center would require me to install and configure JungleDisk, which requires, for security reasons, the entering of two very long strings of letters and numbers. I have those in a secret location online, but it's a time-consuming process -- one that would have to be repeated at every cyber cafe or business center PC I use. If the PC crashes, and the system can't be booted, I'll have to walk away. They'll fix the PC later, and when it's backed up and running, it'll have a folder that represents my online JungleDisk drive with all my files -- not good.

I should have packed a virtual-PC-on-a-flash drive. (Actually, I don't need to have packed it. I can buy a drive here in San Salvador and download and install the software. I'm also going to add this to my travel checklist.)

Since my own laptop -- and all the cyber cafes I've seen thus far in Latin America -- are XP-based, rather than Vista-based, I'm going to download and buy MojoPac Freedom.

This software installs a working instance of Windows XP on a flash drive. After you copy your data files and documents to the drive, you can then just insert the drive into any XP PC with a USB drive. The OS boots, and you use the Windows on your system, not theirs. Best of all, when you unplug the drive, you leave behind no trace of your files or cookies or anything else.

I'm going to buy the smallest-size, largest-capacity drive I can, then tuck it in one of my socks as I'm walking around with my backpack. That way, if my laptop is stolen, I'll at least be able to go to any cyber cafe and get right back to work.

San Salvador's murder rate is even higher than its robbery rate, so perhaps I should have brought a bullet-proof backpack, too.

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